Daniel,
Thanks for the update on your broodies. Some of you talk about hens setting out in the yard. Were adequate nesting areas provided in the coop or did they just decide to nest somewhere else? Is this typical of koppes and/or other game type breeds? Will I have to keep mine contained in order for them to set in the coop. I hope not. When my chickens were young I had a few that would not come home to roost, but that did not last.
Thanks aganin for the update. I won't get my chicks from Sandhill until May.
Mark
Fentress, all of my brood stock (i.e. birds that I have selectively chosen and selected for breeding) are single mated and kept in pens practically 24/7, every now and then I may put the cocks out on tie-cords or if they are gentle enough let them free range and pen them in the evening (Can't do that with games though) but other than that they are kept in pens; I move the pens occasionally to try and keep them on fresh grass, during times when grass is not readily available like winter and such I try to keep leaves or hay (if it's free) in the pens.
Besides my brood stock, all year long I have free ranging hens that can be old breeding hens I've decided not to use anymore or hens that were not what I wanted to breed and I allow them to fend for themselves so to speak; it's just the way my great grandfather did it, my grandfather, father, and now I do things. Chicks are marked practically as soon as they hatch and dry out if they are from my breeding pens and once old enough are allowed to free range until it becomes time to cull through them and select the birds I deemed worthy of keeping. I have always found that young birds whom are allowed to grow up fending for themselves (though I do toss them treats every now and then just to watch them and earn their trust a bit to help make it easier to catch them), will always be the largest, healthiest birds (many, I would say nearly 95% or more of all American gamefowl breeders raise their fowl in this fashion and have done so for many years); it also helps on the pocket book when you raise (or try to raise) lots of offspring yearly.
Because I allow hens and, to a degree some cockerels (the game stags are not capable of doing so for more than about 8 months generally speaking) free range year-round I also get a lot of "Yard hatches" i.e. birds of unknown heritage or at least ones I cannot say I know 100% what they are because I haven't selected them or marked them. These are raised by their mothers, I've had hens set in a large variety of places around here. Some are terrible at hiding nests, and pick places on the ground so their genes typically are not able to be passed on well (in the cases I have seen it, this characteristic was almost if not always passed on to the offspring of that hen); but we have a barn that has a variety of nest areas set up and lots of hens choose to set there. We have a old rundown trailer around here and I had one game hen take a liking to the toilet to set in this year, various other hens have hatched out of the woods- I don't know where they hid their nests. The Kraienköppe seem to be pretty good at hiding their nests, but I can't answer on whether or not they would lay in the coop if you allowed them to free range as my hens are kept penned so that other cockerels have no opportunity to mate with them.
God bless,
Daniel.
P.S. I will say though that the birds do tend to favor "home" for roosting. I kept many of the Kraienköppe penned for a long time this last year, wished I could have free ranged but at the time my cousin had dogs that I didn't trust letting the young chicks run free around. But once the dogs were gone and and I turned the culls out of the pens, it took them a long time for me to teach them they should roost in the trees as they knew their pens were their "Home" and would either roost on top of them or if a little bit of the roost pole were sticking out of the wire they would roost on that. My AG always look for the highest possible place to roost, so if turned out on the yard they naturally will go to the tree.
Unless surprise blue/green eggs pop out in a month they aren't even Easter Eggers, LOL! My best guess was Brown Leghorn mutts since they have dark top beaks and yellow bottoms??? The feather coloring actually looks more like Welsummer but the earlobes are white. BUT only one even has a comb to speak of at nearly 16 weeks. And that one has a comb has had it from very early on.
