Hens turned out to be roosters

[farmerblamb]

I ordered 17 day old chicks that were supposed to be all hens. These are my very first chickens so I'm a beginner. It looks like at least two are roosters. One has started crowing and the other one, well we just think he's a rooster. Anyway. I got these to be laying hens and now that a couple of them are roosters, what are we supposed to do with them? I don't think that we want fertilized eggs. They are only a couple months old so not old enough to lay yet. If we want to keep the roosters do we just separate them from the flock when they get laying age or what exactly do we do to keep them from getting their groove on with our hens? We have some meat chickens coming this week as day old chicks. We thought maybe about housing the roosters with them but we want to let our hens free range some during the day too. So do we just keep them separated or do people normally kill their roosters in this situation and put them in the freeze?

 

[A.T. Hagan]

Even if you ordered all pullet chicks the hatcheries will only guarantee a 90% sexing ratio meaning that there is a 10% chance that any given chick could be a male. Sounds like you got two of them.

If you are going to be raising meat birds then what I would do is keep the boys with the girls until the meat birds are ready for slaughter then process the unwanted roosters at the same time. Until then there is no harm in keeping the boys and girls together. Just don't put the much older birds in with the younger meat chicks.

 

[donrae]

I agree, if you didn't want roosters in the first place, just raise them until 5ish months and butcher them. You can keep them in with the hens until then, as long as there aren't more. When they start really acting alpha male, it's time to butcher. Fertile eggs really aren't a problem, you've probably eaten them from the store already and it takes a very practiced eye to tell if an egg is fertile.

 

[farmerblamb]

Thanks guys for the info. I'm learning something new everyday.