I'm a total newbie and want to breed my hens!

[UrbanEnthusiast]

OK, I literally just got my very first two chickens of my own last week to join my boyfriend's small mixed flock - 13-week-old Exchequer Leghorn pullets (see avatar) - and they have the best personalities! Yeah, I like leghorns! I'd rather see a bird be a bird - very active and flighty, foraging constantly, roosting way up in a pine tree at night (the whole flock has been safe up there for many months, so no need to give me a security talk!) than have one so docile it will come snuggle up to me. I'm not saying snuggly chickens don't have their place, but we all have our preferences. Their beauty and superb egg-laying capacity are just icing on the cake for me!

These birds are hatchery stock, but I don't care, I love them and I'm not a breeder or shower. I was thinking it would be super cool to breed them once they're mature with a brown leghorn rooster (or possibly with a duckwing leghorn if I could find one, but it's doubtful), and hopefully get one, two, or three interesting-looking gals to keep around (would have to find homes for the males - unlikely - or maybe eat them or feed them to our cats if that's not too horrible? I don't know! We can only have three more hens by city ordinance and NO ROOSTERS).

I would be doing this all on a majorly shoestring budget, unfortunately.

Soooooo, am I completely nuts here? Are there people in my area who might "rent out" a rooster? Does that even work? How the heck does an impoverished, busy urbanite incubate and hatch eggs properly?

I just want to know if this is feasible. My pullets are only 13 weeks so we're talking about well into the future. That said, could I breed them as soon as they're laying or is it best to wait a while?

Is there a "Chicken Breeding for Dummies" book? LOL, I need the 411! Please help!

 

[Fred's Hens]

I wouldn't rent out a rooster because of disease issues. Swapping between flocks is a pretty good way to exchange the nasties. Most quality breeders practice a closed flock system. You might consider buying fertile eggs from someone and scratch the itch to hatch that way. Buy an incubator, (a good one isn't cheap) and go for it. Just know that half of the chicks will be roosters and they aren't a snap to sell or even give away, especially in an urban environment.

I'd encourage you to consider a couple of options. 1. Dream of the day when you can live in the country. 2. Become acquainted with rural chicken keeper/breeder and live vicariously through that person. Just a thought or two. FWIW.

 

[Judy]

It's probably a good idea to wait a few weeks or so, after they begin laying, til their first or pullet eggs, which will be a little small, start coming out a larger, normal size. The first egg she lays after being put with a rooster probably won't be fertile, either. It takes a few days for the sperm to work its way inside and enter the egg, which happens at an earlier stage in its formation. You probably want to keep the roo and hen together for at least a week or two.

You might also want to become familiar with quarantine and the reasons for it. Chickens can be carriers of really undesirable diseases, mostly viral respiratory ones, and not be symptomatic. Each time you expose your chicken to one from another's flock, you are taking a chance on transferring one of them.

You'll need an incubator, unless you have a broody, and Leghorns rarely go broody, but perhaps your boyfriend's flock has some that go broody. Do a search here for homemade incubator, or Google it -- there are lots of plans for them, often made out of a cheap styrofoam ice chest and a few other items. Find a used computer fan, or check out still air incubating.

It's perfectly feasible -- just do a little research. And good luck!

 

[Ridgerunner]

You are probably completely nuts but so are a lot of us. That doesn't usually slow us down.

Your biggest problem is that you are not allowed roosters though you are only allowed three more hens. The shoestring budget makes it even more challenging. Artificial Insemination is probably out.

A hen normally lays fertile eggs about two days after a mating and continues to lay fertile eggs for maybe 2 weeks. So that's your window of opportunity.

You might be able to find someone in your area that could work with you on a rooster. You can try posting in your State thread in the "Where am I? Where are you?" section. I would not do it for biosecurity reasons but it is your and their choice. You may find that to be a real challenge.

Not all hens go broody. Leghorns are known for not going broody very often. You'd need an incubator. $$$$ Maybe if you get fertile eggs, you can find someone on your state thread with an incubator that you can borrow or that maybe would hatch them for you.

You will probably be breaking the law if you keep the males around long enough to eat them. Any chicken can be eaten but leghorns have very little meat on them. You will need a plan to deal with the males plus any extra females you might hatch out. Some people use Craigslist to help get rid of them.

