Too late in the year to breed for my own eggs??

[MakNat]

I have 8 leghorn hens who have just started laying and a big pretty Leghorn roo whos the same age. I have a 10 ft by 10 ft place I can isolate them all together for a couple weeks. I know thats not the ideal size for 9 birds, but just for a week or two. My question is.. Do you think he would breed them?? Would moving them screw up their egg laying? I want to get a mess of eggs to incubate. That way I'll have a good early start on great laying hens for early summer.. Would you recommend a light? Also, has anyone had any luck finding a solar powered light for a hen house??

 

[Akane]

Are they in with another roo now? If they are laying and there is a roo the same age or older then odds are they are laying fertile eggs. If there is another roo breeding them they can continue to lay eggs fertilized by him for up to 4 weeks after they are seperated from that roo. You would have to keep the hens away from other roos for several weeks before you even start collecting eggs to be sure the leghorn is the only one you are getting eggs from. If there isn't another roo then there's no need to do anything special. Break an egg, see if it's fertile, and start collecting. You can add a light if they slow down laying but there's no need to move them to another pen unless you are getting them away from another roo.

 

[evonne]

also, if you have another roo, are you wanting to make sure your birds are purebred? or are you just wanting layers??
if it's just for layers, nothing wrong with mixes... they hatch and lay the same way purebreds do... well.. factoring in slow laying breeds or whatever.. lol..
i love the rainbow colors in an egg basket.... the whites from my leghorn are great, but the green from my one EE girl takes my breath away at how pretty it is...

 

[rhoda_bruce]

Even if moving them screws up there egg laying, I would say that it would only be a temporary problem. We are talking about the world champion of all egg layers and as to the roo doing his job.....I would think those particular roos would do more honeymooning than any other roo known to man.
I do have a solar light for my hen house, but probably not as good a light as you would want. Mine was from Northern Tool Co. and didn't cost much. Its good mainly if I need to see myself around the coop at night so I don't trip, but I wouldn't be able to do any real work and I wouldn't count on it for encouraging the girls to give me more eggs either.

 

[MakNat]

Thanks guys. Thats kinda what I figured. I'm only going on my 3rd year with chickens. And yes I have 5 roos. All purebred: the leghorn, a cochin, a EE, a tiny bantam and bigger feather footed bantam. And each roo has about 5 to 10 of the same breed hens. None of the Roos are related to any opf the hens! I made sure of that over the last 2 years!! I'm just trying to figure out how to breed some full bred birds to sell as straight runs in the spring!! I want to have a good reputation when I start selling and want people to know what they are getting!!

 

[evonne]

aahh yeah... at that point i would go and build seperate runs for each of the breeds.. and like they said.. wait 2-3 weeks befroe you think you have purebred eggs...

i saw this really cool coop/run setup that had like 4 or 5 rund and seperate coops, but all in one "builing"... it was on a blog of another BYC'r.. but not hteir BYC page... i'll see if i bookmarked it.. might work good for what you're doing..