Idea's for my new mixed flock coming in.

[EricNRA]

I am going to be brand new to raising chickens in about 4 days. I have 9 Production RIR and 9 Buff Orps on the way. (6 hens, 3 roos of each). I have many idea's and questions, so many I am not sure what to do. I'll start with what I hope to get out of this (besides the fun of raising chickens and teaching my kids about where their food comes from).
I ordered RIR's for egg production and Buff Orps for eggs and meat. I plan on butchering 4 roos at age (wanted to start small because of first time). My hope was to keep a roo of each to produce replacement's and up my flock size when the wife and I get used to raising chickens, plus be able to provide my own meat birds from the buffs. I even hope to have a broody Buff to do the raising for me but I know it doesn't always works out that way.
My first question is should I keep my flocks separate? I was thinking a small flock of RIR's and a small flock of Buff Orps in separate coops. So when I go to produce a meat flock/replacement birds I can keep "pure bred" flocks. My wife wants to keep one coop (to keep cost down) but I think keeping them together would make keeping "pure bred" flocks impossible.
My idea for a coop would be a simple coop under a central Texas cedar tree. The tree is pruned up about 7ft off the ground so I want to run a perimeter fence around it for run. I figured the tree would keep flying predators out and give shade when hot (Central Texas). I also want to free range as much as possible, would they mix themselves together or pretty much stay separate? My plan was to keep the coops and runs about 75ft apart but they would be in a 3 acre barbwire fenced pasture. I know I am probably missing some information but am really wondering what to do. My wife worries about keeping them in the back pasture because of coyotes (our back property line is connected to a 800 acre ranch and we hear them a lot). I really don't want to keep them in the inside fence because we have Mastiff puppy (about 100lbs) and kids that like to run and play. I am trying to think long term also, because we plan on re-fencing the back acreage with goat fencing to add goats at a later date. I have many more questions but I'll keep the opening thread short (if you can call it that) and add more as it comes up. Thank you all in advance!

 

[EricNRA]

One more thing, I want to keep it as simple and low maintenance as possible. I work away from home 2 weeks and then off for two weeks. My wife is a SAHM with 3 kiddos (6, 3, 1) so most of the bigger work would have to be done when I am home. Any and all ideas are welcome and appreciated.

 

[Mrs. K]

well, if you are just starting out, don't complicate it. Even though both breeds lay brown eggs, they will be different colors of brown, and even a little different shape. So you can tell which egg goes to which breed.

What I would do, is one year, keep one kind of rooster, and a year or two later switch to the other breed. Then if you wanted pure bred chicks, just pick the eggs that match the rooster. For example, say that egg laying in the most important thing, then pick a RIR rooster. Now he will breed all the hens, but just keep the eggs from the RIR, so that you would hatch RIR next year, which makes your buffs, two years old the following year, that year, cover them with a BO rooster.

I have had several BO's go broody for me, and I truly love to raise chicks with a broody doing all the work. So it is quite possible that you could have one go, but probably not for a year, so starting with the RIR rooster first might be your best bet, but this way you can do one flock, one coop, and one run.

Not to rain on your parade, but predators often do more culling than we human's have planned. I, myself, am hurting under this selection...... so if you hear coyotes, you probably have all the kinds of predators. What I am saying is the best laid breeding plans can go a muck.

I have been playing with chickens for years, and the only thing I can honestly say is that the Gods laugh at the plans of men. Truthfully, I would not sweat hatching out some crossed chicks. While the layers, really lay, all hens will lay, and the young ones will lay pretty good. With a family of five and 18 hens, you are going to have way more eggs than you need.

Mrs K

 

[Mrs. K]

After I posted, I reread your post. Kids 6, 3 and 1 might be very, very good reasons not to keep any roosters for several years. Very, very often roosters go from being darlings to absolute attacking nightmares in an instant, and they almost always attack children first. Roosters have ruined the whole chicken experience for a lot of children.

