Can I swap out roosters with my flock?

[coach723]

Lots of things are doable, but may not work in practice like they work in your head. It will be trial and error, every bird is different, every hen is different, every flock is different. Some hens will refuse a roo they don't like (which can result in injury), some roo's won't take no for an answer and will terrorize the hens, including serious injury. Especially a young roo or cockerel. A group of hens can sometimes hurt a roo badly also if they gang up on him. There are infinite variables. Probably the best working system is one with many enclosures, so that you can have separate groups to breed for the reasons you are looking for, take your prime purebreds and breed them in one, put your chosen mixes in another. Things would be calmer over all, they will form a flock and everyone will be more content. You can remove or switch out as you lose birds, add birds, or end up with a roo that is unacceptable for breeding for whatever reason. If you want to keep a lot of boys that aren't going to be used, put them in a dedicated bachelor pad as far from the others as possible, so that they don't (hopefully) fight. Every one of them is different. I have 3 roo's, two get along fine. One of those gets along with the third but the other does not and tries to kill him every chance he gets. So he is in his own pen with his own girls. One of the criteria I use in deciding what boys to keep is which of them the hens seem to like and tolerate more. I figure they know better than I do. Looks isn't everything. None of them are human aggressive.

 

[Emmaloveschickens9156]

Even when swapping out Roos, 6 is still too few hens. Maybe after putting the roo in the roo flock, give the hens a week break before adding a diff roo, or get more hens. Saddles are an option too

 

[Mrs. K]

Cute chicks can also grow into mean roosters that can hurt your family / friends / neighbors.

Very true.

And they don't call it cock fighting for nothing. After a 3 month go with the ladies, he is not going to go back into the rooster flock easily.

And a lot of rooster flocks don't work well over the long term.

So as others have said, this might work, but in my experience, the more roosters you have, the better the odds of it not working out.

Do know that the cockerels you have now, in the darling stage are not likely not be the same birds in the nightmare stage. This is the romantic stage, and they are darling.

When I have multiple cockerels, I begin separating them as soon as I can tell for sure. I do sort them in stages. Anything I don't really like for any reason, is pulled to the bachelor set up. Then I wait and see how the ones left, act. Cull again.

If you really want two breeds, it would be better to divide into two flocks. A lot of people do that, but they are in bigger set ups, larger flocks.

Really, I would not keep a rooster with less than 8 hens, and I prefer 10-12. I would not keep 2 roosters unless I had 25 birds.

Roosters take more room than hens IMO.

As to your original post, yes you can do it that way, but I think it will cause a lot of stress on your hens, and will cause a lot of tension. I always solve for peace in the flock.

Mrs K