Neighbors chickens and Ours?

[DoverChick]

Hello!

New to the forum today! Looks like fun! My husband and I are about ready to raise our own set of chickens to feed our family of 3. Although when I've told my daughter about what we would do with the chicken eggs and chickens themselves, she says, "No, don't hurt the chickens!"

ha ha She's in for a rude awakening.... we'll help her through the process.

Anyway, to my question. Our neighbors have 3 chickens and one rooster. They are free range and spend a decent amount of time in our yard as well (we have no problem with it...

) They have always shared their eggs with us.

If we raise our own chickens how would they get along - with the rooster and hens and all? Should we just get hens? Would be benefit from having a rooster too? I just want to make sure we wouldn't have any issues bothering their chickens and having success with ours at the same time. We get along really well with our neighbors.

Thanks for the input!

 

[centrarchid]

How interactions play out will be a function of many things. Breeds, age of your new birds, your birds as established social unit, rooster in you unit, his age, and what happens when flocks come into contact. If your birds juvenile they will likely merge with existing flock for foraging. If yours adult and hens only will merge as well. If yours adult in established group with rooster, possibility exists groups will operate separately at least for short term, especially if roosters can establish boundaries between harems based on displays. Displays work well with my games but some of the more intensively bred production and "for looks breeds" signals do not wokr so well, groups merge and roosters establish pecking order. If merger involves adults some fighting will occur but will be minimal except of roosters involved. More likely than not even the rooster battle will be short unless two evenly matched adults involved.

It will be fun to watch no matter how everything plays.

 

[ginormous chicken]

X2

It depends what you get and what age.

Ohhh...

 

[Pinky]

I agree with everything centrarchid said, but I would worry that my chickens would roost with the neighbors, especially if they were younger or not established in your own yard.

 

[centrarchid]

Quote:
I have seen as you indicate, especially when one group that is mostly to receive immigrants has a rooster and other does not.

On my place, sub-flocks made up of juveniles can form that may mingle together during day but go back to separate roosts each night. That is in part a function of sub-flock members attacking very aggressively individuals not of their click at roosting time.

 

[sunflowerenvy]

first at all welcome to this flock

tell them that u are going to get some chickens

you will need to keep them seperate for at least 30 days so if your chickens have a disease you will feel badly if there chickens died unless u get some baby chicks from them

it up to u if u want a rooster in your flock but if u are only have less than 6 then i would get all hens[ but u will end up having more down the road it is call chicken math]

this is the way i induce my hens n roos to my old flock. i kept in a seperate pen for 25 days. the first set was 3 hens. i had 11 hens n1 roo i put the 3 hens in the coop at dusk on the 2x4 roost three days later start to lays eggs. no problem. then about 4 month later i bought come 4 pullets n a roo[about 7 month]. i put the hens on roost and put the roo into a cage on the floor at night. the next morning when i open the coop door so the other could go out the hens and my old roo [8 month old] was still sit on the roost i let the new roo out and he flew up to my other roo. then my old roo jump down to the floor and walk out and the other roo follow i was check on both of them and the new roo end of the day had a little bit of blood on him. so they got along. so at night when i go lock the doors up at night. they are sleep together or have there share girls sleeping. but when i go out to give them their treat during the day. my old roo jumps on a hen and the other roo comes runing and watch it.

so 15 hens to 2 roo

 

[DoverChick]

Okay, so this is great! Thanks for the quick reply....

We plan on getting peeps (after reading this it sounds like a roo is not needed.) We were not planning on getting more then 6 hens to start anyway. Would it be better if we stuck with getting the same breed as our neighbors chickens? That or we were looking at getting some Long Island Reds... Our neighbors know about us getting chickens and they are fine with everything.

We would raise the peeps inside at first in their box/pen. Then if we take them out to their new coop with a decent-sized outside run and leave them in there for the remainder of the 30 day period we should be fine right? After that time we can let them out to be free range and see how things play out....

Would that help them to understand where they are to roost at night? Then hopefully they won't try to roost in our neighbors chickens pen....

Thank you for all of the help!! We are really looking forward to having some none steroid-ridden chicken/eggs. We just bought a 1/4 cow from a friend and I will be starting my second year with a decent sized garden. It is really crazy when you start to realize how bad the food we eat is....

 

[Pinky]

Sounds good but I would get the breed that you want unless you want purebred chicks. More than likely your hens will be bred by your neighbor's rooster if they come into contact.