Trying to figure out a good cycle for my chickens.

[Alarry31]

So the the subject line for this is confusing but here is what we have going on.

Right now we have four chickens Leghorns and a RRR roo with 17 all female chicks coming in the spring. We have 7 Buff Orpingtons, 7 Buff Cochins and a Turkin which I'm super excited for. We got chose these breeds due to them being known as broody hens. My plan is to hopefully get all these chicks to growing age have them hatch chicks then separate the roosters from the hens. And basically eat the roosters and some hens to keep our number to a viable flock for our set up. I plan to hopefully keep a rooster if he is a lot nicer than Henry the Terrible we have now. I used to free range my birds but we have lost a rooster hank and two of the RRR hens we had. IF anyone has any tips or advice on a cycle or rotation like this it would be greatly appreciate. I am currently looking into how long each of these breeds lays for so that I can start tracking and planning.

 

[3KillerBs]

Welcome to BYC.

I haven't gotten my cycle established yet, but it's very common to replace 1/3 of the flock each year -- getting two years out of a hen and having new pullets laying through their first winter.

People who are selling eggs commercially generally don't carry their hens through their first molt into a second laying cycle but replace them with fresh layers.

 

[Alarry31]

yea I don't wanna be knocking them off like that especially if this new bunch is friendly and more social than the ones we have now lol. we got these at tractor and didn't research the leghorn or rrr breed. def don't need more than one rooster so those will deff be going

 

[lomine]

Not all of your hens are going to become broody. Of those that do go broody, they aren't all going to be successful at hatching/raising chicks. I had one that loved to sit but would peck any hatched chicks to death. First time I let it go as sometimes new broodies are just not good at it all. Second time, she was culled.

I generally pick the hens to cull at the end of each laying cycle. I pick based on age, health, laying quantity, place in flock. You don't want to just cull all the older hens. It will depend on your flock goals. I, like you, want a flock that repopulates itself. A good broody is worth her weight in gold. I have 6+ year-old hens in my flock just because of their abilities as a broody. Most of them laid maybe 1 or 2 eggs a week this past year. But they also each raised 2 or 3 clutches a piece. I have a few that will take any chick I give them too so if I want to add new genes but don't want to set up a broodier, I just find local chicks available when their eggs are close to hatching. Pop them under the broody and she does all the work.

For the hens that never go broody, I generally keep them for three laying cycles as I have gotten more than enough eggs from them for my needs. I also think the older hens are more confident and will venture out and eat more bugs than the younger ones. If I was selling eggs and space was really limited, I would probably cull after two cycles.

 

[aart]

Depends on your goals.
If it's for eggs every winter, without supp light, best to hatch a new batch of replacement layers every spring. Even then you may need to use lights. Even with lights they may not lay all winter.

Depending on how much space you have for winter housing, you may want to cull some birds every year, extra cockerels at about 14 weeks, then older birds in the fall.

 

[Alarry31]

Depends on your goals.
If it's for eggs every winter, without supp light, best to hatch a new batch of replacement layers every spring. Even then you may need to use lights. Even with lights they may not lay all winter.

Depending on how much space you have for winter housing, you may want to cull some birds every year, extra cockerels at about 14 weeks, then older birds in the fall.

 

[Alarry31]

I’ve got a pretty good size coop it’s def still a work in progress. I have since removed the divider wall to open up the whole area and plan on adding more roosts

 

[Ridgerunner]

Don't put too much faith in what you read about how long a hen of a specific breed will lay. There are different reasons for that. One is that each animal is an individual. While there can be averages any individual may lay quite different from the average, she may be way less or way more. If you have enough for averages to mean much, yeah, a breed can have tendencies. Seven is not a lot for averages to mean much.

Even then, I find strain to be more important than breed. Each flock has a different person deciding which chickens get to breed. They can each have different criteria for deciding which chickens that is. So from one flock you may get a Cochin that is better for the size eggs they lay, another Cochin flock how many eggs they lay, or how well another produces meat and they don't worry about eggs. Some people seem to think that every Buff Orpington the world over is identical. That's not even close to the case.

