Chooks will always check out if there's a better pen for them,but in general will sleep where you kept them for the first week or so. I can only give you answers that are relevant to my knowledge, which isn't total by any stretch of the imagination, plus I live in Australia and most people here are American. It's all different, different feeds, different genetics, different environment, even different meanings for the same words, lol. Anyway, here's my anecdotal info on the subject:
You will have problems if you take a (generally feed-inefficient) heavy production layer strain that's always running hungry and try to prevent them from eating the food of another (likewise, usually feed-inefficient) heavy production meat strain, when both have access to eachother's food, I think they'll both choose the most fattening. I think your layers will get over fat and your broilers will miss out and possibly get bullied terribly.
Quote: Not sure what you mean. Free range meat chooks? A certain breed or strain of meat chooks known as 'rangers'?
I keep dual purpose, not strictly meat breeds, but if you're talking about the really heavy production broilers, since their feed needs are so dire they may not be interested in free ranging, nor physically able to do much of it, and I'm inclined to think your rooster will possibly distress them unduly. They're not like the hens he's used to, and heavy meat breeds are more or less cripples, which usually doesn't go down too well with active chooks who've never been raised in a cripple-tolerant society. Commercial farmers in Australia who claim to rear free range meat chooks actually follow rules in books about how far to put the feed trays away from the houses to get them to come out, and how far is too far therefore making them unlikely to make it back to bed. They can't get them to actually free range because physically they are so incapable. They suffer. The distances talked about in the books are about two metres on average! People who want to claim freerange are often steering away from the heavier production birds because they are so limited. Everyone I know who's ever kept them never would again. The sooner the heavy production strain goes extinct, the better.
