I'm looking for flaws in our plan.

[chanceosunshine]

Ridgerunner, same apology to you, I really meant specifically the Cornish Rock Crosses as being bad breeders. They keep being referenced as good meat birds because of their size and that’s where my head was, not thinking about other mixed breed chickens. I will most likely end up doing my own mixes for meat.
As far as the eggs go, it’s the ick factor that I remember as a kid with the egg having a “big” bloody spot inside. I wonder if I just remember it as being more off putting than it really is, which is why I asked.

 

[chanceosunshine]

Sounds like fun! Are you going to fully enclose part of the gazebo for a coop? To calculate how many hens that will house, the standard is 4 sq ft per bird, not counting the nesting boxes. Good luck!

Edit: Sorry, changed "roost" to "coop."

So, It looks a little goofy on paper and I’m hoping it looks better irl but the coop is an 8’ diameter hexagon. That’s about 42 sq ft and we’ll house about 20 birds in it at a time. The run will be about 12 foot in diameter, except for where I want to leave it open for cleaning it out. So, that should be near 200 sq feet. The coop itself is 3’ off the ground and the run will go down to 2 ‘ high. And all of that will be in a fenced area about 40x120 for them to spend most of their waking hours in.
There will be a cupola and weathervane on top just for fun.
We have the posts in the ground and the floor done. We’ll cut some 2x4s to fit the corners of the walls properly with 30 degree angles and start the walls this week. Weather permitting we should be done with the coop and fencing in a week or two.
Choosing a hexagon shape is quite a challenge, but we’re having fun with it.

 

[ChemicalchiCkns]

A hexagonal coop makes me think of my grand mother.

 

[chanceosunshine]

A hexagonal coop makes me think of my grand mother.

Why is that?

 

[ChemicalchiCkns]

They built a hexagon "gazebo" at time of retirement and it is still there. I used to sleep in it on vacationes.

 

[bigz1983]

If your plan is a sustainable flock that mostly for meat(Not egg production)and you want broodies to raise chicks then how about
"Indian game" chickens or purebred Cornish(not the broiler)
The carcass produced more meat than a regular dual purpose chicken and they go broody. Egg production isn't good though..

 

[chanceosunshine]

If your plan is a sustainable flock that mostly for meat(Not egg production)and you want broodies to raise chicks then how about
"Indian game" chickens or purebred Cornish(not the broiler)
The carcass produced more meat than a regular dual purpose chicken and they go broody. Egg production isn't good though..

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll look into them. That's actually the kind of hen I was going to look for next but I didn't have a name for them. Thanks!

 

[chanceosunshine]

They built a hexagon "gazebo" at time of retirement and it is still there. I used to sleep in it on vacationes.

Once the coop is done we have a deck project that will include a gazebo, so I kind of thought the coop would give us a little practice building such a thing.
Maybe my grand babies will think of me when they see a gazebo...

 

[Mosey2003]

As far as the eggs go, it’s the ick factor that I remember as a kid with the egg having a “big” bloody spot inside. I wonder if I just remember it as being more off putting than it really is, which is why I asked.

Not to put you off, but you'll get the occasional blood spot in an egg regardless if it was fertilized or not, these things just happen. I always crack my home eggs into a custard cup one by one as the spotted ones creep me out, I feed those back to the birds. It happens because occasionally a little blood vessel in the reproductive tract will burst, not a big deal.

On the broodiness thing, it's honestly all over the board. They say this or that breed should or shouldn't, but if you buy from hatcheries, that's really not that reliable. Good heritage breeds should go broody come spring. Honestly, I hate broody hens and I've had to break every dang one of my Barred Rocks this spring, a few of them twice! But it's an important breed characteristic, so I'm not going to try to breed it out.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Not to put you off, but you'll get the occasional blood spot in an egg regardless if it was fertilized or not, these things just happen. I always crack my home eggs into a custard cup one by one as the spotted ones creep me out, I feed those back to the birds. It happens because occasionally a little blood vessel in the reproductive tract will burst, not a big deal.

Before a yolk is released to start the internal journey it is enclosed in a membrane that has blood vessels in it. Those blood vessels bring nutrients to the yolk so it can grow. When the yolk is released to make an egg, the membrane splits along a seam that is not supposed to have a blood vessel in it, but occasionally a mistake happens. This U-tube from Auburn University shows the process pretty clearly.