Help, too many roos, not enough hens.

[Kathyb2]

I have had a few free range chickens for the past 4 or 5 years. Then came the incubator. I now have 4 12 wk silkies and 2 eight week old polish sharing a coop/run, a 4 week old barnyard mix living in the same run but separated, and 3 free range chickens.

My question is about the free range chickens. I thought I had 3 girls and one roo. I had 2 hens and I rescued a pair of easter died chicks from the pet store. The rescues are 5-6 mos old and what I thought was a brown leghorn pullet and a white leghorn rooster turned out to be a RIR rooster and a leghorn roo. I lost one of my free range hens so I now have one poor EE hen and two young roosters. If I separate the two roosters, is it ok to have one hen with one rooster? Is it ok to house the extra rooster by himself? Are RIR normally ok penned? If I am blessed and the 4 wk barnyard mix is a pullet, how old would she need to be before I tried to put her with one of the roos? Does anyone have more than one free range flock out together?

What does everyone do with their extra roosters, besides eat them?

Kathy

 

[Domestic_goddess]

my suggestions would be to try to find them new homes! Good luck.

 

[wildorchid053]

i have 4 roos and 4 hens. we just made an addition to the coop.. a bachelor pad for 3 of the boys.. going to put one roo with the girls this winter and the other 3 boys in the little addition.. they can go out at seperate times into the run..

 

[Omran]

you can fix your family a nice chicken soop, that's what I do with extra roosters.

 

[thesdcowgirl]

My roosters are sooo pretty. I don't want to eat the extras! I want to find them new homes.

 

[CamillaRules]

Quote:
I'm so glad to see someone else feels that way. I had to rehome my two roos last night and was feeling like some kind of an idiot for being sad to see them go.

(can you tell I'm new at this?

I kept asking around until I found a farmer who actually wanted a rooster for his girls, so he got 2 instead. I told him I DO NOT want to know if he has to do anything violent and he laughed and was very nice about it....probably cracked up after I left! Good luck. I miss my "Snowy" the white rooster...but the neighbors don't miss his good mornings!

 

[thesdcowgirl]

I'd really like to trade my two roos for a couple more hens- I ended up with three cockerels, and only 5 hens, so I really need a couple more hens. I plan to keep a rooster around just because they're so gorgeous. But I know no one else here in the frozen tundra of South Dakota that has Cochins. And that's what I want.

 

[ilovebuffs]

We have two different flocks that are now free ranging together. We got the bitties when the older ones were about 13wks old, keeping them seperate, of course. We kept them seperate till the bitties were about half the size, maybe a little bit more, of the bigger ones. When we put them out together, they really didn't bother each other too bad. There was some pecking just to figure out the order but they pretty much left each other alone...actually they are still seperate from each other at times. But they do mingle some too. Hope this helps. We have the same problem...the bitties we got were about 7 roos and 3hens. Oh well, I guess that's the way it works. Good luck!

 

[Namble]

Simply sell/eat your roos!

 

[HBuehler]

We try to sell some but one thing is for sure
They all look about the same once the feathers are off

and they taste just like Chicken.
Don't think anyone would be willing to trade a Roo for a Hen..Roos are in an abundant supply unless it's a high quality breeding roo