Rooster/Hen ratio

[Judy]

About how old the roos can get before you have to separate them: 16 weeks is a good round number, but you'll have to watch them and get them out when they start doing much mating or you will quickly have abused hens. 14-18 weeks is usually given as a good freezer camp time for LF, or 12-16 weeks, though it takes at least 6 months to get a larger bird.

We got 50 LF straight run with the intention of putting most of the roos in the freezer. It is a good plan, but you need to be ready to slaughter a bunch of them when the over-mating starts. That or have a bachelor pen ready til you can get them all in the freezer. If you do them at 12 weeks they taste wonderful and are very tender, but don't have a lot of meat on them at that point. If you wait til like 6 months to slaughter, it's too long for the hens.

I've read different ratios on here. Breeders often keep 1 roo with 2 or 3 hens for breeding. I've often wondered how rough this is on the hens. 1 to 10 seems to be a good average.

Anyone want 3 extra roos?

They usually do well in a bachelor pen, from what I have read on here, if they are far enough away from the hens.

 

[Salvadora.Seabright]

Anyone out there have free range chickens? I have 8 roosters (5 Doms and 3 banty Cochins) to 13 hens (2 Doms, 5 Cochins, 6 bantys) on a completely free range basis. They're 6 months old and I don't see evidence of excessive mating for the most part. Am I just extra ordinarily lucky?

 

[lightfoot]

so much for straight run orders and for buying hatching eggs. i have a bachlor pen with 6 beautiful tophat polish, one has a beautiful v comb with prongs, looks like a demon and fights like one. had to put a top cover on to keep them away from the adjoining silkie pen. the layer coop had about 40 chicks 18 from hatching eggs and 30 week old straight run. so far about 10 are in freezer camp and 2 weeks from now 10 from the layer coop and 6 tophats are moving 10 miles from here. maybe there will be peace in the valley again.