How Many Hens to Keep A Fellow Happy

[45lk9p459gm-w]

If you are afraid of the future - then go with a slower growing meat bird, there are meat birds that will reproduce, and produce a nice table bird, but they are going to take more feed.

Do you have breed suggestions for these slower growing birds?

 

[MysteryChicken]

I keep alot of hens, & multiple roosters. This ensures I have good fertility for hatching chicks.

The only draw back is occasionally a rooster will lose his life over a dominance fight. Lost my Welsummer rooster yesterday. One of my Project Orpington roosters killed him.(First Time I lost a rooster in a dominance fight)

My mixed flock coop goes through a Alpha rotation every year. A new Alpha is chosen through a fight every spring. The loser will cower in the coop for awhile, before joining the flock again, but keeps his distance from the new Alpha of the flock.

 

[Mrs. K]

Keeping the flock together and letting the roo have a hen or two when fertile eggs are needed has merit but sounds a little unbalanced over all to me.

I think you misunderstood me. And now that I know you have leghorns now, this is even simpler. Keep the flock and the rooster together. Hatch the brown eggs as needed. A dominique will sometimes go broody. Eventually, you will want to hatch some more leghorns too, just to keep your egg production up.

However, a bred chicken, will produce fertilized eggs for several days. So my point in separating them, was so that you would KNOW for sure, which hens these eggs came out of, but if some lay white eggs, and some lay brown eggs...you do know.

You can keep hatching eggs on the counter. Date them as you collect them. When they get to be 4-5 days old, they go into cooking use. This will keep a constant supply of hatching eggs ready at all times. Some people never refrigerate their eggs.

As you cook, keep track of your fertilization rate. Just look for the bulls eye. When you have a high percentage of fertilized eggs, you can set eggs with confidence. Do know however, that even then not every egg is going to hatch into a live chick. If you get above a 50% hatch - that is good. There was a long term study on here, where people put in the number of what they set, and the number of chicks hatched, then added it to the next persons.... when the total number got over 500 - the hatch average was 50%.

I am not saying that you won't or can't get above 50%, sometimes people do, but sometimes they don't either.

Fascinating hoby, many aspects to it, way more than just getting a few eggs for most of us.

Mrs K

 

[Mrs. K]

Do you have breed suggestions for these slower growing birds?

Personally I do the cornish cross birds. They produce very big birds very economically in a very short period of time. A dozen will keep us in chicken meals all year. However, we are beef ranchers and chicken is only served once a week or so.

Go over to the meat section. There are many people there, that are interested in the slower growing meat birds, and you could get some good advice there.

Mrs K

 

[45lk9p459gm-w]

Personally I do the cornish cross birds. They produce very big birds very economically in a very short period of time. A dozen will keep us in chicken meals all year. However, we are beef ranchers and chicken is only served once a week or so.

Go over to the meat section. There are many people there, that are interested in the slower growing meat birds, and you could get some good advice there.

Mrs K

Thank you ......

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don't see that your basic idea has been kicked apart, more that you have received suggestions on how you may make it work better.

I want to have just a few fertilized eggs to stick under a broody hen when needed, and to trade to other chicken folks for … stuff. Don’t need many, but the supply needs to be steady.

A steady supply is a challenge. Hens stop laying when they go broody or when they molt. As they get older they can slow down laying. There are techniques to get around some of that, though there will always be limits.

Pullets sometimes skip the molt their first fall and lay all through winter even without supplementing the lights.. Not all do that as I've experienced but many do. I rotate new pullets in every year and replace the older hens. I hatch my own replacements.

I don’t want to deal with a rooster that has control of the whole chicken yard

I'm not sure why this is a limitation. If we knew why maybe we cold discuss it more.

so I want to have a dedicated coop and run for a rooster and a few hens. That way I know the eggs coming from that coop should be fertile and I can use them as needed.
My question is: What is the fewest number of hens needed to make a rooster feel like the king of his coop without a lot of social chicken issues to deal with.

I will most likely be using Dominique's.

Why Dominiques? Have you identified a market for them? Some other reason? Knowing why or knowing your goals can be really useful when coming up with suggestions and possible solutions.

Regardless of the breed, some people look at a chart or even base it on their own experiences, usually with very few birds, and assume that every chicken of that breed is exactly the same. That is not even close to true. Individuals lay eggs, some many more than others of the same breed. Individuals go broody or don't go broody. You can get a lot of size difference within a breed. If a flock has been together for a few generations without bringing in outside birds you can get a lot of differences by flock. These is called strains of that breed. We all have our own goals.

As Mrs K said, "I have had the dominique - some people love them, I was not that impressed. To each his own." She is exactly right, she usually is. If her goals were different dominique may have suited her fine. If she had a different strain she may have liked them a lot more.

When selecting a breed (unless you know the flock they are coming from) breed averages may be the best you can do. But don't be surprised if the ones you get don't meet those averages that well. They may be above, they may be below.

I'm still not totally sure of your goals. If you want to enhance the value on the market of your hatching eggs a specific breed could be important. I was going to suggest you get a leghorn rooster and sell leghorn hatching eggs as a possibility. That simplifies it a bunch if you don't have to separate them. Another alternative would be to get Ameraucana hens and a rooster, that would give you blue hatching eggs to sell but Ameraurcana are not known to be a great laying bird. Not real big either for meat. As others have commented if the hens lay different colored eggs to the leghorns you don't have to separate them.