You have stated in your first post, that you are a newbie, and really roosters take some experience. Some are fine, some are rotten, and some go from fine to rotten in a heartbeat. You really can not ever trust an intact mature animal, especially one with a very small brain.

You have years to enjoy the poultry hobby, I am offering the unsolicited advice, just start out with hens..... your children and your wife will love just hens..... the whole getting eggs will be fun....... This will get some experience for the whole family.

I have had good roosters, a soso rooster, and a nightmare...... not worth being scared of an attack, and for your littlest one, could be scars on the face or even an eye.

Mrs K

 

[donrae]

Unsolicited adivice.......I agree with starting simple. IMO the best way to start is to purchase an assortment of hens, several different breeds. First, you can tell the birds apart

. This is usually very important for kids! Second, it gives you exposure to different breeds, and lets you decide which one, if any, you truly like. I also think only having hens is a good thing for the first year or so. It gives everyone a chance to get comfortable around the birds. Roosters and children can be an iffy mix. Roosters aren't wired to be pets, they're best treated as livestock. Kiddos have a hard time getting that sometimes....and kids make roosters nervous. Nervous roosters attack first and never ask questions. Alright...off the soapbox.

Okay, to answer your actual questions.....

If you're getting your birds from a hatchery, honestly you're not going to see a ton of difference in their egg production or size for meat. Yeah, the Orps will be a little bigger and lay a few less eggs, but it's not a huge, substantial difference. Orps do have a better chance of going broody, true.

If you really want to keep two separate flocks, that's doable. What's also doable is keeping two breeds of hens and one breed of rooster, giving you half pure bred chicks and half mixed breed chicks. Actually, the same would be true if you kept both breeds of roosters and just let them inter-breed. Each chick would have a 50/50 chance of being purebred. Red/Orp mixes are actually nice looking birds, they seem to be a common cross and make nice dual purpose birds.

If you wanted one flock, but wanted to do pure bred birds, you could always just build a separate breeding pen. You're not going to be incubating eggs year round, so most of the time everyone could run together. When you're ready to incubate, pull your desired hens and rooster into a breeding pen. If the hens have been exposed to another rooster you have to wait a few weeks for his sperm to clear out before you collect eggs for incubating. Collect your eggs, return your birds to one big happy family.

If you can hear coyotes, free ranging is just going to mean you're serving a buffet. You're going to need some good predator proof fencing to protect those birds.

When spacing the two coops, if you do chose to have two, remember you're going to be walking to each one twice a day. Personally, I'm lazy and I'd put them right together. I'd have them have adjoining walls to save on materials, cause I'm cheap as well as lazy

Hope this gives you some ideas and some food for thought....

 

[enola]

Unsolicited adivice.......I agree with starting simple. IMO the best way to start is to purchase an assortment of hens, several different breeds. First, you can tell the birds apart  . This is usually very important for kids! Second, it gives you exposure to different breeds, and lets you decide which one, if any, you truly like. I also think only having hens is a good thing for the first year or so. It gives everyone a chance to get comfortable around the birds. Roosters and children can be an iffy mix. Roosters aren't wired to be pets, they're best treated as livestock. Kiddos have a hard time getting that sometimes....and kids make roosters nervous. Nervous roosters attack first and never ask questions. Alright...off the soapbox. 

Okay, to answer your actual questions.....

If you're getting your birds from a hatchery, honestly you're not going to see a ton of difference in their egg production or size for meat. Yeah, the Orps will be a little bigger and lay a few less eggs, but it's not a huge, substantial difference.  Orps do have a better chance of going broody, true. 

If you really want to keep two separate flocks, that's doable. What's also doable is keeping two breeds of hens and one breed of rooster, giving you half pure bred chicks and half mixed breed chicks. Actually, the same would be true if you kept both breeds of roosters and just let them inter-breed. Each chick would have a 50/50 chance of being purebred. Red/Orp mixes are actually nice looking birds, they seem to be a common cross and make nice dual purpose birds. 

