We are zoned so that you can have chickens as long as there are no roosters. Not knowing the sex of eggs, what do you do with the roosters? is there a market for them in the classifieds? Perhaps 4H clubs? Just researching possibilities and trying to avoid pitfalls before i leap into this. I already have an incubator, brooder and a custom design for our chicken coop (my husband is an architect - it is a curved front with the back actually inside our garage!), By the way I could never kill or eat our chickens - we will show them and keep them as pets - which brings up another question. What do you do if you want to breed a show hen. Does it work like dogs where you take the grump to a stud? I hope I'm not sounding too ridiculous.
I would recommend (and this is jmo) buying sex links or older chicks that a sexed. Most people get majority roos and they may be hard to get rid of. You might borrow a roo for a week... It won't happen in a few minutes. If you rush I think the hen will reject the roo.
You could try hatching your own and when you know what sex they are you could put the roosters on craigslist to find them homes, or if you into it you could eat them (a lot of people eat them) or like ncCHICKS said you can buy sexed pullets !! I wouldnt borrow a rooster only b/c you should keep any "new/borrow" bird seprate from you flock for a little while to make sure they dont have any sickness's plus you might confuse your flock that way. You could buy fetile eggs and hatch them.
