Questions about incubating eggs

[franciemayhem]

Hello everyone!

My Silkie rooster is 6 months old and seems to be ahead of the curve in terms of physical maturity (he started crowing at 6 weeks and started trying to mount the hens pretty early, too). His sister started laying eggs, so I assume he’s also reached sexual maturity. We were thinking of incubating some of the eggs that the hens lay, but I had questions/concerns that I was hoping maybe people could help with.

1. Can silkie roosters successfully mate with Buff Orpington hens, or are the hens too big?

2. I wanted to avoid inbreeding and not incubate any of his sister’s eggs, but I’ve heard some people say it doesn’t really matter with chickens. Is that true?

3. Most importantly: if the chick ended up being male, does anyone know of anywhere in LA/OC county (or adjacent counties) that would take a rooster in and not cull it? In my specific area the rules about roosters are pretty blurry; as long as the rooster isn’t too ‘disruptive,’ we’re fine. I think two roosters is pushing it, though, and the flock wouldn’t be big enough to accommodate two Roos, anyways. Plus, we would have to incubate two eggs to avoid having a single chick become distressed due to isolation, so we could end up with three total Roos! I just wouldn’t want to raise a chick from day 1 and then send it somewhere where it wouldn’t be taken care of, seems cruel. We would really love to have chicks related to our flock and be able to raise them, but if I can’t find anywhere that is looking to humanely house a rooster then we won’t incubate eggs.

Let me know what you guys think Thank you !!

 

[catsndogs4us]

1. Can silkie roosters successfully mate with Buff Orpington hens, or are the hens too big?

Where there's a will there's a way! My silkie roos seem to be dominating just lately. I have a standard sized rooster too but some of my large hens eggs hatched with silkie traits. Hatched a little black silkie chick (silkie feathers, black skin, 5 toes) from my big, regular feathered Olive egger's egg so the roo must have been one of the silkies.

 

[Debbie292d]

The farm across the road raises light brahmas and a couple of years ago took a white silkie rooster we were going to cull as it was insanely mean, attacking hens, roosters, the dogs, us, and after two days of running around red from blood, and a two-week time out that didn't work, we decided he had to go. She stopped over and wanted him. Good riddance.

For her, he's been the best rooster. He can't mate with the brahma hens even though she put a log for him to stand on. They walk by, he jumps on, but they're too big for him to do the job.

Buff Orpington's are a little smaller than Brahmas are, but not sure that's small enough for a silkie roo.

Sometimes on Facebook in your state/local groups you can post a rooster and someone will need one for their flock.