If you wanted one flock, but wanted to do pure bred birds, you could always just build a separate breeding pen. You're not going to be incubating eggs year round, so most of the time everyone could run together. When you're ready to incubate, pull your desired hens and rooster into a breeding pen. If the hens have been exposed to another rooster you have to wait a few weeks for his sperm to clear out before you collect eggs for incubating. Collect your eggs, return your birds to one big happy family. 

If you can hear coyotes, free ranging is just going to mean you're serving a buffet. You're going to need some good predator proof fencing to protect those birds. 

When spacing the two coops, if you do chose to have two, remember you're going to be walking to each one twice a day. Personally, I'm lazy and I'd put them right together. I'd have them have adjoining walls to save on materials, cause I'm cheap as well as lazy 

Hope this gives you some ideas and some food for thought....

X 2

Rhode island red roosters have a terrible reputation for being mean. And they are tall, heavy roosters that can deliver a horrible wallop to a young child.

 

[EricNRA]

Thank you all for the advice. Maybe I am trying to do too much at first. This has been something my wife and I waited for for a long time and finally got our place with 5 acres. So all the stuff we have been talking about is within reach and maybe overreaching what we can do at first. I have read that RIR roos have a pretty nasty reputation, are BO roos any better or are all roos pretty aggressive? Maybe well keep just the hens at first until we get used to taking care of them then see about getting a roo and see where it goes from there. Well my oldest is counting down the days til the chicks get here, we were at Tractor Supply yesterday and he saw the chicks and is really excited about them coming in. Kind of makes me wish I can got a better assortment of hens and less roos but I don't know if I could change the order at this time.

 

[bobbi-j]

Thank you all for the advice. Maybe I am trying to do too much at first. This has been something my wife and I waited for for a long time and finally got our place with 5 acres. So all the stuff we have been talking about is within reach and maybe overreaching what we can do at first. I have read that RIR roos have a pretty nasty reputation, are BO roos any better or are all roos pretty aggressive? Maybe well keep just the hens at first until we get used to taking care of them then see about getting a roo and see where it goes from there. Well my oldest is counting down the days til the chicks get here, we were at Tractor Supply yesterday and he saw the chicks and is really excited about them coming in. Kind of makes me wish I can got a better assortment of hens and less roos but I don't know if I could change the order at this time.

You may not be able to change your order, but you can pick up a few chicks at TSC about the same time your chicks arrive. They'll be close to the same age and you can have some more variety. That's all I can say. Donrae and Mrs. K. have said everything else that needs to be said.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Practically everything you are going to get on this type of subject is personal opinion based on our experiences. A lot of times you will get opinions on what people have read, not what they have experienced, but I feel the first four that have responded do have experience and in most cases I agree with them when they post on here. I grew up on a subsistence farm in the ridges of Appalachia. My parents raised five kids and had a free ranging flock of chickens, including intact roosters, and we never had a problem with a human aggressive rooster. There are reasons for that.

We never treated them like pets. They were livestock. We did intermix in their area when we did our chores and sometimes just playing in their general vicinity, but we never tried playing with the chickens. We didn’t play with the plow horses, cows, or hogs either. We left them alone and they left us alone.

These chickens were not any special breed. They were a pure barnyard mix, based on a flock that had been in the family for many years, quite possibly from chickens from his father’s flock. Every four or five years Dad would bring in a dozen chicks from the Co-op to bring in new blood to keep genetic diversity up. He’d keep a rooster and a couple of hens from those but the main part of the flock was that barnyard mix. They provided us a lot of eggs and a lot of meat. If a rooster ever showed human aggression, it would quickly wind up on the dinner table. Let’s just say that human aggression had pretty much been bred out of that flock many generations before. Even the hatchery Dominiques, New Hampshire, or whatever Dad got from the Co-op did not show human aggression. I’m not sure why. It may have something to do with them being considered livestock and them totally free ranging to the point in summer we never fed them anything. They foraged for their food when the weather was decent.

What you describe is not a typical backyard flock, set in suburbia. You have room to work with. That makes it a lot easier.