I would not say what you are wanting to do is impossible, but it will be challenging. I can understand the desire to have some chicks from your eggs, but a more feasible way to go is to just get more chicks.

I agree with Flockwatcher on waiting for the eggs to get bigger. You can get good hatches with pullet eggs, but some hens take a while to get all the kinks worked out of their internal egg laying factory. Your odds are better if you wait a while. Plus, since those eggs are small they don't have enough nutrients in them to grow a chick to full size. They will be smaller when they hatch, so mortality can be a little higher.

Good luck! I think you will need it.

 

[UrbanEnthusiast]

Thanks everyone for the responses! As it turns out, I have some acquaintances who live about half an hour outside of town on a hobby farm who have roosters, pens, and incubators, and are happy to let me breed my hens there this spring!!! I AM SO RIDICULOUSLY FREAKIN' EXCITED ABOUT THIS!!!!!

They said they have three kinds of roosters: RIR, Polish, and Ameraucana (they're probably EE, but I don't care). My only chicken before these two Exchequers was a RIR pullet I got last month and the poor thing didn't last a week before a raccoon got her. She was a sweetie, but I think the breed is too docile and flightless to survive in our environment I like to call "extreme free ranging", and even with the chicks being half Leghorn, I don't want to risk it. And I'm not really a big fan of the Polish look, so I think I'll pick one of the Ameraucana/EE roosters. I was hoping to breed my babies with a non-white variety of leghorn, but hey, beggars can't be choosers and though I could easily scrounge up my own rooster, I doubt they want any extras around (though I'll ask). I'll be curious to see what the eggs turn out to look like once the Leghorn/EE cross offspring start laying!! Do y'all think they'd be white or blue/green or what?!?

DID I MENTION THAT I'M EXCITED?!?!?

I think I'm officially turning into a Crazy Chicken Lady and I love it!!!

Now what to do with those extra roos when the time comes... Not sure I can bring myself to kill one I raised from a chick.

 

[AinaWGSD]

The first consideration when thinking about eating your extra roos from your own hatches (or "sending them to freezer camp" as many like to refer to it) is whether or not you can kill any chicken, let alone one that you raised. If you can bring yourself to kill a chicken you don't know, then it becomes easier to kill one that you've raised since hatch as it gives you confidence that you can do it quickly and humanely.

As for eggs, EE or Ameraucana over white egg layers should give you paler blue or green eggs. However, if the rooster is an EE and comes from EE that lay green eggs there is a chance he could pass on the gene for brown without also passing on the gene for blue (blue egg genes + brown egg genes = green eggs) and you might also get very pale brown or cream colored eggs.

I would also seriously reconsider letting your birds "extreme free range." You say not to give a safety lecture as the birds have been safe in the pine tree "for many months" but then you state that you lost your RIR to a raccoon. Raccoons will take a leghorn just as easily as they will a more docile breed as they almost always attack at night when the birds are unlikely to take flight quikcly enough to escape even when a predator is in the midst of the flock. And they are good climbers. A person can play Russian Roulette for years, but all it takes is one unlucky pull of the trigger to end it all. Predator/safety issues aside, it's just a plain bad idea in an urban/suburban environment as any bird that can roost "way up in a pine tree" is also going to be perfectly capable of going right over the fence and exploring the neighborhood. With so many people working their butts off to get laws changed to accept chickens within city limits, this kind of behavior is nothing but bad news for the urban chicken "movement." It lends credence that chickens in a residential neighborhood are a nuisance and gives those who oppose allowing chickens in towns ammunition for their argument against chickens. It's kind of like how a few irresponsible dog owners make it impossible for the responsible ones to take their dogs anywhere in public or get any kind of off leash access no matter how well trained and behaved their dogs are. Please don't take this as an attack, it's just my personal view on it.

 

[UrbanEnthusiast]

Thanks for the info, Aina. You clearly know your stuff! I appreciate your viewpoint even though we disagree.

