Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat

Poultry and Pets => The Hen House => Topic started by: tbam on May 22, 2006, 16:42

Title: roosters un the hen house
Post by: tbam on May 22, 2006, 16:42
Hi all
I wonder if any one has any experience with roosters in the hen house that I can use for my 4H club. I am looking for good and bad times.
Beth
Title: roosters un the hen house
Post by: John on May 22, 2006, 23:13
OK - what's a 4H club?
Title: roosters un the hen house
Post by: Heather_S on May 22, 2006, 23:30
It's a thing in the USA :) My knowledge of them is limited to visiting their exhibits at county fair type things and they always had the baby chicks running around in a pen  :lol:
Title: roosters un the hen house
Post by: John on May 23, 2006, 06:22
Heather_S is hearby appointed official English to English translator and cultural  explainer :)
Thanks
Title: roosters un the hen house
Post by: Ian_P on June 13, 2006, 15:10
Why would you want to put roosters in a hen house?

In a past life 30 years ago I kept 10s of thousands of chickens and the only time I ever kept cockerels was if we wanted to breed from them and wanted fertile eggs. Strictly one cockerel to ever 10 hens, any more and they started fighting, any less and they got worn out very quickly.

If you just want eggs, hens do that very well on their own.

Cockerels eat feed you don't need to buy.

Of course you could always eat them, but keep them separately, then they won't upset the hens.
Title: roosters un the hen house
Post by: John on June 13, 2006, 16:41
It's a commonly held belief that you need a cockerel to get the hens to lay eggs.  And before I sound superior, I used to think that white eggs came from battery kept hens whereas brown were from free-range.
 :oops:
Title: roosters un the hen house
Post by: Heather_S on June 13, 2006, 16:52
Quote from: "john"
It's a commonly held belief that you need a cockerel to get the hens to lay eggs.  And before I sound superior, I used to think that white eggs came from battery kept hens whereas brown were from free-range.
 :oops:


Maybe that's due to the funny US campaigning that "Brown eggs are local eggs and local eggs are fresh" ... there's less of a takeup for brown eggs in the US. There's mostly white eggs because they all come from the leghorn (? I think I have that right) chicken which is a heavy layer. US needs heaps of food so they go for the heaviest producers at least in chickens and cows.

I do miss white eggs for easter. I had to buy expensive duck eggs this past year to work my decorating talents on  :oops:
Title: roosters un the hen house
Post by: John on June 13, 2006, 17:13
I think it was the white=positives of the late 50's early 60s (like white bread) that  made the battery producers go for breeds that laid white eggs. Then things switched around and the battery producers go for brown eggs (in the UK) because brown=natural in the consumer mind.

I mean, your eggs are labelled as 'Farm Fresh' rather than 'Produced by caged birds in our version of chicken hell' so the move to brown reinforced the marketing message.

In Spain I noticed the bulk of eggs were white so I think there is a lot of market preference.