Start a flock with or without a roo?

[dumb_cluck]

He's fairly sweet, and eats out of my hands, and allows me to handel him or the hens in the house when they roost, but if I upset one of his ladies (like take eggs right out from under them).... whatch out!

Guess I would then need a full bite suit!

 

[rancher hicks]

Quote:
Unless there is a specific reason other than hatching to NOT have a roo, it really won't matter. Something about the rooster crowing that's pleasant. One rooster even two, but sixteen and it gets annoying. Also not all roos sound alike. Also not all rooster crow continuously or alot.

Can a roo be happy around the hens, and not be intimate? Your joking right? Can I be around lindt chocalate and not eat it? Can I talk to a newby and not make a plug for Delawares? As the saying goes.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly , roos gotta dance til the day that he dies. Can't help lovin those peeps of mine.

All the best

Rancher syracuse, ny

 

[sourland]

Happy without intimacy? I think not. A rooster can be a neat thing to have around, or he can be a royal pain in the--. You place your bet and you take your chances with a rooster. Since you only are planning on keeping six hens, a rooster might be too hard on them. By the way, there is no difference between fertile or non-fertile eggs as far as palatability.

 

[patandchickens]

Can I inquire why you are set against fertile eggs? Is it because you think it would be ooooky to have to eat them? I am asking because that is EXACTLY where I was originally coming from... part of the way I sold my husband on getting our original three hens was that I said "I definitely don't ever want a rooster, because I want to be able to eat the eggs without being grossed out".

Well of course this turned out to be similar to the subsequent "well, I'll never want any kind of poultry *besides* chickens" or "sheep are the one animal I have NO interest in ever owning" LOL --- because you know what, you CAN'T TELL whether the egg is fertile, if it's been collected in a timely fashion and stored somewhere coolish, unless you have good eyesight and have put in a nontrivial amount of research and training into *learning* to recognize the signs of a fertile egg.

Honest. Go to the "incubating and hatching eggs" section of this forum, and check out the stickied threads and all the other ones too, wherein people are asking "is the egg in this pic fertile" and arguing about whether it is or not. Truly. It is a teensy subtle thing. You would never know unless you took the effort to learn how to figure it out. And they taste exactly the same

Just a thought,

Pat

 

[elmo]

We ended up with one rooster in our batch of five chicks, and he was such a darling we fell in love with him and tried to keep him...until this spring when the neighbors complained. We had no choice because roosters are illegal where we live. We did find a good home for him, fortunately.

But there seemed to be something so right about seeing a rooster with his hens. He was the leader of the flock and it made it very easy to move the flock where I wanted them to go. I herded the rooster, and the hens followed. It was interesting to watch the social interactions among the flock. When hens squabbled, the rooster would restore order. He helped stop bullying behavior by the top hen to the lower ranking hens. He kept a watchful eye out for predators. He would find tasty things to eat in the yard and call his hens over to let them eat what he had found. He had a colorful personality and was the center of attention for his hens and for us, too. We miss him greatly!

If we could, we would have a rooster with our flock. It's just the natural order of things. And as Patandchickens said, we really couldn't tell any difference in the fertilized eggs.

 

[gryeyes]

I didn't plan on having a rooster, just because of the noise factor. But in my batch of newly purchased "pullet" chicks, one was an accidental roo.

By the time I was sure he was a rooster, I had fallen in love with him, just like with the rest of the chicks. I'm glad I kept him. He's a hoot to watch! I don't even mind his crowing (although I did wonder what got into him THIS morning well before dawn.) I gather my eggs daily, none of my hens have gone broody (yet), and there's absolutely no difference in taste between a fertilized and un-fertilized egg.

I think it's best to have a rooster grow up with the hens. But that's just because that's what happened with mine.

 

[McNugget]

Quote:
It's not the bite... it's the spurs!!!

Just make sure you have on long pants

 

[dumb_cluck]

I'm glad to hear that fertile eggs taste the same as non-fertile. WHEW! That takes the pressure OFF. As I mentioned earlier... if I happen to get a "packing peanut", I will keep him. Of course if he turns out to be a bully.....I will re-home him.

The taste issue is from my past when my mother was cracking eggs for breakfast and she screeched that there was a baby inside. I didn't get to see it, but it was a few YEARS before I would touch another egg.

So far all of my babies have been sweet: Rudy my GSD, Lucky my cat, Cochise my mini horse, Bill, Jill and Sally, my first mallards and baby Skittles, my adopted mallard. (see my website) I am looking forward to the little ladies showing up early June !