Making room for Roos?

[Camijean]

Hello everyone,
My family and I are new to raising chickens and we started from scratch! By that I mean incubating our eggs. In our first round of 10 we got 7 baby chicks. They’re a month old now and we have moved them into the coop. Since we don’t have adult chickens and the summer has the coop plenty warm ( though we keep a heat lamp at night still) I’m not an expert but I’m pretty sure of our 3 Rhode Island reds 2 are roos and then I think we have 2 more in our other breed maybe 3. Leaving us with only two hens. Our goal was to raise chickens for egg laying but it was a chance we took with starting with eggs.

we want to raise up the Roos, but don’t want them to fertilize the hens. Should we always keep them separate by building another coop and run? I don’t want them in constant distress. But I know we don’t have enough hens for them and we do want eggs

 

[TheDuckGuy]

Hello everyone,
My family and I are new to raising chickens and we started from scratch! By that I mean incubating our eggs. In our first round of 10 we got 7 baby chicks. They’re a month old now and we have moved them into the coop. Since we don’t have adult chickens and the summer has the coop plenty warm ( though we keep a heat lamp at night still) I’m not an expert but I’m pretty sure of our 3 Rhode Island reds 2 are roos and then I think we have 2 more in our other breed maybe 3. Leaving us with only two hens. Our goal was to raise chickens for egg laying but it was a chance we took with starting with eggs.

we want to raise up the Roos, but don’t want them to fertilize the hens. Should we always keep them separate by building another coop and run? I don’t want them in constant distress. But I know we don’t have enough hens for them and we do want eggs

Either get about 50 more hend or separate them

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Is there a reason you don't want them fertilizing the hens? The only way to guarantee not breeding would be to keep them separated entirely. Otherwise you /will/ have hens bred

 

[rosemarythyme]

If you want to keep all of them building a separate bachelor coop and pen would be ideal.

 

[aart]

we want to raise up the Roos,

For meat?

but don’t want them to fertilize the hens.

Why?
Do you not want to eat fertile eggs, or do you not want more chicks hatching?
Chicks will only develop if you keep the eggs at 100° for 21 days.

 

[3KillerBs]

Welcome to BYC. Where, in general, are you located? Climate matters and we can give better advice if we know what you're dealing with.

What do you want your chickens for? How does having males contribute to that purpose?

If eggs alone are all you want and you don't want them to be fertilized your best bet is to rehome the males ASAP and get more girls -- unless butchering males is part of your plan, in which case you can either butcher them as soon as they start showing their hormones (they'll be better eating that way), or move them to bachelors' quarters in hope of putting some more size on them -- at the cost of more feed and tougher meat.

 

[Ridgerunner]

we want to raise up the Roos, but don’t want them to fertilize the hens. Should we always keep them separate by building another coop and run?

To meet your goals, yes. You need them totally separated by 12 weeks, even that may not be soon enough if your boys hit puberty early.