Get another rooster, maybe two, mature but not too old. One year old should be about right.
As mentioned above, older roosters are not as active a younger roosters. Six years is getting pretty old. Having another rooster in the flock will help stir up competition, adding younger more active roosters is a trick hatcheries use to increase fertility and get older rooters more active.
There is no magic number for hen to rooster ratio. How many hens a rooster can keep fertile depends on the rooster, the hens, and general flock dynamics. People tend to forget that the hens play a part in this too but it’s easy to just blame a rooster.
After a successful mating a hen stays fertile for about two weeks, sometimes longer, so a rooster just has to mate with a hen once every two weeks for her to lay fertile eggs. But a rooster does not carry a little black book keeping track of which hens he has dated lately. Mating is random. A hen that hangs around a rooster is more likely to me mated than one that joins a sub-flock and doesn’t stick too close to a rooster. Hens give off signals that they are prime mating targets, like bright red combs and wattles. Mating is about dominance as well as sex. If a rooster sees a less dominant rooster mating a hen, he might mate her just to show he is really the dominant rooster. Chicken interaction and flock dynamics are pretty complicated but can be fascinating.
I suggest more mature roosters as opposed to juveniles as a mature hen will often refuse the advances of an adolescent. Part of that is that she wants a mature father for her children. Part is that it is about dominance. An impertinent young brat is not going to dominate a matron of the flock.
Whether you are better off penning them or letting them roam will depend some on your facilities and a lot on flock dynamics. I’ve seen a relatively young active rooster keep a flock of 25 free ranging hens fertile. That 10 to 1 magic ratio comes from commercial hatcheries where they use the pen breeding method, maybe 20 roosters in a pen with 200 hens. They have discovered that in that situation a 10 to 1 ratio pretty much ensures fertility. In your unique circumstances I don’t know the best way to get fertility up, but adding one or two relatively young active roosters is probably the best way to go no matter how you house them.
As mentioned above, older roosters are not as active a younger roosters. Six years is getting pretty old. Having another rooster in the flock will help stir up competition, adding younger more active roosters is a trick hatcheries use to increase fertility and get older rooters more active.
There is no magic number for hen to rooster ratio. How many hens a rooster can keep fertile depends on the rooster, the hens, and general flock dynamics. People tend to forget that the hens play a part in this too but it’s easy to just blame a rooster.
After a successful mating a hen stays fertile for about two weeks, sometimes longer, so a rooster just has to mate with a hen once every two weeks for her to lay fertile eggs. But a rooster does not carry a little black book keeping track of which hens he has dated lately. Mating is random. A hen that hangs around a rooster is more likely to me mated than one that joins a sub-flock and doesn’t stick too close to a rooster. Hens give off signals that they are prime mating targets, like bright red combs and wattles. Mating is about dominance as well as sex. If a rooster sees a less dominant rooster mating a hen, he might mate her just to show he is really the dominant rooster. Chicken interaction and flock dynamics are pretty complicated but can be fascinating.
I suggest more mature roosters as opposed to juveniles as a mature hen will often refuse the advances of an adolescent. Part of that is that she wants a mature father for her children. Part is that it is about dominance. An impertinent young brat is not going to dominate a matron of the flock.
Whether you are better off penning them or letting them roam will depend some on your facilities and a lot on flock dynamics. I’ve seen a relatively young active rooster keep a flock of 25 free ranging hens fertile. That 10 to 1 magic ratio comes from commercial hatcheries where they use the pen breeding method, maybe 20 roosters in a pen with 200 hens. They have discovered that in that situation a 10 to 1 ratio pretty much ensures fertility. In your unique circumstances I don’t know the best way to get fertility up, but adding one or two relatively young active roosters is probably the best way to go no matter how you house them.
