Starting from Scratch need input please!

[gsmom329]

Hello Everybody I am new to Chickens this year, we have babies in smaller pens that they will soon be outgrowing. My husband can no longer do heavy machine/tractor repair. We have a huge 24' by 42' shop were turning into a chicken coop LOL

We have already enclosed one end with insulation that will be (has babies in it now) the hatchery and safe lock up for newborn chicks. I have an area approx. 10 foot by 16 foot on the other end we're going to fence off for the inside chicken coop for older birds. We have 7 different breeds of baby chicks and I was wondering if they can all run together or if they need to be seperated. They will crossbreed if I've done my research right so we'd like to seperate in the spring to get true breeds when we hatch eggs. We are making openings in the side so they can go out into a fenced yard outside. Will take any suggestions!! What do you use on the floor for odor control?

 

[RendonRoo]

If you go to BYC homepage there is a section on getting started. I would suggest you start reading there. You will find many suggestions to suite your needs. After you have read all you can you will have questions. That's where the forum really helps to tap into real life experience. When you have a question be sure to include any information that will help to get the best advise to fit your needs. I spent about a month just reading others post. By the time my chicks arrived i felt rather confident. I still had a few problems and questions and got excellent advice from other members.

Welcome to chickens and BYC

 

[patandchickens]

Hi, welcome to BYC

Quote:
Most breeds get along fine together, but you are likely to have troubles if you want to keep 7 roosters all together. If you are seriously going to have 7 roos then you will need to keep most or all of them separated. Either you can keep the roos (some or all) in solitary confinement except for putting them in a breeding pen with the appropriate hens for a while each year; or you can have 7 different pens, each with its own breed of hens and roo.

Hens can remain fertile for up to a month after being mated by a particular rooster so if you are going to put hens of breed A in with a rooster of breed B, you would want to wait at least a month AFTER SEPARATING THEM before hatching any eggs if you want purebreds (I mean, obviously you will also need to put a breed A rooster in with those hens during that month, but my point is you cannot be hatching eggs right away after switching roosters, if you care about parentage.

Have you considered just KEEPING 7 breeds, i.e. just hens of most of them, rather than trying to actively BREED all 7 breeds? As long as you have some means of identifying which eggs come from which hens - and there are a variety of ways of doing it - you can certainly have 7 breeds of hen in with 1 rooster and only hatch the eggs from the same-breed hens.

That would seem to me a much more sensible way to get into it than jumping right in with a lot of different breeding pens or having to lock roosters up all the time.

What do you use on the floor for odor control?

You will need some sort of bedding -- most people use softwood shavings, the kind sold for bedding horse stalls and suchlike, but you can also use straw (chopped is better) or a variety of other materials, although they have more drawbacks.

Odor control is a matter of a) having excellent ventilation; b) having not too many chickens for the space (and ventilation) available; c) keeping everything dry; and d) cleaning as necessary. One thing that helps a whole big lot, odor control wise, is to have a droppings board under the roost that you clean EVERY MORNING (you just snowplow the poo off into a bucket you're carrying, takes mere seconds, literally, honestly) because then you're removing almost 50% of the daily poo output from the coop right then and there.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat​

 

[gsmom329]

Thanks so much for the ideas!! I found the coop plans and got some great ideas not only for the coop but for watering also we had been researching this as well. I'm thinking we may thin our flock down to 3-4 breeds since we have the room I can easily divide my space into seperate pens for them. Were only going to keep 3 hens and a rooster of each breed (originally that's what we ordered but long story how we got so many now

). Our area has an awesome 4-H going but not alot with chickens so were going to offer the ones we don't want to 4-Hers at little to no cost. I think I'll build one big pen and see how they all interact then I can section off as needed to keep some seperate. But I don't want anyone to be in solitary I wouldn't like it if I had to!! Again thanks for all the wonderfull info. on this site.