From some of your latest posts it sounds like you want the hatching eggs you sell or hatch yourself to be good for meat. Is that one of your goals? Cornish X are not good for keeping to get eggs, they grow so fast it's hard to keep them alive. They also grow really fast. You pretty much have to buy the chicks each time. Rangers can be a little easier but not a lot, you will still probably need to buy chicks. You are probably going to be a lot better off using a heritage type bird.

There are a lot of different ways you could go with this. I'm not sure I understand your goals well enough to make a good suggestion.

 

[LizzzyJo]

OK, I totally get this. You want fertilized eggs, but don't to deal with a rooster comin at ya and annoying people and chickens all over the chicken area? Is that it?

 

[Chickassan]

Absolutely correct, and a heck of a read..

I don't see that your basic idea has been kicked apart, more that you have received suggestions on how you may make it work better.


A steady supply is a challenge. Hens stop laying when they go broody or when they molt. As they get older they can slow down laying. There are techniques to get around some of that, though there will always be limits.

Pullets sometimes skip the molt their first fall and lay all through winter even without supplementing the lights.. Not all do that as I've experienced but many do. I rotate new pullets in every year and replace the older hens. I hatch my own replacements.


I'm not sure why this is a limitation. If we knew why maybe we cold discuss it more.


Why Dominiques? Have you identified a market for them? Some other reason? Knowing why or knowing your goals can be really useful when coming up with suggestions and possible solutions.

Regardless of the breed, some people look at a chart or even base it on their own experiences, usually with very few birds, and assume that every chicken of that breed is exactly the same. That is not even close to true. Individuals lay eggs, some many more than others of the same breed. Individuals go broody or don't go broody. You can get a lot of size difference within a breed. If a flock has been together for a few generations without bringing in outside birds you can get a lot of differences by flock. These is called strains of that breed. We all have our own goals.

As Mrs K said, "I have had the dominique - some people love them, I was not that impressed. To each his own." She is exactly right, she usually is. If her goals were different dominique may have suited her fine. If she had a different strain she may have liked them a lot more.

When selecting a breed (unless you know the flock they are coming from) breed averages may be the best you can do. But don't be surprised if the ones you get don't meet those averages that well. They may be above, they may be below.

I'm still not totally sure of your goals. If you want to enhance the value on the market of your hatching eggs a specific breed could be important. I was going to suggest you get a leghorn rooster and sell leghorn hatching eggs as a possibility. That simplifies it a bunch if you don't have to separate them. Another alternative would be to get Ameraucana hens and a rooster, that would give you blue hatching eggs to sell but Ameraurcana are not known to be a great laying bird. Not real big either for meat. As others have commented if the hens lay different colored eggs to the leghorns you don't have to separate them.

From some of your latest posts it sounds like you want the hatching eggs you sell or hatch yourself to be good for meat. Is that one of your goals? Cornish X are not good for keeping to get eggs, they grow so fast it's hard to keep them alive. They also grow really fast. You pretty much have to buy the chicks each time. Rangers can be a little easier but not a lot, you will still probably need to buy chicks. You are probably going to be a lot better off using a heritage type bird.

There are a lot of different ways you could go with this. I'm not sure I understand your goals well enough to make a good suggestion.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Not true, Dominiques lay very regularly if they are in good conditions and even lay throughout winter and moulting "at least here they do."
These however aren't confined to coop and run.
Really unless you have major predators that breeds talents are wasted by keeping them cooped.

again, depends on source. As I said, I've not owned any personally.

Henderson claims 120-200 medium eggs per year. Plenty of hatcheries claim 225 or 235 up to 275 medium to md lg eggs per year (of course, i take hatchery claims with a serving of salt). Cackle covers their bases - 180-260 eggs per year, as example. The American Livestock Breed Conservancy offers a similar range (230-275) and medium size. As does the Livestock Conservancy. MSU offers "good" for frequency of lay. This site's "pickin the right fricken chicken..." thread claims "medium" for frequency of lay.

So that offers a range of 1 egg per three days (worst case) to two eggs every three days (best case), with a firm middle ground of four eggs every seven days, most likely medium in size.

As modern egg layers go, that's not impressive (but still at least as good as my Dark Brahma [whom, coincidentally, MSU also labels as a "good" layer]).

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Ideas are so fragile .... and you guys just kicked this one apart for sure.

Today is a good day to plot an plan so I will rethink this little adventure and see where it might go.

Thanks for the input.

Not at all. But if every idea worked right off, man would not need to be a thinking animal, or a social one. You are doing the right thing by asking for shared experience, and doing your research first.

As the exchange between @Chickassan and I should show, individual experiences (those are anecdotes, not data) can vary wildly - and "trusted sources" can disagree substantially. As you build your business plan, best to assume the worst case in calculating your break even point, then plan for unexpected success.

My own experiences with Dominiques (if I had any to offer) would likewise be anecdotes, not data. Just as my experience re: fertility with my (mutt) rooster over my (mostly mutt) hens. Gather what info you can, weigh the credibility, consider points of broad agreement, then rolls your dice and takes your chances. There are few guarantees in life, except that its the only game in town, and the house always wins in the end - whether you sit down to play or not.