Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (69 page)
Read Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens Online
Authors: Gail Damerow
Breeders are diseased; especially troublesome for hatching eggs are chronic respiratory disease, infectious coryza, infectious bronchitis, Marek’s disease, and endemic (mild) Newcastle disease.
Breeders are too young or too old.
Breeders are stressed due to excessive showing.
Breeders are undernourished.
The cock-to-hen ratio is too high or too low.
The ideal cock-to-hen ratio for pen breeding is influenced by the cock’s physical condition, health, age, and breed. On average the optimum ratio for heavier breeds is 1 cock per 8 hens, although a cock in peak form can handle up to 12
hens. The optimum ratio for lightweight laying breeds is 1 cock for up to 12 hens, yet an agile cock may accommodate 15 to 20. The mating ratio for bantams is 1 cock for 18 hens, although an active cockerel might handle as many as 25. An older cock or an immature cockerel can manage only half the hens of a virile yearling.
If you have too many cocks, fertility will be low because the cocks will spend too much time fighting among themselves. If you have too few cocks, fertility will be low because the cocks can’t get around to all the hens. If you have only one cock and more than half a dozen hens, the cock will favor some hens and ignore the others.
Since cocks tend to play favorites, it pays to switch them periodically. The more cocks you have to switch off, the less likely you are to experience inbreeding problems; it’s far better to have chicks sired by several different cocks than hatch the same number of chicks all with one sire. And by keeping extra cocks, you won’t be left high and dry if your favorite rooster becomes incapacitated during the breeding season.
If you use only one cock at a time, house the extras in separate pens or cages. My friend learned this lesson the hard way. He knew one rooster was enough for his dozen hens, but he kept a second one as insurance. The two cocks fought so incessantly that feeders and perches were soon painted with blood, and the hens produced no fertile eggs. The exasperated fellow sold one cock to a neighbor, whose coop was within earshot. Whenever the neighbor’s cock crowed, the homeboy flew up to the rooftop to answer in defiance. One day when the cock jumped down from the roof he broke his foot, abruptly ending my friend’s breeding season. This unfortunate experience would have been avoided if the fellow had alternately penned each proud cock alone and given it a turn with the hens.
Ironically, cocks are less apt to fight if you keep three or more, instead of just two. If you use several cocks for flock breeding, keep them in two or more groups and rotate the groups, rather than rotating individuals — the less you disturb their peck order, the less fighting will occur. If you lose one cock out of a group during the season, chance a possible slight drop in fertility rather than replacing him and running the risk that peck-order fighting will cause fertility to plummet.
Pedigree breeders commonly mate chickens in pairs or trios, the latter consisting of one cock and two hens. The fewer hens you keep with a cock, the more you have to watch out for damage due to treading (see box on following page).
TREADING |
A cock intent on mating grabs feathers on the back of a hen’s head with his beak to help balance himself while he attempts to stand on her back. More often than not, his feet slide on her smooth feathers and he makes a few quick movements of his feet to get a good hold. This movement of the feet is called |
Before the situation goes that far, take measures as soon as you notice hens are missing feathers because of treading — or even before feathers go missing. The first step is to keep the cock’s toenails properly trimmed, taking care to round off the corners. |
If you have several cocks, you might house them in separate coops and let each run with the hens for a few hours a week. Each cock will have a different set of favorite hens, offering the others some relief. If you have only one rooster, you might divide your hens into two flocks and alternate the cock between the two groups. |
Dress a hen for action. |
Once you get your pattern sized just right to fit your hens, if you want to spend more time perfecting it, you might add some refinements. You could stitch the pieces together inside out to avoid raw seams around the edges, or slightly curve the bottom inward to make room for the tail. To readily identify each hen, you might add her band number using paint, embroidery, machine stitching, or iron-on patches. |
Apply the jacket when the hen’s feathers start disappearing, not after she’s already wounded. To dress a hen, put her head through the center opening between the two elastic straps, then put one wing through each of the other openings so a strap runs beneath each wing. When first dressed, the hen will try to back away from the jacket (please refrain from wounding her dignity by laughing), but soon enough she’ll get used to it. |
A jacket is not intended as permanent clothing for your hens but to get them safely through the period during which you are collecting fertile eggs. One also comes in handy in the event a hen does get wounded, to protect her back while the feathers regrow and the gashes heal. When the hen is with other chickens, you must leave the jacket on 24 hours a day until this fertile egg collecting period is over or until she has healed. |
|
Making a jacket proportioned for a Rhode Island Red hen requires two pieces of denim or canvas 6 |
” by 9” (162 mm by 229 mm), two 8½” (216 mm) lengths of ¼” (6 mm) elastic, and a spool of matching or contrasting thread.Breeder-flock housing plays an important role in the fertility and hatchability of eggs. Facilities with lots of environmental variety help give a cock privacy to mate undisturbed by other cocks. Excessive fighting among cocks may be a sign of poor facility design, since cocks that are lower in peck order have no place to hide from dominant birds.
If you have more than one rooster, furnish each with at least one feeding station. Each cock will gather his harem of hens around a feeder, and fighting will be reduced, especially if you space the feeders well apart and locate them where each cock can reach his station without having to pass through another cock’s feeder territory.