Separating roosters from hens?

[ILuvSilkies4208]

Hi, everyone!

So I've been keeping silkie chickens for a little less than a year. I ended up with mostly roosters out of the chicks I have purchased. I sold some and acquired more females and am trying to catch up with even more females for them. I have noticed feistiness in the cockerals and I have split up the group into pairs right now. I think the girls miss each other, and am worried about the roos being too rough with them. They are not terrible, but I feel like they have their moments, if that makes sense, when I just want to smack them away from the girls for being insensitive and too pushy/rough with them. No one is so bad that I feel he's GOT to go, if that makes sense. There IS calm for a great majority of the day.

I would like to learn more about appropriate vs. inappropriate mating, should I be separating the boys from the ladies at any point or would separation cause hormones to rage on even more? Just not sure what to do there. :/ I know people who do just pairs, I know people who also have two roosters and some hens together---- I'd like to hear more thoughts on these ratios please. Any tips, advice, information is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[Folly's place]

Welcome! Cockrels tend to mature sooner than pullets, so in a flock of agemates, there might be some issues for a while. BUT selecting for good temperament in those cockrels is necessary too. Watch them and eliminate any who are behaving badly, either to you, or the pullets. How many males do you need for your breeding goals to be met? Two? Three? Pick the best, and then maybe they can be one flock. If you want separate breeding lines, then you will need separate pens to manage them. Many of us practice flock mating, rather than pairs, but it's your choice. Mary

 

[ILuvSilkies4208]

Thank you for the helpful response! I would love to do flock managing instead, but I am choosing to separate to achieve certain colors and have the separate pens. Flock managing seems so much easier, honestly.

 

[azygous]

If you're wanting to separate the males from the females and are worried it will make the males hornier or harm them, no, it won't. It does no harm to separate them until you wish to have mating occur.

In fact, you will achieve both greater flock harmony and better quality breeding if you separate the young cockerels from the girls until they've mellowed out a bit, after around a year or eighteen months old.