Mixed flock?

[luckyramu]

Greetings group!

I'm new to backyard chicken culture and thought I'd give a hello.

I am allowed 5 hens and 1 rooster where I live, and am building a coop. I'd like to have a few ornamentals but mixed up. I'm thinking about a couple of silkies, a cochin, and a something along the lines of polish or phoenix.

my question:
Won't the rooster I get fertilize all the hens? and won't that create half-breeds? What do you guys do to solve this?

Thanks,
luckyramu

 

[cobrien]

Welcome!
The rooster will mate with all of the hens. But the eggs will only hatch if a hen goes broody and you let her incubate the eggs, or if you hatch them yourself in an incubator. I have a silkie, a cochin and a polish and can easily tell which hen the eggs came from, they have different colors, sizes and shapes. I don't know what the Phoenix eggs look like, but think if you wanted to hatch some eggs you could probably pick which ones you wanted to keep. Some people like half breed chickens, others prefer to know (or be pretty sure of) what they're getting.

BTW I also have 3 of the same breed, black australorps, and can tell which hen the eggs come from. But that may not always be the case.

If you really wanted to hatch eggs from a particular hen and you can't tell her eggs apart from the others, you would have to separate her...I've never done it but others can hopefully advise on the logistics.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

Yes, you would end up with chicks that aren't purebred. They will still be great layers, just not purebreds. If you want to raise purebreds in a mixed flock without separating them, you could do it for one breed.

Different chicken breeds lay different colored eggs. White, blue, green, and all different shades of brown like a pale tint, light, medium, dark chocolate and dark terracotta. If you want to raise only one breed, just pick a rooster of that breed and at least one hen of his breed. For the other hens, pick breeds that lay any other color of egg. Then you will know which eggs are hers. You can let her or any of the hens that go broody set on just those. Or pull just those to incubate. Silkies are smaller, so you could tell her egg by size.

Henderson's chart lists the egg color of the various breeds.

http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html