Did i make a mistake

[lazy gardener]

A lot of good info posted here. Ditto BirdMan: If you have a roo you'll see some feather damage... no matter how many hens you have. He's gonna have favorites. It may not happen right away... but, eventually you'll see it. I'm noticing it in my flock of 16, who are in a 10 x 12 coop. I think it's bound to be worse in the winter when they're apt to be inside more... and bored. Same with feather picking.

Crowding is the biggest issue with any flock. Is this your first flock? Will you be selling a lot of eggs? While getting chickens can be like a trip to the candy store, my advice to you is: Assuming that you are in this for the long haul, there will be plenty of options to expand your flock in the future. You're going to want to replace some ageing hens. You may have a hen go broody in the future. That may be the best time to add your Orps. You already have a large flock. There's quite a learning curve with poultry. Also, it might be wise to put the brakes on regarding getting more birds just to see how much of a bio load this current flock puts on your yard, and how much of a financial burden they are to your wallet.

 

[Ridgerunner]

No, you did not make a mistake in your selection of breeds. In my opinion people get way too hung up on breed, when breed isn’t all that important. There are breed tendencies, I won’t deny that, but those tendencies get pretty blurred. I have Irish ancestry so I’ll pick on the Irish. Many people have certain preconceived notions about what an Irish person should be like. I did, and when I went to Ireland and worked with Irish people I met some that matched my stereotype. I also met a lot that did not. Each Irish person is an individual and needs to be taken as an individual. Many people have stereotypes of different chicken breeds. Some Barred Rock, RIR, or Buff Orpington will live up to their stereotype, but a lot won’t.

With chickens, the person selecting which chicken get to breed needs to select for certain tendencies or those tendencies quickly get blurred. That is behavioral just as much as physical or production traits. There are very few breeders in the country, hatchery or private breeders, that actually select for behavioral traits. No one can tell you which of your breeds will produce the dominant chicken in your flock and no one can tell you which breed will produce a brute and bully, if any does. You may have behavioral problems or you may not but that is not dependent on breed.

I’m not a believer in magic numbers for chickens whether that is how much space they need, hen to rooster ratio, or much of anything else. We keep them in so many different conditions with so many different goals, different flock make-ups, different management techniques, and who knows how many other differences that no one magic number can cover us all. We are all unique.

As far as space goes, I firmly believe the more room you provide the fewer behavioral problems you are going to have to deal with, the more flexibility you have to deal with problems that do show up, and the less hard you have to work. You can crowd them but that generally makes it harder on you and you may have to make some tough decisions. You may have to anyway but the odds of it being rougher on you go up the more you crowd them. You might follow the link in my signature for some of the things I think you should consider when determining how much space you need.

For some reason this thread got off on roosters. Most hatcheries guarantee a 90% accuracy on sexing chicks, so there is a possibility you might get a rooster or two. Part of that depends on how the feed store handles the chicks when they come in too. Some feed store personnel are more knowledgeable than others. With your black sex links and amber links that should be real close to 100%. It is certainly possible you will wind up with one or more roosters, but not guaranteed.

That 10 to 1 hen to rooster ratio makes for a nice flock, but that ratio is based on the commercial industry where they use the pen breeding method to produce fertile hatching eggs. It has nothing to do with roosters fighting or hens being over-mated. It is purely about fertility and even then just about fertility of hens kept in the pen breeding system. With the way we keep them, fertility depends a lot on the individual rooster and the individual hens. The hens play a part too. A fairly viral active rooster can often keep 20 to 25 hens fertile while a rooster that is not that active might have trouble keeping 3 or 4 hens fertile.

You can have the same problems whether you have a small hen to rooster ratio as if you have a large ratio. You can have barebacked hens with one rooster and 25 hens. Many breeders keep one rooster isolate with one or two hens during the entire breeding season and never have barebacked problems. Some of that is due to the personality of the individual chickens. When I had barebacked hen issues I had a pretty good hen to rooster ratio, but those two hens had brittle feathers. That’s genetic. Their feathers were so brittle they just broke off easily, even if the rooster did nothing wrong. When I removed those two hens from my flock and did not let them breed, my barebacked hen problem went away, even though the ratio was worse.

