I am new to raising chickens and now have a hen and rooster Bearded D'Uccle who are cooped together. The hen is currently sitting on a clutch and this pair seems to be doing well. My son was doing a school farm project raising Seramas and D'uccles which is how I got involved. He lost interest but I fell in love with the little birds and since we have 14 acres and a very large coop, decided to try raising them. We inherited the adult d'uccles from the project. Before he left the school project he won some hatching eggs in a raffle. We had serama, d'uccle and old english eggs. Only the serama and d'uccle were successful BUT I now have 2 cockerels and one pullet d'uccle and 3 cockerels and one pullet serama. The seramas are about 2 1/2 months old and 2 of my cockerels are starting to crow and be aggressive with each other. I separated the most aggressive one yesterday. The d'uccles are about 3 weeks younger and the cockerels are still fairly docile. Question: Since I obviously need more pullets, what is the best way to coop these birds so they don't fight? Can I have one pullet and cockerel together and then leave the remaining cockerels together until I get more hens? Do you recommend buying hens or trying to incubate your own? I worry about bringing disease on to our property with birds from other sources but incubating means I could end up with a bunch of cockerels again. Thanks for your help.
