Keeping a roo....

[mamaboyd]

I want to keep one of chicks for a rooster, the rest will be going for meat when they are ready. We will be ordering more chicks to raise for meat after these ones have been processed. So, my question is, can I keep a rooster, if we are getting more chicks, will he hurt them etc, should I keep them separate?? Never had a rooster before, well, this is our first time raising chickens altogether so any advice is greatly appreciated!!

 

[Southern28Chick]

Are you going to process all your chickens and just keep one rooster with no other chickens? Roosters are kept to protect flocks and fertilize eggs. There's no point in keeping one rooster by himself, chickens are social animals. And yes if you get more chicks you have to keep the rooster separated from the chicks, he will hurt them.

Hope this answers your questions.

 

[mamaboyd]

I want to keep a few hens for laying eggs, if my hubby allows me too, he was thinking the next batch of chicks to keep some hens for eggs, but by than winter comes, and I don't think the hens lay too many eggs during the winter if any. I know that if we keep some of the hens now, it will be hard to get them to get along with the new batch of chicks, so we will have to add on to the coop to separate them. I just want some chickens to keep instead of having them all processed. So if I keep some hens from this batch and keep a rooster, as long as I separate them from the new batch of chicks things might be okay?? Will I ever be able to have the new ones be in with the older ones??
I guess this is a crazy idea, but we live on a farm, and I want it to be like a farm with chickens and a rooster, and still have meat on the side.

 

[Southern28Chick]

The chicks that you have are they meat birds? If so you should just process all of them because from what I hear (I don't have meat birds) they don't live very long. You need a laying breed, not a meat breed if you want good eggs. There are breeds that are very cold hardy and will lay still in the winter, just not as much as in the warmer seasons.

What kind of chicks do you have?

 

[mamaboyd]

Hi, the chicks we have are dual purpose birds, but not the white rock birds. They are called Frey's Special Dual Purpose. They are supposed to be better than the white rocks as they are less susceptable to diseases etc than the white rocks and they live longer. They don't grow quite as fast as the white rocks thus they don't die of heart problems etc. The hens do lays good eggs, but not as many as your normal layer hens, but that's good for us, as we won't be overflowing with eggs.
Here's the website from where we got them from if it helps:www.freyshatchery.com

 

[Southern28Chick]

Ok, I see Rhode Island Reds and Barred Rocks on there. I have those. Did you get the mix of breeds or did you chose what breeds you wanted? Here's a cool fact. If you keep a Rhode Island Red roo and breed him with Barred Rocks, you'll get Black sex-links. Then when the chicks are born you can tell what chicks are male or female by a white dot on their heads. The little roos will have a white dot and the females will be all black.

Edited to add: Nevermind I just saw what the Special was. It's some kind of red bird? If they say they are good layers then I'm sure that's fine.

 

[mamaboyd]

The frey's special is a breed that this hatchery came up with. The males are white and the females are a rusty brown colour. We can already tell which is which.
That's a cool fact about breeding the RRI's with the BR's will create black sex-linked birds that makes it easier to see who is who!!!

 

[Southern28Chick]

Well, good luck with your birds. You'll enjoy waking up to a loud mouth roo in the morning. My DH always said if the rooster gets to loud he'd have to go but he loves hearing the rooster crow now.

 

[mamaboyd]

Thanks, You know, I'm up early in the morning anyways, so I don't think I'll mind the crowing first thing, can't be any worse than the cows bawling at the crack of dawn, LOL. There's something about having a rooster that really makes a farm a "farm", if you know what I mean.