Sara Ranch
Songster
- Jun 7, 2017
- 916
- 971
- 183
Beautiful birds!
Someone else will be able to help identify the mixes.
Someone else will be able to help identify the mixes.
Hen:rooster ratio
- Thread starter ehoneybee
- Start date
Connor Pearson
Hatching
- Sep 2, 2017
- 1
- 0
- 1
I have 9 hens and 2 roosters I'm incubating eggs so I want good fertility, they fight a bit but that's minor
- Thread starter
- #33
These hens don't sit on their eggs so I'd have to incubate them myself if I wanted more chicks. Glad they won't go broody, though!
- Thread starter
- #34
Went to tuck them in last night...so cute how they all just know to go in the coop! They do look pretty squeezed and when I checked in on them this morning to let them out, there was plenty of poop in the nesting boxes. Clearly not enough room on the roosting bars. It says for 4 reg. size or 6 bantams, but I'd say 2 -3 max. I think I'll get another coop and connect them with a run. Does that sound good?
Get bigger coop that they all fit in, they'll want to be together....
..... and save the small coop for the future, they make great isolation/broody/hospital/growout coops.
Adding your state location to your profile would help us immensely....
....climate can make big difference when offering advice/suggestions.
ETA: regarding the 10:1 ratio, that is for commercial fertility assurance.
Many breeders keep pairs, trios, quads, etc.
Has nothing to do with how'll they'll get along, that is a whole nother issue.
I did not notice what age the male and three females are. Did you mention that? It could be important. Why I asked about age is that immature cockerels and pullets are more likely to have problems than mature roosters and hens. Those look fairly mature so you should have that in your favor.
Stuff gets taken out of context all the time and becomes law. That’s happened with the 10 to 1 hen/rooster ratio. That 10 to 1 ratio is a rule of thumb hatcheries use to maintain fertility in the system they generally use to keep their chickens. In the pen breeding system they may have 20 roosters with 200 hens. They monitor fertility and tweak that ratio if they need to but they have found that a 10 to 1 ratio is a good starting point. It’s all about fertility, it has nothing to do with behaviors. You are not in that situation, that ratio has nothing to do with you. Breeders often keep one rooster with one or two hens throughout the breeding season with no problems. Others may have over 20 hens with one rooster and still have problems. Often one rooster can keep a lot of hens fertile.
Any hen can go broody regardless of breed or background but many never go broody regardless of breed. The only way you can control when or if eggs hatch is to get an incubator.
I don’t know what your final number of chickens will be. That is the number you should plan for. If you plan on hatching eggs or getting new chickens to add to your flock, I suggest you build a lot bigger than you think you need to. You can follow the link in my signature to get some of my thoughts about space but if you add chickens of any age whether you hatch them in an incubator, let a broody hatch and raise them, or you buy them you need more room than if you have a flock all the same age.
What you have is about 3’ x 7’ with an enclosed area 2’ x 2’ according to their dimensions. If that run is 3’ wide the photos make it look like the coop section is too so I’m not sure what is going on. You have two nests. The whole thing is covered. I don’t know what your climate is like, it’s often helpful to modify your profile to show your general location, that helps with so many questions. For four chickens that is not horrible for summer provided you never lock them in that enclosed section but leave the entire area, run plus coop, available to them at all times. Winter may be a different situation.
What I suggest is that you first decide on how many total chickens you expect to end up with and build a run next to that coop big enough to handle them. Don’t depend on being able to free range them all day every day. There can easily be times you want to lock them up instead of letting them free range.
Then build a coop large enough to handle however many chickens you will wind up with attached to that run. The idea is to keep the current coop to use as necessary. It is often extremely handy to be able to isolate a chicken from the flock in something like that, especially if you will be integrating in the future.
Lots of people manage a few birds in a coop/run that size, especially in suburbia. These are often the people you read about cleaning and managing poop every day of the year. In something that small you have to work harder than you would if things were bigger. You don’t have the flexibility to manage issues and emergencies as they come up which can add to your stress levels. The more you crowd them the more likely you are to have behavior issues but a lot of that depends on the personality of your individual chickens. It’s very possible a rooster and three hens could manage in that very well or it’s possible you could have a disaster. But that’s true to a point in any sized coop/run. It’s just more likely when they are tight.
Stuff gets taken out of context all the time and becomes law. That’s happened with the 10 to 1 hen/rooster ratio. That 10 to 1 ratio is a rule of thumb hatcheries use to maintain fertility in the system they generally use to keep their chickens. In the pen breeding system they may have 20 roosters with 200 hens. They monitor fertility and tweak that ratio if they need to but they have found that a 10 to 1 ratio is a good starting point. It’s all about fertility, it has nothing to do with behaviors. You are not in that situation, that ratio has nothing to do with you. Breeders often keep one rooster with one or two hens throughout the breeding season with no problems. Others may have over 20 hens with one rooster and still have problems. Often one rooster can keep a lot of hens fertile.
Any hen can go broody regardless of breed or background but many never go broody regardless of breed. The only way you can control when or if eggs hatch is to get an incubator.
I don’t know what your final number of chickens will be. That is the number you should plan for. If you plan on hatching eggs or getting new chickens to add to your flock, I suggest you build a lot bigger than you think you need to. You can follow the link in my signature to get some of my thoughts about space but if you add chickens of any age whether you hatch them in an incubator, let a broody hatch and raise them, or you buy them you need more room than if you have a flock all the same age.
What you have is about 3’ x 7’ with an enclosed area 2’ x 2’ according to their dimensions. If that run is 3’ wide the photos make it look like the coop section is too so I’m not sure what is going on. You have two nests. The whole thing is covered. I don’t know what your climate is like, it’s often helpful to modify your profile to show your general location, that helps with so many questions. For four chickens that is not horrible for summer provided you never lock them in that enclosed section but leave the entire area, run plus coop, available to them at all times. Winter may be a different situation.
What I suggest is that you first decide on how many total chickens you expect to end up with and build a run next to that coop big enough to handle them. Don’t depend on being able to free range them all day every day. There can easily be times you want to lock them up instead of letting them free range.
Then build a coop large enough to handle however many chickens you will wind up with attached to that run. The idea is to keep the current coop to use as necessary. It is often extremely handy to be able to isolate a chicken from the flock in something like that, especially if you will be integrating in the future.
Lots of people manage a few birds in a coop/run that size, especially in suburbia. These are often the people you read about cleaning and managing poop every day of the year. In something that small you have to work harder than you would if things were bigger. You don’t have the flexibility to manage issues and emergencies as they come up which can add to your stress levels. The more you crowd them the more likely you are to have behavior issues but a lot of that depends on the personality of your individual chickens. It’s very possible a rooster and three hens could manage in that very well or it’s possible you could have a disaster. But that’s true to a point in any sized coop/run. It’s just more likely when they are tight.
- Thread starter
- #37
They were all born in May this year. We're going to build a bigger coop and a run - I like this idea and so does my husband
lilmarie84
Songster
it depends on the breed as well you have a BO which is one breed that do tend to go broody and they are still fairly young so they might not go broody til closer to spring if they do go broody
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