Will Brahma roosters be too much around Leghorn hens?

[DoozyWombat]

During the mating act the hen squats. This gets her body onto the ground so the rooster's weight gets to the ground through her entire body, not just her legs. This way a hen can support a heavier rooster without injury to her legs. The more weight difference the hen and rooster the easier it is for something to go wrong, but it usually doesn't. I personally would not be that worried about the Brahma rooster hurting a Leghorn hen's body because of the weight difference.

My suggestion is to prepare a place you can isolate two of those boys away from the flock at a moments notice. Be ready. I suspect you'll probably need it in another month or two.

Both very good points. We have a portable dog kennel ready now that should hold two large roos, along with extra feeder and waterer. I just hope they'll be okay in there together.

And we're keeping the Leghorn.

Thanks again.

 

[Mrs. K]

Well that will work for transportation or short term emergency, but not for a long term separation. A 5 foot handle fish net can be helpful for separating fighting roosters or a chicken hook. Wear long sleeves and pants.

 

[DoozyWombat]

If you are able to butcher the meat birds, then put the boys where you had the meat bird. They will need a couple of weeks more, but AArt is fond of them on the grill at that time.

I do not quite understand why you would swap a hen for a rooster. Adding a third rooster is going to triple your odds of things not going well.

If asked, I give the advice of a hen only flock the first year. Get some experience, roosters are a crap shoot and take experience, they seem to be a darling or a nightmare. Being as you can cull, I would do the meat birds and the roosters.

Next year, raise up some chicks in the flock with the older birds, they tend to educate roosters. Or if you really want a rooster, ask around, what you are looking for is an extra rooster that was raised up in a multi-generational flock, and is so nice, he did not get culled and is nearly a year old. I would not add him till the pullets are laying.

Personally, I like 8-12 hens with a rooster, but I would not add a second rooster until I was approaching 20-30 hens. Roosters take more space than hens. I think what you are considering is pretty much a good recipe for at least one and a high probability of multiple cock fights, and worn out pullets.

Mrs K

All good points, and yours and other posts have convinced me I need to end up with just one rooster, based on temperament.

We have them all together, which has made the young Brahmas look a little like VW Beetles running around tanks, as the CX have gotten huge. But we do have a small kennel where we can isolate a rooster if we need to. I don't want to cull the roosters until necessary, to give them enough time to develop their adult personalities, but I realize they may not give me the time for that.

The hen-cock swapping is because I did a joint order for Dark Brahmas with a friend. She only wants girls for her flock, and I wanted two boys and the rest girls, to ensure I got at least one rooster. But one of hers turned out to be a boy, and CackleHatchery sent us an extra pullet, so I agreed to swap.

I like your idea of raising hens only the first year. But then I would have to introduce chicks the second year, which I'd like to avoid. We'll want them to go broody and raise some chicks, so we'll have a larger flock next year. I like the ratio of 8-12 hens per cock. It sounds much easier on the hens, anyway.

I have no doubt you are right about roosters. If the calmest temperament guy is a problem, he'll get processed once we have a good-sized brood coming along. I also like the idea of letting the hens teach young roos how to behave.

 

[DoozyWombat]

Well that will work for transportation or short term emergency, but not for a long term separation. A 5 foot handle fish net can be helpful for separating fighting roosters or a chicken hook. Wear long sleeves and pants.

I had to look up chicken hook. What a concept! Thanks for the idea.

 

[Mrs. K]

Introducing chicks is way easier than dealing with a bad rooster. just an FYI, if your plan does not work out, adding chicks is really not hard if you have space, and it sounds like you do.

 

[aart]

We'll want them to go broody and raise some chicks, so we'll have a larger flock next year.

You can hope.

Introducing chicks is way easier than dealing with a bad rooster.

That's for sure!
I find integrating purchased or incubator chicks easier than dealing with a broody.

I like the ratio of 8-12 hens per cock. It sounds much easier on the hens, anyway.

It can be, or not, depends on the cock.
Having more than one male just doubles the crap shoot.

 

[DoozyWombat]

Introducing chicks is way easier than dealing with a bad rooster. just an FYI, if your plan does not work out, adding chicks is really not hard if you have space, and it sounds like you do.

I do have space. The coop is an 8x12 Woods design, and is in about a quarter acre, surrounded by electric fence.

Thanks!

 

[DoozyWombat]

You can hope.

That's for sure!
I find integrating purchased or incubator chicks easier than dealing with a broody.


