[Thompson24]

Hi guys

If you say have 20 - 30 hens all in one huge area, how many cockrals would you be able to put in or would you have to fence it all off into say trios or is it safe to keep a number of cockrals together as long as they have enough birds to share?

[GrannieAnnie]

Apparently you can have up to 15 hens with one cockerel, but I've never kept them together for long enough to say about keeping several cockerals in with all your hens.

I suppose it depends on the individual cockerals and whether they get on well together.  I'm sure someone on here does keep them all together, but you wouldn't need trios, just 2 or 3 cockerals with 10 hens each, depending on why you want the cockerals in teh first place?  Do you want to breed them?

[Thompson24]

yes hopefully, our allotment site is quite small (about 20 allotments) and we all get one great.   Everyone has chickens which they replace every year to two years.  We were talking today in our meeting and thought we have a spare alotment which we could use as a breeding place for chickens to breed all off our own as we want to become self sufficient etc.  We have a number of clockers and incubators now between us also.  One guy had one cockreal with 15 hens but the hatch rate was almost zero.  He changed the cockreal howerver the hatch rate didnt increase, hence why I would like to find out how many cockreals we could put in?

thanks for your help

[cathangirl]

Are the hens hybrids?  Were they really concentrating on brooding the eggs properly?  Such a shame not to have much success so far.

[poppies]

Hi we only put 4 /5 hens to one cockerel or we start getting clear eggs. really it depends on individual cockerel or breed

[Thompson24]

cathangirl I think they are light sussex hens with a RIR cockreal.

Poppies - do you have them in the same pens or do you have them split up?

[too many girls]

i have loads of different breeds of cockerals running with loads of different breeds of hens, they all seem to stick to their respective breeds, however, i do live on a farm so there's plenty of room to get out of the way in case of squabbles, i don't know how they'd get on if all penned up together.

[poppies]

We split up the bantams as they seem to fight over certain hens, but the large fowl we keep  together in huge pens so they have plenty of space , any touble makers are put separately with a couple of hens - although not related most of our cockerels that are kept together were hatched at about the same time   so this might help

[henrys.hens]

Yes i keep lots of cockerels and hens, Its fine as long as you dont have like 2hens 1cock because its fine when they are fenced off but the hens can get over mated.