Need personal thoughts :(

[Mattsiewrt19]

I dont know what to do. Today i lost my rooster and one of my isa chickens its terrible and now i have 3 hens left there about 10 weeks old i believe. An owl pulled them through the bars. They were not able to get in but they were roosting right on the side of the chicken wire and i tried to move them but thwy kept going back, now they dont go anywhere near it. Im very sad about them dying but my hens need a rooster! So should i wait for them to grow to add 2 hens and a rooster? or should i buy new chicks and have them grow alittle and let them meet the hens? I know hens take the role of the rooster but if i let them grow up with just hens will it make it harder when i add the rooster? Any ideas thought are very accepted thankyou

 

[GitaBooks]

I'm really sorry about your chickens.

I love my rooster, and while I can certainly see why people have reasons to go without them, I never want to. They are so full of personality, they guard the hens and allow them to act naturally, like care-free hens. My rooster also respects me and I respect him.
I would suggest getting, if you could, fully-feathered chicks and slowly, over a few weeks, introducing them. Having a couple hens and a rooster will allow them to have friends amongst themselves. As the chick gets older it will turn into a crazy teen and probably drive them all nuts, but it should calm with age to become a respectable flock leader and, if you ever hatch chicks, a great father.

You could also try getting an already proven, calm adult rooster, though he may over-breed the girls if you don't get more hens. This way, you can be almost sure the rooster isn't going to attack you and won't drive your hens crazy.

Best of luck!


Dominator, my awesome rooster, even though he lost part of his tail to a dog and his comb to frost bite and some of the feathers on his back to a heat light

 

[Folly's place]

So sorry! More chicks would be nice, but fix your coop and run first! Your birds need a safe haven especially at night, and they don't have it. You can get chicks, and blend the groups a little later, or find some chicks about the same age as your survivors from someone close to you. Mary

 

[azygous]

I'm so sorry about this traumatic event. It's hard to lose your chickens under any circumstances, but when a predator kills so many, it hits you hard.

Take some time to recover from this shock before you decide what to do next in the way of replacing the ones you lost. Better to use the next few days assessing your coop and run to make improvements so this won't happen again. Hardware cloth around the lower part and perhaps moving the perches farther back.

Don't be in a big hurry to replace your rooster. If you end up ordering more chicks, one or two are bound to end up being boys. I just discovered that I have two boys out of the four chicks that survived in my latest batch. If you go and get a rooster now, you could end up with way more than you will want and then you'll be worrying about what to do with all of them.

 

[Mrs. K]

A flock of hens don't need a rooster. However, they will accept a new mature rooster very easily, but wait till they are laying. A young rooster and young non laying pullets often are a big problem.

Fix your set up, because while the birds are skittish now, they don't have a big brain, and they will go back, and so will your predators.

Then if you can, add some hens the same age And size of your birds, or older birds. Chicks will be most likely attacked by your remaining birds, so make a difficult addition.

I hate it when I loose birds! Makes me so mad!

Mrs K

 

[Mattsiewrt19]

Thank you for all the replies i did try to make improvments but really its a good coop i just wish i would have moved the roost more. I could tell whatever killed them couldnt get in because it was only the heads eaten from outside the cage and i was go to wait not anytime in the next week but i do have someone talking to me about 2 hens and a rooster around my chicks age. Now i do not like getting chickens from other people but im assuming as long as they are walking eating and acting normal there fine. So ive heard.

 

[Mattsiewrt19]

@azygous

 

[Blooie]

Um, I'm wondering how you know it was owls that took your chicks.....sounds more like something a raccoon would do. Anyway, I know you said you'd be moving the roosts, but if something can reach in, something can eventually get in. Personally, (and I know some disagree with me as often as I've repeated it here on the forum), I don't believe there's any such thing as a "predator-proof setup". The moment I start counting on wires and hardware cloth and whatever else I could come up with and start to relax, some predator is going to find a weak spot or a spot in need of repair that I've overlooked. All of the predator-proofing in the world does me no good if I get complacent and rely strictly on the measures I've taken rather than on my own eyes and diligence. That said, somehow you have to make sure that no little raccoon hands or weasels or the like can squeeze through the bars and there's only one way to prevent that - a good, solid layer of hardware cloth. I know there's nothing any of us can say that you haven't already said to yourself, so 'nuff said on that topic.

As for replacing your birds, please be sure you aren't exchanging one way of losing birds for another. Make sure that if you get new chickens, you get them from someplace reputable, and quarantine, quarantine, quarantine until you are 100% sure they are healthy and not going to bring in a virus, bug, or parasites to your existing flock. It would be terrible for you to have gone through the sad loss of chickens to a predator, only to lose the rest of them because of rushing into replacements.

I wish you all the best of luck, and I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope the advice you've been given helps you.

 

[aart]

I dont know what to do. Today i lost my rooster and one of my isa chickens its terrible

and now i have 3 hens left there about 10 weeks old i believe. An owl pulled them through the bars. They were not able to get in but they were roosting right on the side of the chicken wire and i tried to move them but thwy kept going back, now they dont go anywhere near it. Im very sad about them dying but my hens need a rooster! So should i wait for them to grow to add 2 hens and a rooster? or should i buy new chicks and have them grow alittle and let them meet the hens? I know hens take the role of the rooster but if i let them grow up with just hens will it make it harder when i add the rooster? Any ideas thought are very accepted thankyou

10 week old are still chicks...pullets and cockerels.

Can you post a pic pf your coop where this happened?

Agrees with the others, fix the coop before even thinking about more chickens....and read up on integration.

 

[Mattsiewrt19]

@aart yeah i can do that i

and i used to have about 20 chickens on the farm and i intergrated them all the time, but i always just bought full gorwn ones i never started with chicks like this before my chickens free range all day so they are only in the coop whrn i leave for a long period or whrn they sleep.