It can be, or not, depends on the cock.
Having more than one male just doubles the crap shoot.

I expect a few years from now, I'll be chuckling at the naivete of some of my questions. Right now, I am aiming at a self-sustaining flock for meat and eggs, reproducing their own numbers. So I'm going to try to get them to raise some of their own, but I'm sure I will make many mistakes.

The journey should be both frustrating and fun, anyway.

And the advice is very much appreciated!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Right now, I am aiming at a self-sustaining flock for meat and eggs, reproducing their own numbers.

You never know if a hen will go broody at all and you certainly cannot control when. I appreciate the idea of self-sustaining but to have any control over if and when the eggs hatch you need an incubator, especially if meat is one of your goals. I like my broody hens but I could not put one chicken a week on the table without my incubator even with a lot of broody hens. The logistics just don't work out for me. You have a nice set-up, that 1/4 acre should stay green in season and that coop gives you a lot of flexibility. You do not need a big expensive incubator, a lot of chicks get hatched in those smaller cheaper ones, but being able to control when they hatch if pretty valuable. Trying to do that with just broody hens can be very frustrating, especially at the start.

I like my broody hens. The tendency to go broody is inherited from both the mother and the father. That's where the logistics of an incubator can help. When a hen goes broody she stops laying eggs. That's generally when you collect eggs to hatch, so her eggs don't generally hatch, it's the other non-broody hens' eggs. You are perpetuating the genetics of "don't go broody".

If you identify a hen that goes broody and collect her eggs for incubation, then select a replacement rooster and maybe a couple of pullets from those chicks, the odds of a hen going broody in future generations can go way up. That's what happened to my flock when I did that. I went from a flock where maybe 1/4 of the hens might go broody (and usually at an inconvenient time) to where practically every hen went broody at least once a year. I still had to do an early spring incubator hatch to keep from running out of meat in the freezer because they typically don't go broody early enough. And I needed a good broody buster.

We all have our own goals and set-ups, we each have to find out own way. There are a lot of different nuances. For example, if you only eat your cockerels you'll have to hatch a lot more chicks than if you eat your excess pullets too. That's if you have a goal of how often you eat chicken. I eat my excess pullets, there are only two of us so we don't need a huge chicken. But many people sell their excess pullets to try to help recoup feed costs. You'll work out the system that works for you, just be patient and stay flexible. Nothing ever works out exactly as planned.

My main laying/breeding flock is one rooster and 6 to 8 hens. Less than all these optimum hen-rooster ratios you see. For your goals you may find you need more hens. With these numbers I don't often have the behavioral issues you can. Oh, stuff happens, but not that frequently. There is a difference in the behaviors of mature hens and roosters versus immature pullets and cockerels, I take that into account before I take dramatic action like eating one. I do select some of my freezer birds by behaviors, male and female. If one is consistently doing something detrimental to the flock it is gone and not allowed to breed.

For example, after I reduced my first hatchery order of 28 chicks down to a flock of one rooster and 8 hens (mature enough to assess them, I thought) I had two hens that were consistently barebacked. Before breeding season I put those two in the freezer. That reduced my hen to rooster ratio from 8 to down to 6 to 1. But the problem went away. How could I blame the rooster for that? That is part of the experience I call upon when I say I don't believe that you have to have a certain number of hens per rooster. I think a side benefit by not allowing those hens to breed was that barebacked was pretty rare in the pullets that hatched after that.

I've had a friend call me ruthless when talking about the way I manage my flock. I thanked her, considered it a compliment. But I think being careful in selecting which birds get to breed is an important part in developing a elf-sufficient flock.

 

[Folly's place]

My goals are slightly different than RR's, but not that different. I too like having broody hens, and last spring had a very bad unplanned flock reduction event that killed all but one of them.
My flock replacement chicks are mostly not genetically part of my original flock, so in many ways I'm starting over.
I had three breeding groups; white Chanteclers, Belgian d'Uccles, and bantam EEs. and have needed new birds for all three groups. The new Chanties look good so far at eight weeks of age (Cackle chicks), the EE bantams from Cackle are mostly cockerels, sadly, and the Belgian d'Uccle chicks didn't do so well, as only two out of six survived with the broody hen. I think there was an inbreeding issue, and that's bad for that group. I need outcrosses there!
The Chanties are dual purpose, so selecting for size matters, and egg laying all winter if possible, and of course temperament.
Mary