[jayson]

hay my names jayson and im completly new to the poltry world...

my question is if a hen lays an egg how do you now if its a hachling or not?...

do you need to do somthing to stop it from being a hachling or what?...

im completly at a loss please help

thank you for your time
jayson

[GrannieAnnie]

Hi Jayson, welcome!

Well if you really are that new to chicken's?  A hen will only lay fertile eggs if she has a cockerel around her to fertilise them.

Then you will only know if the eggs are fertile if you either put them under a broody hen or in an incubator.

[joyfull]

Hi and welcome Jayson, how many birds do you have and what type 

[jayson]

none as of yet im trying to gather as much info as possibal befor diving in ... i was toying with the idea of geting 4/5 rhode island reds to satrt with

[jayson]

so in that case if i dont want them fertalised then i have to make sure the cock dosent go near

[Hayley'sHens]

As you dont have them already, Why dont you just get POL (point of lay) hens. That way you get the eggs but dont have to worry about a cockerel, as you wont have one.

[GrannieAnnie]

Jayson, can I ask you a personal question?

How old are you??

We generally say cockerel, as this is a family forum!!

[jayson]

  sorry i didnt think of it like that. Being a forum that is about chickens, i didnt relise people would read it in that context .... im 19

[GrannieAnnie]

That's okay then!  It's just that sometimes we get really young people on here and we think they are just having a laugh, but when we find they are very young, then we take a different stance.

So basically, if you just want your chickens for the eggs, as suggested, start with point of lay hens.  Hybrids are generally cheaper than pure breeds like Rhode Island Reds.  And you can usually guarantee you are only getting girls.

If you buy pure breeds, you've got a higher chance of getting a young cockerel or 2 which you don't want unless you want to breed them.  We were lucky with our RIR's as we could tell the boys from the girls at about 5-6 weeks.

How much room have you got down there in Southend for them?  the minimum size for a coop/house is 1sq ft per bird and the minimum size for run is 1sq metre per bird, but we try to encourage people to give them as much room as possible to let them spread their wings a bit.

A little shed will work out cheaper than buying some of these coops from places like Ebay which are generally not worth the money you pay.  And try to make the run fox proof.  Chicken wire isn't fox proof.  Many of us use weld mesh at least for the bottom couple of feet of the run.

there are lots of ideas on the forum for runs and houses and other stuff, so good luck!

[jayson]

thanks abunch iv got around 4 by 8 sqr meters of grass land and about doubel that in pathing i was going to put the coop on the pathing right on the verg where the grass and pathing meet is that alright???
 

[beulah59]

Sounds great