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Once you’re sure that backyard poultry are right for you and your lifestyle, you next need to work out what your ideal flock would look like. This includes thinking about the species, number, gender, breed, and age of birds you want to get.
If you are new to backyard poultry keeping, it will probably be easiest for you to start with chickens since they have been domesticated over many centuries to fit in well with our lifestyles. They are also generally failry low maintenance.
Game birds such as quails and guinea fowl tend to be much more flighty and don’t want to interact with people as much. There are also far fewer resources available for new owners on how to properly care for these species and fewer veterinarians who feel comfortable treating them.
It is also not a good idea to have mixed flocks contain multiple species of birds since they often have different requirements for care and may not get along well with each other.
If you live in an urban area, your local council likely has limits on the maximum number of birds you can keep. For first time flock keepers, 3 to 5 birds is generally a good starting point. This is a large enough flock to help you learn the ropes of caring for chickens while still meeting their needs for social interaction with other birds. If you have a larger family, a flock of 6 to 8 hens may be better to provide you with enough eggs during the week.
If you live in an urban area, chances are pretty high that your city council has strict regulations against keeping roosters. This is mainly because roosters have a habit of crowing at the crack of dawn and then continuing to make noise all throughout the day. This is a definite nuisance for your neighbours who may not share your enthusiasm for backyard birds.
Another major problem is that backyard flocks with roosters will produce fertilised eggs. If these eggs are allowed to hatch, about 50% of the resulting chicks will be roosters. Since most people don’t want that many males in their flock, these birds often get dumped in public locations or surrendered to local rescue organisations. This is not only a major animal welfare issue, but also puts a significant strain on the resources of city councils and rescue organisations to humanely manage these unwanted birds.
You don’t need to have a rooster to have a healthy, happy flock. Most people who keep roosters do so because they either want to breed their own chicks for replacement or sales or they value the potential role that roosters can play in protecting the flock against predators. Since roosters sit outside the hen hierarchy, they also sometimes act in the role of settling down squabbles and easing the integration of new hens into the group. On the downside, roosters can cause injuries to your hens with their claws and spurs during the mating process. If there are multiple roosters in your flock, they can also cause serious injuries to each other when they are establishing their social position.
If you are planning to get roosters for breeding purposes, you will need one rooster for every 10 to 15 hens. When there are several roosters in larger flocks, they will often create smaller flocks within the larger groups leaving the other males alone. Having the proper ratio of hens to roosters will help prevent fighting between roosters and keep the hens from becoming stressed out by too much attention.
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You have the potential option of getting birds that are at all different stages of the lifecycle including hatching eggs, chicks, pullets, and adult hens. In general, it’s better to have a flock where all the birds are in a similar age range to prevent bullying and to lower the risk of diseases spreading from adult birds to young birds. Growing birds also have different dietary requirements than laying hens and can run into serious health problems if they are fed the same rations.
While it can be fun to watch your eggs and chicks grow into adult birds, one very important thing to consider is that about 50% of these chicks will end up being roosters. Unfortunately, there is no way to tell the sex of chick while it is still in the egg and even after the chicks hatch, you might not easily be able to determine the sex for several weeks until the males and females start showing differences in the appearance of their combs, wattles, and tail feathers. So unless you have a plan in place to either keep, rehome, or humanely destroy these birds, then hatching eggs and chicks are not the right age group of birds for you.
Pullets are a popular choice because you can more accurately determine their age and they will also give you the most potential years of productive egg laying. The main downside is that you may have to provide them with a little more guidance and training to get them used to using nest boxes. If possible, purchase pullets that are expected to reach 18 weeks of age sometime in spring or early summer, which is the natural seasons for poultry to come into lay.
Adult hens can also be a great option. Some people purchase point-of-lay hens, which are hens that have completed one laying cycle on a commercial production and are ready for retirement. These birds tend to be genetically good egg producers but may not be a social as you would like since they weren’t raised interacting with many people.
The main risk with getting or purchasing adult birds is that you may not always know how old they are. Most hens don’t start showing obvious physical signs of aging until they are quite old. Unless the person you are getting them from has good records of when they hatched, you may be getting older birds than you bargained for.