Roosting issue

[BarredRockMom]

Or, get a refund from the breeder & try to find a Farm Animal Sanctuary. They will sometimes have chickens available for adoption. You can pick your chicken & usually be able to tell if it's a hen right away (unless it's a younger bird.) The only thing is that places like that will only adopt to a 'no kill' home, so if that's not part of your operation, you might want to pass.

We adopted some hens of laying age from just such a place. We wondered how long it would take to get eggs, but as it turned out, our concern was for nothing. We had two eggs by the time we got home that same day!
But our girls are pets & we are running an old age home for chickens.

 

[Kat C]

I know the feeling I started out with 6. Already sent one Roo back and am quite sure I'm looking at 2 more that will be going back. I paid($10) more than the going rate with the guarantee to trade out for a pullet. the bad part is you end up investing time and then trade in on a younger bird, Oh the life of a BYC owner lol. I suppose I could have bought point of lay pullets(locally here for $10/11) but look at all the hours I would have missed wondering that old age question Roo or Pullet? There are over 89,000 topics on this site asking for help with Gender and Breed. I have read and researched for Hours and I doubt if I'll ever figure it out. There are a lot of folks on this site that have very good knowledge on these topics. and if you follow their posts they have a very success rate at identifying the Roo's and pullets.
Maybe ask the breeder to trade them out.

Usually by 6 weeks or so we can tell roo from hen, but we had one lovely hen that we didn't know was a roo until it crowed. Perhaps we were hoping too much that it was a hen.

 

[Kat C]

Chickens produce on average 1 rooster for each hen. People want all hens or mostly hens for good reasons. Thus there is an excess of roosters. We have had countless people try to get us to take their roosters, most with the stipulation that we not kill them. That is just trying to get someone else to live with your problem. We have to kill our own excess roosters which we don't really like but we do enjoy the meat.

Hard fact of life, too many roosters is a problem and slaughter is the only true solution. Chickens in the wild live in flocks of 1 rooster and many hens. In nature the excess roos are culled by predators.

Hard fact of life, everything that is born dies.

 

[Stepnout]

Chickens produce on average 1 rooster for each hen. People want all hens or mostly hens for good reasons. Thus there is an excess of roosters. We have had countless people try to get us to take their roosters, most with the stipulation that we not kill them. That is just trying to get someone else to live with your problem. We have to kill our own excess roosters which we don't really like but we do enjoy the meat.

Hard fact of life, too many roosters is a problem and slaughter is the only true solution. Chickens in the wild live in flocks of 1 rooster and many hens. In nature the excess roos are culled by predators.

Hard fact of life, everything that is born dies.

Great post!
I’m 61, I hunt, fish. I hook and realease and I eat what I shoot and eat some of the fish I catch. I’m perfectly ok with returning the rooster I have to be eaten. I’m also ok with legally killing things that would try to eat my chickens
I love and can see the Beauty of nature. But raccoons, squirrels, skunks, coyotes all have a place. Just not in my coop.

 

[Cryss]

You returned your cockerels. Did the breeder not offer pullet replacements?