hi, and thanks to anyone that will take time to help me out. Primdawg from Bolingbroke, GA. My wife has decided to add chickens to our list of animals. Great! Fun! and i'm enjoying them with her much more than i anticipated. i have several questions:
1st, we built a cool coop and run from your image ideas and it turned out beautiful. We have a black copper maran rooster and 5 hens and they are beginning to feel at home (all around 5 months)
2nd, we just purchased more birds from a friend that showed birds and is just having a tough time and needed to downsize. Great looking birds, 2 bantam pair and 3 silky pair.
Question: what is the procedure for mixing breeds especially the above. all are so cool, friendly birds, no problems so far so, i'd like to keep it that way. What happens when you put them together? i have a large run and large coop that can handle 16 birds but.......
3rd, do you suggest i just build another "separate coop and run" for the 3 silky pairs and the bantams?
do i need a 4th small coop for the 2 bantam pair? that's 6 roosters, and like i said, all cool now but worried about putting everyone together?
4th, will the black copper maran try to breed the bantams and silky girls? Will the Bantams breed the silkys or silkys bantams? or is that not possible?
objective:
we have an incubator so, we would like to raise the chicks to sell or give to friends or whatever, and have the eggs to eat, give away, and whatever. we don't plan to show but would like to keep good stock.
i don't know anything about good stock but these are all very nice birds from nice stock if that means anything. Not much to us other than they are all so cool looking, very pretty, sharp looking birds which i guess is just cool for our viewing enjoyment.
so, what's the call on the coops? mix them together? one for the large and one for small, three separate? separate runs? other suggestions as the lady also gave us a couple dozen silky eggs so we put them in the incubator.
i guess that's it for now and thanks to any and all replies and don't worry about hurting my beginner feelings, haha, as "any" info is great.
Thanks,
Primdawg
1st, we built a cool coop and run from your image ideas and it turned out beautiful. We have a black copper maran rooster and 5 hens and they are beginning to feel at home (all around 5 months)
2nd, we just purchased more birds from a friend that showed birds and is just having a tough time and needed to downsize. Great looking birds, 2 bantam pair and 3 silky pair.
Question: what is the procedure for mixing breeds especially the above. all are so cool, friendly birds, no problems so far so, i'd like to keep it that way. What happens when you put them together? i have a large run and large coop that can handle 16 birds but.......
3rd, do you suggest i just build another "separate coop and run" for the 3 silky pairs and the bantams?
do i need a 4th small coop for the 2 bantam pair? that's 6 roosters, and like i said, all cool now but worried about putting everyone together?
4th, will the black copper maran try to breed the bantams and silky girls? Will the Bantams breed the silkys or silkys bantams? or is that not possible?
objective:
we have an incubator so, we would like to raise the chicks to sell or give to friends or whatever, and have the eggs to eat, give away, and whatever. we don't plan to show but would like to keep good stock.
i don't know anything about good stock but these are all very nice birds from nice stock if that means anything. Not much to us other than they are all so cool looking, very pretty, sharp looking birds which i guess is just cool for our viewing enjoyment.
so, what's the call on the coops? mix them together? one for the large and one for small, three separate? separate runs? other suggestions as the lady also gave us a couple dozen silky eggs so we put them in the incubator.
i guess that's it for now and thanks to any and all replies and don't worry about hurting my beginner feelings, haha, as "any" info is great.
Thanks,
Primdawg
from Ohio. So glad to have you aboard. First thing you need to do is quaratine your new birds to make sure they are not carrying any diseases. Then, most folks will separate the birds using poultry wire so that they can see one another but can't get to one another. 
