mixed flocks

[coppercloud]

Hi I was wondering which would be better , having one big group of males and females of the breeds I want or should I try to separate the breeds . I wanted to know this for chickens and for ducks.




(I cant actually get birds yet I wanted to know for the future)

 

[learycow]

For chickens and ducks, you can mix and match breeds (but I would advise against keeping call ducks with large ducks, and bantam chickens with large chickens as the large males can injure/hurt the smaller females).
But if you want to hatch babies that are pure, then you need to separate them by breed as the males will breed with any female, color and breed doesn't matter to them

 

[Going Quackers]

Depends, what are you doing? if you want purebreds then obviously that won't work, if there are no breeding intentions then it doesn't matter much.

Do try as said to keep breeds of similar sizing vs extremes like i don't run my scovies with my calls for instance, just avoids any possible injury.

 

[jdywntr]

Depends, what are you doing? if you want purebreds then obviously that won't work, if there are no breeding intentions then it doesn't matter much.

Do try as said to keep breeds of similar sizing vs extremes like i don't run my scovies with my calls for instance, just avoids any possible injury.

x2

 

[coppercloud]

ok I was just wondering about personal preferences like having a big group of pure parents with mixed chicks/ducklings or if you think its better to have lots of little flocks for each breed. (that would be a lot of little ponds

)

 

[Going Quackers]

Well, i can only tell you how things work here.. My biggest quantity of ducks is Muscovy, they all run together aging from this years hatches to years old. I have 2 buff orpington ducks in this flock, so there are two who "technically" don't belong, scovies are an unusual one as they are not mallard derived, so if they breed with ones who are the offspring are all mules. I have no real intent on breeding these two the buffs were an addition to add variety.

My calls are kept separate being bantams i don't feel comfortable with them being with such big birds plus they are of higher pred risk overall.

My big chickens are housed separate BUT do free range, so they go where the ducks are sometimes. The bantam chickens(all silkies) are again housed separate and break down into 3 units and do not free range same reasons as the calls.


Hopefully that helps!

 

[HollyDuckFarmer]

Here I have 1 Pekin x KC drake who is pretty with a sweet disposition, 3 Runners, 2 Rouens, 2 Khaki Campbells, and 3 females remaining from Fall's hatches, 1 KC pure & 2 Rouen x KC mixes (I think!) Mixed flocks are AWESOME IMO. But it all depends on what you want from your flock. Plus when they're all mixed, it is a lot easier to tell them apart!