As far as roosting in the tree, we did lose one RIR pullet to a raccoon because she didn't like being in the tree and came down after we put her up there. It was my fault for picking the wrong breed for our purposes. This time I did my research and my two Exchequer pullets went right up on their own just before dusk on their very first night here and have gotten more and more adept at it ever since. Now they roost right next to our flock leader while our other two hens always snuggle up together in a different part of the tree. Other than the one RIR, the only time we have lost any chickens was at the very beginning when we were still keeping them in the coop, a raccoon dug under and pulled the legs off of three of them; it was terrible. We are near the heart of Seattle and there aren't any large hawks, owls, or eagles around, and no foxes or coyotes either. All we really have to worry about is raccoons and other than the one bird who didn't have the flightiness and roosting instinct, they've all been safe in the tree so far, unlike in the coop. They really do roost way far out on the branch where it's much too unstable for a raccoon to go. Maybe one day I'll eat my words, but they look too beautiful and happy up there for us to start forcing them into their coop. They could hop the fence in the day if they wanted, but they don't. There's not much we can do about that anyway as we don't have the money to build them a run even if we wanted to (which we don't because the whole point is to have free range birds despite the increased risk from predators). We only have neighbors on one side and no complaints so far. They have chickens, too, actually.

 

[speckledhen]

You need to slow down a bit. First of all, hens may not just automatically submit to any old rooster. And you need to quarantine any rooster for a month before introducing that rooster to your hens anyway to make SURE as you can that he has no disease to pass on to your hens.
You cannot tell by looking at a chicken if it's healthy or a disease carrier. What will you do when your hens possibly come down with some contagious respiratory illness from some rooster you bring in?

Sometimes a hen will fight a rooster or a rooster may try to dominate a hen who doesn't want to be mated and blood will be shed. So, there are things to consider before you do something like use a "stud rooster", something I would never advise anyone to do.

And then there will be the males you hatch out, if you do this. You'll have to have a plan for those.

All the above are things to consider before you commit to doing this.

 

[UrbanEnthusiast]

You need to slow down a bit. First of all, hens may not just automatically submit to any old rooster. And you need to quarantine any rooster for a month before introducing that rooster to your hens anyway to make SURE as you can that he has no disease to pass on to your hens.
You cannot tell by looking at a chicken if it's healthy or a disease carrier. What will you do when your hens possibly come down with some contagious respiratory illness from some rooster you bring in?

Sometimes a hen will fight a rooster or a rooster may try to dominate a hen who doesn't want to be mated and blood will be shed. So, there are things to consider before you do something like use a "stud rooster", something I would never advise anyone to do.

And then there will be the males you hatch out, if you do this. You'll have to have a plan for those.

All the above are things to consider before you commit to doing this.

Thanks, much of that had not occurred to me. I figured the mating might be a little rough, but I don't want my gals to get injured. What if I pick an especially docile rooster and let them get to know each other in adjoining pens for a while after the quarantine period? Or what if I get a male chick and raise him with the hens until he's old enough to breed? Any other ideas? I really, really want to breed my beautiful babies.

 

[speckledhen]

Thanks, much of that had not occurred to me. I figured the mating might be a little rough, but I don't want my gals to get injured. What if I pick an especially docile rooster and let them get to know each other in adjoining pens for a while after the quarantine period? Or what if I get a male chick and raise him with the hens until he's old enough to breed? Any other ideas? I really, really want to breed my beautiful babies.

Well, if you cannot have roosters, raising up one for them will probably get you in trouble since he will most likely be crowing before he's even fertile. And it's hard to know how a rooster will behave around new hens. My first rooster was a gentleman with us and with the ladies, but the first face to face meeting resulted in a bleeding comb for him and him having to lay down the law to some uppity women who were a bit miffed that their space was being invaded by a rooster (after 5 weeks of quarantine, of course). I considered him very docile, but he rose to the challenge when his authority was questioned.

Quarantine, then an adjoining pen before the actual introduction, is a good idea, yes, but you'll also have to decide what to do if he shows symptoms of illness while in quarantine, especially if he doesn't belong to you. Usually, you would euthanize a bird who showed symptoms of contagious respiratory illness during that time, but if he belongs to another person, you can't do that, unless they agree with it.

There is no perfect formula for doing what you propose to do, which is breed chickens in a place where you cannot have a rooster.