Roosters pecking order

[chicken pooter]

My parent's and I raised chickens comercially for a long time but grandma never prepaired us for rasing egg layers and keeping them for a long period of time. Long chicken house's seperated by wire with different chickens and many hens and roosters is just not working. Egg production is down big roosters scared of little bantys, young scared of old, young whooing old, and old die from new young roosters. You can not bring in a new rooster to cross breed and mix him with the many hens along with the other rooster. 1 to 12 is the reg count but if you have 20 or so? What to do? If you want to have fertile eggs how is this accomplished? Trying to build up the flock. need advice on haveing alot of chickens in chicken house that is seperated but still a large pen for each. Plenty of room to run from each other but dang they fought till the one died from exhaustion.

help please if you dont mind..
Thank you

 

[Mrs. K]

I am not sure if I will be of any help. But if you are looking for better egg production, you need some pullets, (lay good first winter) year old hens, (lay nicer size eggs, but will molt) and the three year old hens (last year of laying, big eggs) After 3 years old, the egg laying rate decreases.

That is what I am trying to do, cull the three year olds going down into winter, and replace with pullets each year.

It sounds like you have a large house, and if I understand correctly, you have tried to section it off, so that you can separate the birds, but that you do not feel that it is working do to size of the birds, and the difference of ages. They must be fighting through the fence? I hope someone else will chime in here, cause I know that many have multiple pens, but I do not.

I think what you need to do, is cull starting with the older birds, and then decide if you want standard or banty size chickens, and cull with that in mind. I think that I have read, that for good fertility, you want a young roo and a bit older hens. That is what I have and they are currently about 100% fertile.

Mrs.K