Chicken Feathers are not growing up.

[Brahma Chicken5000]

@aart and @chickens really what is your rooster to hen ratio regardless if they’re for breeding or protecting the hens?

 

[Brahma Chicken5000]

I would have the roosters with the layers so that they could warn them of danger when they would be free ranging. Of course I would still be outside when they would be free ranging.

 

[chickens really]

I would have the roosters with the layers so that they could warn them of danger when they would be free ranging. Of course I would still be outside when they would be free ranging.

[/QUOTE]
All you can do us try it...If it gets out of hand?...Cull one..What breeds?

 

[chickens really]

My Pal Al, he breeds Chickens and many breeds ...He keeps one Rooster to two or 3 Hens and has great success..

 

[Brahma Chicken5000]

I would think that the hens would get over bred on trios?

 

[Brahma Chicken5000]

All you can do us try it...If it gets out of hand?...Cull one..What breeds?[/QUOTE]

 

[chickens really]

Actually no, his Birds are great...Why I only have 6 Hens to one Rooster..Nothing here gets over bred either ...

 

[Brahma Chicken5000]

My light brahma rooster, Marcy, overbred his 4 hens.

 

[Brahma Chicken5000]

The photos are the breeds I want for my laying flock and breeding flocks.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I thought the rooster toy hen ratio of 1:10 was to make sure the hens don’t get over bred. I plan on having a large layer flock (30 hens) with a couple roosters mixed in with the hens to protect the hens when they range.

You probably got that on this forum, it's really common on here. The commercial hatcheries that use the pen breeding method have found that a ratio of around 10 to 1 for large fowl and around 12- 15 to 1 for bantams pretty much assures all eggs are fertile. They don't want to spend money to feed more roosters than they need. They are always checking fertility and tweaking that number to be as efficient as they can. That only applies to the pen breeding system too, where you might have 20 roosters in a pen with 200 hens.

If you house then differently then that 10 to 1 for fertility does not apply. Some roosters can cover 25 to 30 hens without a problem. Some have problems with more than a handful. Some of that is personality of the hens and rooster. Yes, I believe the hens have a part to lay in this too. Younger roosters are often much more vigorous than older roosters. Smaller roosters like bantams are often more vigorous that full-sized breeds.

10 to 1 makes a nice flock, but as Aart said, some people don't have any issues with much smaller ratios and people with much larger ratios sometimes have problems.

My ratio is constantly changing as I have pullets coming into lay at a lot of different times of the year and I collect eggs for hatching at different times of the year. My basic breeding/laying flock may be one rooster with 6 to 8 hens, this year it will be 9 hens for different reasons. Sometimes when I am evaluating pullets to decide which ones I wan to keep for my breeding/laying flock (or I don't have freezer room) I may have somewhere in the upper teens of pullets and hens combined.

I normally butcher my cockerels around 23 weeks of age. Cockerels and roosters are two different animals, cockerels are often really wired when their hormones kick in. Occasionally I isolate some or all of the cockerels to a grow-out pen if it gets too rowdy, but there have been several times I have a lot more cockerels than pullets in with my main flock and I don't isolate any. When I keep a cockerel to replace my older rooster I often have both of them in with whatever hens and pullets I have until that cockerel has matured some.

I think room has a lot to do with any of this. If you crowd them you are much more likely to have behavioral problems than if you give them lots of room.