Meat birds with heritage birds

[TGray]

We are looking at getting some heritage birds for the eggs and as pets mostly. But we would like some meat birds to eat. Can these both be raised in the same coop?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Can they be raised together, yes some people do. If you’d asked “should” instead of “can”, it gets a bit more complicated. Personal preference enters the equation.

Broilers eat, poop, poop, and eat, plus grow extremely fast. Boy do they poop a lot. They also grow extremely fast. They will dwarf your heritage chicks in no time. And they hog the feed. Boy do they eat a lot.

You can manage to raise them together, especially if you only get a few broilers. You will have poop to manage and you’ll need plenty of room in the brooder and coop, plus enough feeding stations for all of them to be able to eat but you can do it. I suspect if you do it a few times, you will probably wind up with separate facilities for the broilers.

But you will be eating the broilers at 6 to 8 weeks of age. That’s not that long to put up with it on an occasional basis. You can always try it once and see how you like it.

Where are my manners? Welcome to the forum!