Oh no, what kind of problems are we talking about?
We have 4 other hens right now, all right around 12 weeks old.
He can over mate them and some of them might become injured from it. A lot of hens have their back feathers ripped off from over mating.Oh no, what kind of problems are we talking about?
I will be sad to give him up (he was our little runty baby for the longest time, if you can believe it), so now my husband and I are talking it through to see if we can try to make it work and keep him.
Would you say 4 hens is too small a flock for him in that case? We love him, but we also love our other girls and don't want them to suffer.
Yes, but It does depends on the cockerel
For some it works, for some it doesn't, depends on the guy, and even with enough hens he still may pick a favorite. I would leave him for now, and if you start to notice bald heads, wings, and right above the tail, etc... then you may want to remove him. However there are also hen mating saddles you can buy to prevent mating damage.
Fertilized eggs can become chicks, but a hen needs to go broody and sit on them for 21 days for them to hatch and develope. If you collect them same day, and don't let your hens sit on a clutch of eggs you won't end up with any baby chicks.Thank you again for your great, quick responses. Here I am showing my utter newbie-ness and ignorance: I did not know that you could eat fertilized eggs!Color me shocked.
I have always thought that if a rooster was around the chickens, the eggs would be fertilized and become chicks. So of course I didn't want to eat baby chicks! Or have tens of new baby chicks every spring.Clearly, I've got to do some more research since this is our new situation.
But to be clear... It's NOT eating baby chicks if we eat fertilized eggs? What is actually the difference?
And in that vein, how disruptive are roosters in the morning?
Maybe we can make this work.
He is a Light Brahma. Very handsome one at that.
