managing several breeds

[kryptoniteqhs]

ok so, so far i just have rhode island reds, silver laced cochin bantams, and red sexlinks. I am planning to add (very soon, tomorrow if possible) rhode island whites, delawares and silver laced wyandottes. I have 3 different coops right now...Any ideas on how to keep the breeds from mixing and making mutts when I get more breeds? The only ones I want to ever mix at all are the rirs with the riw and silver laced wyandottes to make sex links. But, I still want to keep most of them separate to keep most of them pure bred. Like idealy I would need a coop for rirs, one for riws, one for sex links, one for my cochin bantams, one for delawares, one for silver laced wyandottes, one for the rir roo and riw hens, and one for rir roo and delaware hens. wheew i think i got that all straight....

 

[kryptoniteqhs]

i wish they were like horses, you could just hand breed them when your ready....

 

[KLH2010]

I don't have any good suggestions but good luck! I have wondered this myself. Right now I have a mixed flock and I don't know what I'll do if I decide to raise a few different breeds.

 

[Frizzledhen]

When you are short on pens, you can always keep the roos separate from the hens and set up a breeding pen. Put the roo and the hens you want bred in the breeding pen for a couple of weeks and collect the fertile eggs for hatching. I have a breeding pen and a pen I put the covered hens in and I know the eggs are fertile by the roo I chose. I may select only a couple of my best hens and the roo who will best compliment the traits I am looking for, called selective breeding.

 

[patandchickens]

Well, you'll only get "mutts" or anything else unwanted IF you have hens go broody and you don't break them up. It's not like rabbits, where once mating has occurred you really have no choice what happens from there

Because of this, you don't really have to keep them separate if/when you're not hatching chicks.

As Frizzledhen says you can pen them with the rooster of choice for a couple weeks, long enough to get however many eggs you want to incubate. If the main flock of hens does not have a rooster in it, then you could start collecting eggs to hatch after just a couple days; if there's a rooster of the wrong breed loose with the big hen flock then you'd want to wait a few weeks before collecting fertile eggs to make sure they were sired by the right roo.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Sunny Side Up]

In my opinion, that sounds like an awful lot of work that would just take away much of the joy of chicken keeping for me. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I find that it's worth the effort to design things for the most effortless use. If I have to fill extra feeders, or fuss to access a poorly designed enclosure, or take extra steps in my daily care of my flock, it gets annoying very quickly.

My preference in chicken flocks is a mixed bouquet. When I first ordered chicks from the hatchery I selected one of each standard-breed laying hens, and a couple of roos chosen for their classic good looks, a Brown Leghorn and an Ameracauna. I've been fortunate that they both turned out to be mannerly.

I have some bantams that do all the brooding, and over the years have raised some beautiful home-grown mixed-breeds -- mutts, if you want to call them that. Part of their appeal is trying to figure out their parentage, and seeing the unique new combinations of colors & patterns they have when they feather out. They are extra healthy with their hybrid vigor, the hens make reliable layers and the eggs come in a wider variety of colors. The roos flesh out nicely and are welcome at our table.

I know there are many folks here who raise purebreds for showing and to sell their eggs, others breeding for specific traits, and you'll want to hear from their points of view. But I think if you're just getting started you might have just as much fun plus make your chores easier keeping everyone together and not worry so much about keeping your breeds separate. If later you do decide to breed purebreds you can just separate the ones you want to breed, or limit the types of roos you have in with all the different hens.