roo question....

[vkp23]

My mom keeps bugging me that I need to put all but one of my roos in the freezer because they will fight and kill eachother. The pen they are currently in that may be true, but we are working to fence in a large portion of our yard so they can free range and they will have plenty of room. I have 16 hens and I want some fertile eggs to sell when they get old enough to start laying, so from that I was thinking I needed to keep 2 or 3. I've heard of other people being able to keep roos together as long as they have room to keep out of eachothers "territory". Will I be ok keeping 2-3 roos, or is she right that I need to butcher all but one?

 

[Uppity Peon]

You could have more than one. It depends somewhat on the personaloties of the guys, whether or not they were reared together, and the territory as you have already pointed out. I would consider having a house for each guy, and enough structure in the yard (bushes or whatever) that the roosters can basicly stay out of eachothers sight.

 

[Chicks R Friends NOT Food]

I would keep about 2 with the number of hens you have now. I read somewhere that 10-11 is a good number for each rooster. Thus more hens= more rooster= less in the freezer. What I've done to completely solve my rooster problems is seperate coops and runs. It can be done very easily by either a divider in the coop and then seperate runs, or completely seperated coops.