Bachelor pads and breeding

[AMURPHY227]

I am in the process of building a bachelor pad for my teenage boys. If you want to skip down to the question, its labeled "QUESTION:"

I am not new to chickens, but I am new to a bachelor pad system lol......

Backstory: My husband got me 9 Black Copper Marans from a breeder for Christmas. They were straight run. 5 of the 9 are roosters
I also noticed 3 of my chicks didn't have full BCM characteristics. One had a splash on her chest (which is now all solid black), and the other 2 popped up with beards. So I asked the breeder about this and he said his farm hand got some of the eggs mixed up from his Amerecauna/BCM eggs. So this means, I got lucky enough to also get 3 F1OE's! (Breeder offered to switch them out but I excitedly declined).

So now I will def be keeping an F1OE roo and a BCM roo- and I decided if I am keeping 2, why cant I just keep 5? So thus begins my research on color breeding and bachelor pads.

QUESTION:
How is breeding handled when the roos are seperate from the hens?

The breeds of my hens are as follows:
Easter Eggers
Black Copper Marans
Buff Orphingtons
Gold Laced Wyandottes
Crested Cream Legbars
F1OE BCM/Amerecauna mix

Roosters:
Black Copper Marans
F1OE BCM/Amerecauna mix

I am going to want to breed BCM x BCM, BCM x CCLB for my own F1OE's, and also back cross BCM x F1OE hen, F1OE x BCM hen, F1OE x CCLB, etc....

You get the picture.

What are my options on breeding? Is it safe for me to just pick which roo I want to breed with at that time and put him in the run with all the ladies, and return him to the bachelor pad every evening?
Or could I use my grow out pens as breeding pens, and select which hens and roos I want to breed at that time and put them in those pens for a few hours a day for a few days?


Also how long should I wait in between breedings to be sure of what I'm hatching out? A month?

And my husband thinks the roos will change once they are bred with for the first time. I was under the impression that as long as they don't LIVE with the ladies, they tend to stay more laid back, and less aggressive.


Pic of my pretty boys, and my pretty girls walking by their grow pen while the boys gawk at them

 

[Ridgerunner]

It takes about 25 hours for an egg to make its way through the hen's internal egg-making factory. That egg can only be fertilized in the first few minutes of that journey. That means if a mating takes place on a Monday, Monday's egg cannot be fertile from that mating. Tuesday's egg might or might not be, depends on when the mating took place and when the egg was laid. I don't count on it. Wednesday's egg will be fertile from that Monday mating.

A rooster does not mate with every hen in his flock every day but he doesn't have to. The sperm is stored in a special pouch near where the egg starts its internal journey. That sperm can remain viable anywhere from 9 days until four weeks. It can vary a lot. So you need to wait four weeks after a mating to a rooster you don't want for the father before you start incubating eggs. Give the hen's system time to clear out. But you can introduce the rooster you want at any time, you do not need to wait four weeks.

Every time you put a new chicken in a pen with others or take one out you take a chance on upsetting the pecking order. That could cause fighting. Usually adding to or taking away a rooster from a bachelor pad isn't that risky, but there is always a risk. Same thing is true for adding or taking a rooster from a flock of hens. The risk is fairly low but it is not zero. I would work out ways to minimize the disruption. Instead of rotating in a rooster every day I'd leave one in for a week or so before taking him out. Minimize the disruptions.

 

[Mrs. K]

More pens are wonderful for lots of reasons!

Thing is, that putting off culling roosters will catch up with you if you hatch. Hatching eggs is about 50/50 rooster chicks, pullets. You really cannot keep all of them, or at least in my world.

And you really don't want to breed all of them. If you are wanting to play with genetics, well, you need to really follow the animal husbandry techniques that people have improved their animals for 1000's of years. You want to breed the best birds, eat the rest.

And that goes both ways - hens and roosters. You should be taking some measurements - which roosters weigh more on the same opportunity for food and gain. You need to look carefully at your standards, feeling the back, the keel bone, the length of legs. You want to see which hens come into lay first. Look at feet and beak alignment - those are genetic problems that can quickly multiply the problem.

So, what you really need to do - is breed your best hens (maybe 2-3) to your best rooster. Collect their eggs for a week, keeping them at room temperature - then set the eggs.

Personally, I think you get better roosters and better flock dynamics when a cockerel is raised in a multi-generational flock. I only keep roosters in a bachelor pad long enough to make sure who I think I am going to keep is who I AM keeping.

So I pick my best rooster - hatch his eggs, from my top hens.

Chickens hate change, putting birds together, pulling them apart, is going to cause a lot of strife. Not worth it to me. And, if I had a breeder down the road - well, I would cull all of these except one of them. Breed that breed this year, next year, I would go down the road, and ask him to let me look at his roosters of another breed. Roosters are always easy to come by.

These are your birds - and you can do it your way - DO report back on what did or didn't work.

Mrs K

 

[nevrenufanimals]

If you are constantly rotating the roos in with the hens, will it cause more aggression between the bachelors when they are returned to their pen? Or is is better for them to never have the chance at "a good time" to begin with? I am fixing to setup a roo pen because i have 12 unsexed chicks at the moment and we know how that ends. I am not interested in the genetics of breeding, just would hate for the boys never to get to be boys..... But I dont want fighting and aggressive roosters either. If it means they never get to "socialize" with the hens, then thats how it will be.

 

[Ridgerunner]

If you are constantly rotating the roos in with the hens, will it cause more aggression between the bachelors when they are returned to their pen? Or is is better for them to never have the chance at "a good time" to begin with?

Every time you make a change there is a chance something will not go right. It's just that way with living animals. It is purely your choice but I would not make a change without a reason I considered important.