Something about breeding chickens is that unless you pick your breeding stock with certain traits in mind, those traits are pretty much lost. Hatcheries do not select their breeders based on lack of human aggression. With their pen-breeding method it’s just not a priority. I think that has a lot to do with why people have more problems with human aggressive roosters from hatcheries than my experience shows. Some people raise Rhode Island Reds based on behavior as well as production and show-quality traits. Their RIR roosters are not human aggressive. A lot of that stuff depends on who is selecting the breeding stock and what traits they are selecting for.

With all that said, yes it is possible a rooster will go after a human, including a young child. Until you feel that child is capable of handling an attacking rooster, don’t leave the child unsupervised around the chicks. We were not left unsupervised around the horses, cows, or hogs either.

I always advise people to keep as few roosters as they can and still meet their goals. That’s not because you are guaranteed problems with more roosters, just that you have a higher chance of having problems if you have more roosters.

Don’t get too hung up on the breed thing. You can eat any chicken. RIR’s are dual purpose birds and have found their way into many a stew pot. If you are going to raise them for show you need to keep them purebred. If you are raising them for eggs and/or meat, that is not a criteria unless you just like purebreds. It does depend some on the person that has been selecting the breeding birds, but once you remove the fluffy Orpington feathers you usually don’t find much difference in the size of the carcasses.

Even if you keep the flocks’ coops separated by 75 feet or more, the chickens will decide which rooster mates with which hen. Each rooster may seem to have his own harem, but when you hatch the eggs you generally get a lot of cross-breeding. A few years back one of our forum members was in the situation you are talking about withy two separate flocks. She didn’t believe me when I told her she would get crosses but was surprised when more than half were crosses. It’s pretty obvious when you think you are hatching Brahmas and the other rooster is a Naked Neck.

Predators are likely to be a huge problem. If you free range you will almost certainly occasionally lose some and always have the possibility of the flock being totally wiped out. Predators are real hard to predict and are a challenge to control. You’re going to have that same challenge with your goats. Goats are a problem to keep in anyway. You might give serious consideration to fencing that area with the goat fence, but include an electric fence to keep most of the worst predators out. Coyotes and many other predators can easily jump or climb a fence, but they tend to inspect that fence first. If they get shocked they tend to just leave the area immediately and avoid it afterwards. An electric fence won’t stop all predators but it is a significant deterrent.

Another big thing you can do is to lock them up at night in a predator-proof coop. Practically any predator will hunt during the day, including coyotes and bobcats, but they are a lot more active at night. Locking them in a safe coop from dusk until dawn is a huge benefit.

I free ranged mine when I first moved here and lost two in the first three years to a fox. I could live with that rate much as it hurt. But then someone abandoned a couple of big dogs out here and I lost 8. A couple of months later it happened again and I lost 5. I got electric netting about 2-1/2 years ago. The only one I’ve lost since was to an owl when I was late locking them up at night.

What you are talking about doing will have some challenges but it is doable. I really suggest you don’t get hung up on breeds unless you just want purebreds. I’d even suggest you pick up a few more if the feed store has a pullet bin when you get your chicks. Get different colors and patterns, even if you don’t know the breed. You never know which one will go broody and you and your kids will probably enjoy a rainbow colored flock.

Go ahead and get those roosters. You will probably eat them before they get big enough to pose much of a threat to your kids, especially if you supervise the kids when they are around them. The general rule is to breed the ones you want to eat and eat the ones you don’t want to eat. Don’t be shy about eating some pullets either if the individual pullets don’t meet your requirements. You are not only breeding color, you are breeding behavior, broodiness, and egg laying ability into your flock, whether good or bad.

Good luck with it.

 

[Klutch]

Just keep it simple with one pure line of roo, either go red or BO. If that is your breeds of choice, remember you still have 2 years from having to worry about breeders. A lot can happen in 2 years, maybe mixed in up a bit and throw in some brahma, aussie or SS just for looks. In 2 years egg production will out of this world, even with your broody buffies.