How many chicks to expect from a Delaware trio

[JosiahK]

Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with breeding Delawares could tell me how many chicks I could expect anualy from a Delaware trio if I let the hens raise the chicken themselves, and how many I could expect if I had a 50% success rate in a homemade brooder?

Thanks in advance!

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Are you expecting the Delawares to incubate?
Do you have an incubator?
There's no guarantee a hen will set or how many times. If you're waiting on a hen to set and you have 2 hens, you could get anywhere from 0 to about 30 chicks annually.
They won't lay while they're incubating and brooding.
If the hen hatches them herself, she'll brood them as well.
50% is a good goal for a homemade incubator. You should have very few fatalities in a brooder once the chicks hatch.
If you incubate them when a hen won't set, you may get as many as 200-300 a year.

 

[JosiahK]

In that case, I will try to incubate the eggs myself. Does 200-33 eggs per year mean 200-300 chicks?!

Thanks!

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Depending on where you are and if they are breeding, the eggs are likely to have good fertility year round.
Keep in mind that roosters need photo-stimulation just like hens.

Someone could start with a trio and if not artificially incubating, may never get a hen to set.

 

[donrae]

If you have a stellar broody you'd get 3 clutches a year. I don't think most Delawares are going to brood that much, more like once or twice. Each clutch, say you give her a dozen eggs. 21 days to hatch, then most hens brood chicks around 5-7 weeks after that. You've got a hen out of production about 2 months, give or take. So, if each hen does that, you've got 4 dozen chicks a year (going with a 100% hatch and survival rate), averaging 2 dozen pullets and 2 dozen cockerels per year. That's about the absolute best scenario for having your hens brood.

Like Canoe said, if you brood yourself, you can have a lot more chicks. Each hen should average 250+ eggs a year and theoretically you could set each and every one. You'd probably want two incubators or an incubator and a hatcher to avoid staggered hatches and lockdown issues.