It sounds like you are getting yours from a hatchery. They typically do not breed for longevity of lay. I would not expect a lot out of them as far as longevity.

Along these lines broodiness is another trait that you can breed for or against. If the person selecting which chickens get to breed uses broodiness as a trait in just a few generations they can have a flock where most of the hens go broody. Or they can select so they don't have many broody hens at all. So while some breeds have a reputation of going broody a lot more than other breeds, that does not mean all or even most will. There is some luck involved in this.

The majority of hens really lay well their first laying season, molt, and them lay really well their second laying season. After their second adult molt their productivity drops. For some individuals it really drops but for some you might not notice it much but the overall average drops if you have enough for averages to mean anything. After each adult molt after that, the flock average productivity drops.

My goals are different from yours. My typical laying/breeding flock is one rooster and 7 to 8 hens. Every year I save 4 replacement pullets. In spring I have four hens that have been though two winters, four hens that have been through one winter, and chicks I'm raising to be replacements. That fall, I butcher the four oldest and keep one set of hens and one set of pullets through the winter. Some people use 1/3 replacements every year and stretch this cycle. Some use some other methods like keeping close track and selecting which chickens they want to keep. There is some trial and error involved to develop the system that works best for you.

I once kept a replacement rooster that hatched from an egg laid by a hen that goes broody. Most of his daughters went broody. You can breed for it.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

So, I have a "decent" sized flock - its in my sig, below. Not a single one of my birds has ever successfully hatched a clutch on its own. Counting on broodies is rolling the dice. I wish you every fortune in it.

I use a 12 egg incubator. The math is simple. If I set 12 eggs, and three week later, get eight birds on average to successfully, half of them, on average will be males (4). That means that if I incubate once a month, I can take one young male for the table each week, on average and one old hen (replacing her with a younger hen from a prior hatch). That keeps the flock number stable.

If you have a bad hatching, start you next incubation sooner and cull less. A great hatching? delay incubation or cull more. Because your cull numbers are small, you don't need a lot of fridge/freezer space as you would if you were processing a score of CX at a time.

The biggest problem with this method is that you always have a lot of young, unproductive birds - feed costs are higher. But you can ensure you have only young birds starting their lay as they come into winter by aggressively culling older birds out of the flock (the ones most likely to go into molt and drop production over the winter), then rebuild flock numbers with early incubations in late winter/early spring.

I recommend you keep one rooster, and a "back up" near maturity, in case of misfortune, or to periodically refresh the genetics some.

/edit and I should note that I grew my flock to (larger than) the current size from just 18 birds, in a single season. You can follow those efforts here.

 

[saysfaa]

.. My plan is to hopefully get all these chicks to growing age have them hatch chicks then separate the roosters from the hens. And basically eat the roosters and some hens to keep our number to a viable flock for our set up.. IF anyone has any tips or advice on a cycle or rotation like this it would be greatly appreciate. I am currently looking into how long each of these breeds lays for so that I can start tracking and planning.

If all the hens in your flock go broody often, you won't get many eggs.

Some farms kept two flocks: one of their production breed or line and one of a broody breed or line. They weren't necessarily separated except to get unmixed chicks.

It matters what your goal is. Mine would be sustainability, feeding my family, and enjoying the flock. So, I would sacrifice some efficiency and accept somewhat lower production than I could get with other methods.

I would select hatching eggs from the oldest hens available (not ignoring other goals too much). Or possibly their daughters and sisters.

In the morning, when I might stay awake long enough to finish a sentence, I might be able to do a more complete plan.

Edit to update. I don't think I can do a more complete plan. There are too many unknowns and even the "knowns" would be changing. I really don't know how many of the hens would be broody, how broody they might be (how often?, only in the spring?, etc), how many would also be good mothers, whether any or all of that works with how many eggs I want or how much meat, whether I have a good way to store the excess to even out the supply or if a seasonal supply works well. I don't know how old to expect hens to produce if I accept lower production in their early years or how much lower production it would need to be.