HELP!!! Pressed for time and feeling like a novice!!!!

[olp_63]

Our coop will be finished in a few days or so, and when it's done, ALL the birds have to be moved from the garage to the coop - no exceptions!
But I have one tiny problem that I failed to plan for. I have 4 bantam roosters that will need to be separated as we do not wish to have fertile eggs at this time. Or at least, if we do get fertile eggs, we would like them to be pure bred, not mixes.

Sooo...how do I separate them from the others? Building another coop is NOT an option! But luckily my dad did a great job with the coop as far as size! It's pretty big. I was thinking that i could put the roos in individual cages on shelves in the coop. And let them out into the run in shifts. But doesn't that seem somewhat cruel? Or is that just the novice in me? I really don't have much experience with roos, so ANY help is appreciated!
Thanks to all who answer this!!!

 

[muddler6]

As far as not wanting "fertile" eggs, if you are going to eat them, there is no real difference, you would be surprised how many eggs I have gotten from grocery stores that are fertile. Once you know how to tell the difference it is easy to tell the difference. If you don't want chicks, just collect them everyday and don't let them hatch. As long as your roosters get along they should be fine in there with the others. Mine fought like crazy, and I had to get rid of one.

 

[olp_63]

Well, I don't think we'll eat very many of the eggs. I dunno...my family has never really been interested in that

.

We would love to breed ONE of the pairs (we have Japanese, Sebrights, and Mille Fleurs) at a time.

The roos have been raised together from day one when they were arrived at our house from Ideal. And we are yet to notice any problems with aggression. But we just don't want mix breeds.
Also, this may be a dumb question, but, can we just throw the eggs out? It would feel so wrong but if we aren't gonna eat them....

 

[greenthumb89]

you can throw the eggs out but i was told that japanese bantams had to be artifically inseminated because of the size difference...dont know for sure but i would probably look into it.

if you hvae a pet dog or cat give an egg to them once in a while, they love them and their coat will be extra shiny from the extra protein.

 

[muddler6]

At the very lease, cook the eggs for the chickens, I have an old blender that I throw the eggs in, shell and all, and an old skillet just for cooking the eggs in for my chickens. The shells are good for giving them calcium. If your family tries fresh eggs, especially from your own chickens, that my sway them over to enjoying them that much more. Look at some of the recipes on here and try different things that have eggs in them. OR give them to friends, neighbors and family. If you have dogs, my dogs when I had them loved eggs. It is such a shame to throw out the bounty of your work and time.

 

[cyrixlord]

Do you have neighbors you can give eggs to? I'm sure they'd love eggs.

 

[olp_63]

I wish we had friendly neighbors that we could give the eggs to! Our neighbors on one side are EXTREMELY rude and self centered, but they are involved in poultry and the 4-h fair. They are constantly bragging about their daughter's many achievements! I really wish they were nice as we are also involved in the 4-h fair for our county.
Anyway, our other neighbors, though friendly, would not be interested.
I'm going to do all that I can, but hopefully we will not end up overrun with chicks that we can't house!

 

[jenjscott]

Don't forget, if you feed them back to the chickens, you are recycling your food, and saveing on the feed bill.

 

[dftkarin]

You don't eat eggs at all?

 

[Grass]

donate them to a local food bank or salvation army. some family in need would surely love to have some fresh eggs