I'm looking for advice on how best to set up several breeding pens and maybe a bachelor pad as well.
Up until now I've just kept one big free range mixed flock of about 30 birds, with two roosters and another two hens of the same breed in there. Any time I wanted to hatch their eggs, it was easy, as they lay small cream tinted eggs that are different from the big white and big brown ones laid by all my other birds. So I could just pick their eggs out of the nesting boxes knowing they'd be pure bred.
But now I've got the chance of four or five different breeding trios/quads, and obviously I'd need to change my setup quite a lot to deal with them all.
And I'm just wondering how everyone else does it?
Like I say, I normally free range everyone on grass, so I'm not even sure what would be a reasonable size of run for four birds who would be stuck in it for the whole of breeding season. This is a breed that prefers to free range, and I'd feel quite sorry for them being penned up, so would want to make sure they all had nice big luxury runs.
And when it's not breeding season and they can be free ranged again, what do you do with all your roosters? Do you keep each breeding group in their own coop-and-run, but just let them out to free range, or do you free range the hens but keep the roos penned up? If so, do you pen them up separately or all together? If it helps, this is a breed that is fairly laid back. Multiple roos from different coops are content to free range in each others' space and mostly keep out of each other's way. There's usually not much squabbling among them...
I'd imagine penning the roos away from the hens out of breeding season would be best. Having seen the feather damage that one or two roos can inflict on 30 hens, I hate to think what a breeding group of just three hens would end up looking like!
I've got loads of ideas about what to do, but any advice from folk with breeding set-ups would be great. Cheers!
Up until now I've just kept one big free range mixed flock of about 30 birds, with two roosters and another two hens of the same breed in there. Any time I wanted to hatch their eggs, it was easy, as they lay small cream tinted eggs that are different from the big white and big brown ones laid by all my other birds. So I could just pick their eggs out of the nesting boxes knowing they'd be pure bred.
But now I've got the chance of four or five different breeding trios/quads, and obviously I'd need to change my setup quite a lot to deal with them all.
And I'm just wondering how everyone else does it?
Like I say, I normally free range everyone on grass, so I'm not even sure what would be a reasonable size of run for four birds who would be stuck in it for the whole of breeding season. This is a breed that prefers to free range, and I'd feel quite sorry for them being penned up, so would want to make sure they all had nice big luxury runs.
And when it's not breeding season and they can be free ranged again, what do you do with all your roosters? Do you keep each breeding group in their own coop-and-run, but just let them out to free range, or do you free range the hens but keep the roos penned up? If so, do you pen them up separately or all together? If it helps, this is a breed that is fairly laid back. Multiple roos from different coops are content to free range in each others' space and mostly keep out of each other's way. There's usually not much squabbling among them...
I'd imagine penning the roos away from the hens out of breeding season would be best. Having seen the feather damage that one or two roos can inflict on 30 hens, I hate to think what a breeding group of just three hens would end up looking like!
I've got loads of ideas about what to do, but any advice from folk with breeding set-ups would be great. Cheers!