I want to talk about breeding roosters

[gimmie birdies]

I want to know...
Who you are breeding, when you plan on breeding, pictures of you flock, with chicks your rooster can claim. Oh, and when did you rooster start to mate, and or crow. Also why you like you rooster...let's stay positive! If you think of a rooster-y subject I didn't already mention, let's hear it!

My last rooster, Bojangles, EE. He started to breed at 5 months? The eggs he fertilized didn't really start to pump out chicks till he was about 6 months old. The hens he mated with were one year old. (6 months older) I do want to say that he was a med. size, and wasn't too aggressive.
3 of these were his...the white ones and a black one...11/30 BCM/ee

7/8 set hatched below. 12/09

below 11/11 hatched LO, NN and bluebelle egger, BCM..12/21

Below 12/15 hatched and then 2 days later 3more hatched bantam, LO, bluebell egger, New Years hatch...

Below 5/8 hatched? they were set 2 weeks after I put my rooster down, because I had enough chicks. hatched on 1/11 (2NN the blue, 2 AC, and one BCM)

My plan and goal is to raise these birds, pick through and keep the NN (2) and blue females for me. Re-home any all black females with regular necks. Eat or re-home roosters, but save another blue rooster to mate this spring with hens I didn't breed in the above batches. (A white NN, 2 frizzles)
When did your roosters start to breed?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Most roosters start trying by 5 months but that depends on if there are more dominant roosters in the flock. It also depends on breed. Early maturing breeds, like Jaerhons, start crowing well before 3 months of age and try to mount anything that moves by 4 months. Most years, I raise up 20 to 30 roosters and select the best 10 from those and then the best 5 or 6.
I've had over 30 breeds of chickens but roosters from only about 10 or so breeds.
I now only raise a single breed/variety.
I don't believe in mixing breeds when hatching.
I believe in hatching a lot and culling hard in order to get the best birds. If one doesn't do that, they are basically either wasting time or just have a hobby.

 

[3KillerBs]

Following, to learn.

 

[gimmie birdies]

I like to pick through my birds. And I am excited about blue birds. His babies will be all green- to olive eggers. That is why I am buying more of the dark brown egg layers. I still have some hens that lay tan. I sold my LO. since I have their blue feathered babies that will lay a green egg.

 

[sdm111]

Yeah man, roosters are chickens too.

 

[Bonkerelli]

I do plan on breeding my Serama and my English Orpington/Cuckoo Maran roosters. They're not father's yet. Trixster who's the mix I incubated last year. Tobias, the Serama is a sassy thing and is top roo in the coop. Probably breed them in March. I actually have not seen Tobias mate any of the hens, his size or not, but does lots of dancing. Trixster.. well needless to say the 2 hens that are currently laying are completely bald on the back of their heads.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I like to pick through my birds. And I am excited about blue birds. His babies will be all green- to olive eggers. That is why I am buying more of the dark brown egg layers. I still have some hens that lay tan. I sold my LO. since I have their blue feathered babies that will lay a green egg.

Are you speaking of blue feathers, blue egg shells or both?

 

[3KillerBs]

Who you are breeding, when you plan on breeding, pictures of you flock, with chicks your rooster can claim. Oh, and when did you rooster start to mate, and or crow. Also why you like you rooster...let's stay positive!

I have two cockerels, Ludwig and Victor/Rameses (see here), and I plan on breeding both of them.

Ludwig is an "oops" male from a pullet order. He's a Black Langshan and he's absolutely GORGEOUS.

But what qualifies him to be the father of my first generation in the mixed flock is his temperament. I know that things can always change with a cockerel, but at 9 months now he's proven to be gentle with the hens and respectful of both me and my 16yo, who helps me tend the birds. He doesn't titbit and I haven't seen him dance, but he took over as flockmaster to the adult hens with so little fuss and trouble that I wasn't sure he was even mating until I started seeing fertile bullseyes on the egg yolks.

When he was about 4 1/2 months old and I moved the Welp chicks into the coop in the integration pen he took an immediate interest in them, sitting next to their pen to rest with them cuddled right on the other side of the mesh.

I didn't witness it, but my son reported that when this batch of chicks finally ventured out of the main coop into the run, they did it under the watchful eye of their babysitter, Ludwig. I have seen him disciplining the rambunctious "teenage" cockerels when they made a pullet squawk -- but not pursuing or bullying.

He was a bit late crowing -- 5-6 months? -- and took a good while to find his voice and have it settle.

Ludwig is getting the less-desirable Blue Australorps, the California White, the Black Langshan girl, the Silver-Laced Cochin(LF), the Domninique, most of the Orpington x Wyandotte crosses, the Marans, and one or both of the Mottled Javas.

I don't intend to keep him more than a year but, assuming his good temperament lasts, I'm hoping that my brother-in-law, who is building his chicken coop and who has been promised his choice of a reasonable number from my flock, will want him as a long-term yard ornament (they don't intend to breed because my sister is too sentimental to cull excess cockerels).

Here are some of his ladies:

 

[3KillerBs]

The Green-band cockerel, whose name will be either Victor or Rameses, won out as the best of 5 Blue Australorp boys (ALL the straight-runs were male). At 19 weeks, he wasn't quite as big as the red-band boy, but there's an indefinable *something* about him that's been evident from about 6-8 weeks. He's nice and broad with a chest that, to may admittedly uneducated eye, just looked really good.

While hunting for photos of Australorps with really good type to compare him too and Blues with really good markings I realized that he actually has better blue coloration than the birds in the hatchery photos. He's the dark one in the center of the photo, outclassing his last remaining competition.

At almost 20 weeks any judgement of his temperament is unreliable, but so far so good in terms of being respectful to me and I have seen him dance for one of the pullets (she wasn't impressed, but he was trying).

He's been crowing for weeks, quite nicely, though I hope his pitch deepens as he grows.

He's getting the better of the two adult Blue Australorp hens, the best of the Blue Australorp pullets, the Light Brahma, the Silver-laced Wyandotte, and one of the Orpington x Wyandotte crosses. However, I only intend to hatch the pure Blue Australorps -- at least for the first part of the season. That's why his adult hens are the ones whose eggs I can tell apart and whom I don't want to breed at all.

Here are some of his girls:

 

[Sally PB]

I probably won't hatch any of my eggs... this year, anyway. But I am really curious what I'd see if I crossed my Buff Orpington roo with my:

Jubilee Orpington
Blue Jersey Giants
Black Australorps

Does anyone have any of these crosses?

Then again, I am under the spell of Bielefelders. I don't have any of those. Yet.