I always recommend that you keep as few roosters as you can and still maintain your goals. That’s not because you will have more problems with more roosters, but because you are more likely to have problems. With roosters, the more roosters you have the more room you need. This extra room is not about square feet per chicken, it’s about the roosters being able to claim separate territories and minimize opportunity for conflict.

Many of us integrate chicks all the time. The problem is not so much size as maturity level, though a larger chicks is more of a danger to a younger chick. You might be able to integrate those younger Buff Orps without any problems, but the possibility for disaster is fairly high. I’d suggest you keep them in a separate brooder until they get older. How much older? At least until they have feathered out and don’t need the heat source any more. To me that is a minimum. What age you can actually integrate them will depend a lot on your set-up, again the more room you have the better. Again, there is not a magic number for this. I integrate them at 8 weeks, more due to my set-up than anything else. Some people and many broody hens do it earlier. For some people they need to wait until the chicks are basically fully grown. You might want to do a search on chick integration to get different people’s opinions and methods.

You can see there are a lot of different opinions on this forum. A big part of that is that a lot of different things work for different people. It can get pretty frustrating on here trying to figure out which way to go, not because our options are limited but because you have so many different ways to choose from. It’s often hard, but if you can figure out which people raise them a lot like you, then you might narrow your options down. It’s usually not a case of whether you can or cannot do something but how can you do it.

Good luck and welcome to the adventure. You’ll find that it is not as hard as we make it sound.

 

[birdman55]

very good information...you just have to find out what works for your situation....and that comes thru experience..so give it some time you will do great

 

[Bogtown Chick]

Off on the Tangent of Roosters again. As they age to a 2 or 3 year old they mellow and are much easier on hens...unless you haven't culled extras and there is still competition.

I think if you are in a mild to temperate climate those breeds are fine. I myself in my climate (very chilly long winters) need a smaller combed variety of bird.
So Breed selection is Very important to me.

 

[greg eviston]

Thanks to all for all the input! I really appreciate it! I have a coop that is 12 x 12 so hopefully that is big enough for the 20 birds I am raising. Any ideas on how big of a run I should build for that many chickens?

 

[donrae]

12x12=144 square feet. That should be a nice size for 20 birds. Good rule of thumb for a run is 10 square feet per bird, so you're looking at minimum 200 square feet for a run. If you've not read Ridgerunner's great article on how much space chickens need, I highly suggest it....

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/how-much-room-do-chickens-need

 

[littledog]

One of the best, most down-to-earth, and most helpful posts I've seen on this or most other animal-caretaking forums. Thank you!

 

[kubotafoot]

I bought several chicks starting a flock and didnt do my research very well before i bought and might have made a mistake. I bought 5 rhode island reds, 5 barred rock, 5 black sex link, 3 amber link and 2 white leghorn. After reading up on it is this going to be a bad flock because if i read right the barred rock will get picked on pretty bad. Also i would love to buy 5 buff orpington to finish out my flock but i believe they will get picked on also. Can anyone tell me if i have made a mistake?

Quite a mix! Raised together from the start, they will learn to get along. Birds of a feather, flock together is true. You will see the different breeds do hang with each other. The barred rocks here in my flock rule the roost! They are not going to be picked on and just stand up for themselves. You may be tempted to jump in and stop all rights, but don't. They need to establish a pecking order, but they all can be taught manners. I grab one when it is acting too aggressive in my book and tell him/her "We don't do that in this house. I am the boss of tyhe farm.....you can be the boss of the barnyard if you can, but never be mean." They probably have no clue what I am saying to them, but the get the idea with being held up and spoken harshly to. We have no fightsm and all are happy, even when pecking orders change and change they do!
As for adding little ones to the flock......If you have a separate spot to raise them where they all can SEE each other, but be separate, I would say go for it, but they little ones need to be at least 65 weeks old before being added directly to the main flock. As long as they can see each other during growth time, all should be well.
Enjoy! It's a great experience.