I have a nice BCM Roo that I want to put over my EE, for a Olive Egger. He is not the dominate Roo. My RIR gets all the respect and the action , I would like to separate but I dont want to mess up the way my flock all gets along . I have 17 1-1 1/2 olds . 1 BCM Roo , 1 RIR Roo , 1 Bantam Old English Roo that thinks he is Boss , 1 Guinea Hen , and 13 miss Hens , They all stay in the large coop that has lots of room and a 15 ft x 25 ft run. I also have 15 more chickens that are about 10 weeks , 6 roo's and 9 hens they stay in the small coop , that coop has a 15x8 run , that opens up to a large run thats about 30 ft x 40 ft . The large run is open to both flocks and they both use it at the same time. So they dont really hang out together its like 2 different flocks the little ones dont go to close to the bigger chickens unless they are really thirsty , they just stay to themselves. I would like to move the younger ones in with the main flock , and pull out the BCM and the EE and put them in the small coop and small run to mate . What would you do and how would you do it . They all get along in there own separate groops , what will happen when I try to make these changes? any help would be awesome .
I've requested the move for you. In the future, when you need to do this, just press the "report" link at the bottom of the post message and choose "Wrong Section" from the drop down menu and explain which in which forum you want the post to appear.
I have moved my birds around and put the boy with the girls I want them with. There may be some squabbling at first but they will eventually work it out.
I'm going to face the same situation eventually; figured I will need a bachelors pad that needs to be large, more than the usual size for the coop and run to allow for fighting as roosters are returned to the pen. Maybe several small pens would be better than one large pen. Chickens are complicated!
I don't actually know, but I've read the hens store sperm (?), so the roo might not have to leave the main flock for an extended period.
We do this all the time. The roosters always get to free range. We pen up the selected breeding hens in their own area so that they have no access to the roosters. Weekly, we expose the rooster to the hen. We keep the hens away from the other roosters for a minimum of 30 days, but most sources sometime after 21 days is OK. After the initial 30 day wait, you collect the eggs for incubation. You can keep several different breeds of hens as long as the rooster you want is only exposed to the hen you want. Works out great for us. We have 4 different breeds plus the crosses we make. We let the rooster start breeding around day 20 so by day 28 to 30 we know there will be fertile eggs. You can also just keep the rooster away and wait for the eggs to stop looking fertile.
we do this type of thing all the time. Just try to make the switch at night. They will work it out, they may not be super happy about it, but they don't mind that much.
