Free Range Flock With Separate Breeding

[Mrs. K]

You really don't have to do it all every year. You could do one color a year, or maybe two. You really shouldn't hatch pullet eggs, but wait until the eggs are full size. And you shouldn't hatch all of your chickens eggs.

What you should do, is get the SOP's for the breed. Learn to read that, and really examine your hens. Probably pick the top 3-5 hens according to the SOP's. The other hens are just layers. Then get a very good rooster in the color that you want. Now he can run with everyone, but you need to separate out the good hens eggs. Those are the ones that you will hatch.

My advice would be for the five colors being hatched with fresh birds in that color would be a 3-4 year plan. Not all one year - or you are going to be building.

Another issue - is how many hens do you have or expect to have? And every time you hatch, you tend to get 50% males. (My last hatch, 100% males, just saying).

Good luck, best advice is start small, get that going, then start making bigger plans, you have years to do this hobby, no need to do it all at once.

Mrs K

 

[JustAMoHick]

You would probably have to have multiple coops and pen them when you want to hatch eggs or rotate them. When they free range though the hens will choose their roosters and it won’t necessarily be because he is the same color.

Hi, welcome to the forum. Glad you joined.

First, the basics to help you plan. On average it takes an egg about 25 hours to go through the hen's internal egg making factory. That egg can only be fertilized during the first few minutes of that journey. That means if a mating takes place on a Monday, Monday's egg is not fertilized from that mating. It can't be. Tuesday's egg may or may not be fertile from that mating, depends on the timing. Wednesday's egg should be.

Note that this is after a mating. A rooster does not necessarily mate with every hen in his flock every day. He doesn't have to. After a successful mating the hen stores the sperm in a special container near where the egg starts its journey. That sperm can remain viable anywhere from 9 days to over three weeks. The 9 days is good to know. The over three weeks is probably more important to you. Three weeks is not a hard and fast time period. The sperm may not still be viable, it may remain viable for a week or more longer.

Some breeders use three weeks as a cutoff date, it usually works. But usually does not mean always. Some people use four weeks if they want to be very sure. I don't know how strongly you feel about that.

With this information it is up to you to decide how you want to manage this. I don't know how many hens you will have, how many chicks you want, or how often you want to hatch chicks. If a hen is exposed to a rooster that you do not want to hatch from she needs to be isolated three or four weeks before you start collecting eggs to hatch. You may want to think about not letting them free range with any rooster.

One model would be to let the hens free range without a rooster and keep all roosters in a secure bachelor pad. When you want hatchable eggs put a rooster with his specific hens in a breeding pen. How often you want hatchable eggs will determine how many breeding pens you will need.

Many people are successful keeping roosters in bachelor pads as long as there are not girls to fight over. They will establish their own pecking order and will probably have to redetermine that whenever you remove one or out one back. With living animals you do not get guarantees but it is usually not too bad. But if you decide to build a bachelor pad make it big. Give them a lot of room, both in the coop and in the run. It is not something you want to think small about.

There are other ways to go about it. Keeping five different breeding flocks from cross breeding isn't that complicated but it does require facilities and a plan. Good luck! And once again,

Thank you very much for the insight. Appreciate it!

 

[JustAMoHick]

You really don't have to do it all every year. You could do one color a year, or maybe two. You really shouldn't hatch pullet eggs, but wait until the eggs are full size. And you shouldn't hatch all of your chickens eggs.

What you should do, is get the SOP's for the breed. Learn to read that, and really examine your hens. Probably pick the top 3-5 hens according to the SOP's. The other hens are just layers. Then get a very good rooster in the color that you want. Now he can run with everyone, but you need to separate out the good hens eggs. Those are the ones that you will hatch.

My advice would be for the five colors being hatched with fresh birds in that color would be a 3-4 year plan. Not all one year - or you are going to be building.

Another issue - is how many hens do you have or expect to have? And every time you hatch, you tend to get 50% males. (My last hatch, 100% males, just saying).

Good luck, best advice is start small, get that going, then start making bigger plans, you have years to do this hobby, no need to do it all at once.

Mrs K

Thank you, Ma'am; I appreciate your help.