Why I will ALWAYS Have Roosters in My Flock

all right this is SSL family dad was simple sustainable living and today I'm going to talk about roosters [Music] so ever since we got chickens like actually spend what four or five six years ago in our little suburban homestead we started off with that little flock of six eisah Browns the question has always been should we have roosters should we not have roosters what do you need to be careful with what's the point of having a rooster and so I hopefully can answer some of those questions if you're looking to get chickens this year so let me take you into our breeding flock over here and show you the barn rocker rooster that we have and what are they good for all right so we've got the old suburban chicken coop here still working great automatic theater still working awesome and this has become kind of our personal flock of chickens there are seven barred rock hens in here as well as one barred rock rooster who you'll see right here the bigger guy and then we have Bloody Mary the the famous Bloody Mary I have old series on that chicken she was one of our original ice around but we have the rooster here Johnny who is actually kind of a newer addition he was given to us and it worked out perfectly because we needed a rooster for our body rocks here we plan on having a sustainable operation here in the ssl family farm where we will breed our own chickens each year and we will continue to you know increase our flock for meat and for eggs so why get a rooster well number one if you are going to do any type of free-range or open air type flock where the chickens will be out and open to birds of prey and other types of things like this here this is a 40 foot by 40 foot area that the chickens free-range in they get in the summertime about 50 to 75% of their nutrients from this this this pan or this yard from scratching and eating the vegetation that grows in here but they are open to hawks and other types of prey that can swoop down they do have some cover from this tree but they definitely could fall victim to prey what a rooster does is a rooster will identify a danger to the flock and they will alert the hens they will then all run for cover I it's hard to get video of this happening hopefully I could get some down the road but I have seen it happen many times a bird will fly over and whether it's a hawk or not if it looks like one that the rooster will give a certain call and all the hens will run for cover and they will be protected that way so the roosters do protect the flock I have heard that a rooster will also fend off a you know smaller predators maybe rats and weasels and other types things like that they do have Spurs and they they can get aggressive roosters can fight I have never witnessed this myself but the point is is that roosters do provide protection especially in a free-ranging flock you generally would want to have at least one rooster for every six to nine hens maybe ten at the most and the roosters will provide production the hens will actually kind of stay with that rooster generally and and stay together for that protection so just a bonus tip biggest question I got asked in previous videos was do you need a rooster for your chickens to lay eggs the answer is no chickens will always lay eggs hens will always lay eggs and when they come to age whether there is a rooster present or not but in this case what we're doing here is we're going to be breeding these chickens so in order to have a fertilized egg you have to have a rooster so number reason number two to have a roosters if you want to incubate eggs down the road you need to have rooster and flock generally a rooster one rooster again can service between six to ten six to nine hens as far as breeding is concerned and so this flock here we plan to hopefully have a lot fertilized eggs we're incubating all of these eggs that we get each day about five two to seven eggs a day so and that is reason number two to have Richards if you want to do any type of breeding now I will also say I did not know this was true but this year this was proven to us these chickens were not laying here this winter they had didn't have any supplemental light or anything like that so they were really slow they slowed way down in the winter with they're laying as soon as we got this rooster they all started laying I don't know if that's true with a rooster that's constantly with the hens but it seems when you add a rooster to the hens it it gets their their cycle going again and it's sure I mean it was like two days later we got that new rooster in there and they were all laying so it did make a difference for us with how well they laid in the shorter daylight hours reason number three if you want to raise a dual-purpose flock you will want to have some roosters roosters are much bigger as you can see here the oyster versus the other hands those hens are pretty small by rocks are still considered a dual-purpose bird they do grow big enough to get decent amount of meat out of but especially these guys these guys can get up to six seven pounds even bigger and that can be pretty pretty worthwhile when it comes to meat production but aren't roosters too noisy well they are noisy and they they crow they it's it's a beautiful thing I love it in fact it's one of the reasons that we love to have roosters here of course we are out in the country and it doesn't matter if we get roosters crowing no one cares around here everybody has chickens or animals of some sort if you live in the city or a subdivision you have a small flock that might not be allowed it might not be something that your neighbors would want so you'd have to consider that when you're getting a small flock or in a small city or suburban setting Brewster's do crawl they crawl in the morning very early they crawl sometimes during the day we have lots of roosters running around here and they seem to occur all the time they talk to each other at almost they crawl in there danger they crawl when it's nighttime and sometimes I don't know why they grow so they are a little bit noisy and that's something you need to consider one of the questions that I often get asked is are these roosters or are roosters aggressive well it really depends on the breed it depends on their conditions and it depends on the person yeah we have been training and teaching these roosters hopefully from a younger age that we are in charge are they gonna attack you I know some people are petrified of roosters well I would say the the general answer is no roosters are not aggressive they're not going to hurt anybody however there are certain breeds in certain conditions where roosters will flux on you they will maybe jump at you or other things like that but they are a pretty small birds so it's not like you can't just smack him down they really keep the peace they prevent I don't know I'll put the link in the description to the series on Bloody Mary she's injured actually from an injury she got while free-range er stuck in a fence in her leg but she got picked on dramatically with the other five Lisa Browns that we had that is a breeds thing Lisa Browns tend to do that however the Roosters will jump right in the middle of these hens these hens will pick at each other if they're if there's no rooster in the flock and they're in small conditions especially in the wintertime and things like that they start to peck at each other they start to pick at each other the Roosters they they not only protect the hens from outside predators and dangers they also protect them from each other they really take care of these hens these hens start to jump at each other and flex at each other and those roosters come flying over and they'll get right in the middle of them or they'll they'll kind of pack them on the head and put them down you know push them down and push them out of the way and they they they are the peacekeepers whether you decide to get rooster and your flock or not chickens are awesome to have we they're our favorite farm or homestead animal by far they they are the most useful animals and I something I feel everybody should have honestly they produce food for you they are very friendly they're they're fun to just kind of be and hang out with and watch and feed and take care of they they're very easy to keep and if you have a rooster in your flock it's kind of a well-rounded balanced little ecosystems they all take care of each other certain breeds of of hens you know if you have a rooster I know some of the law for f---ing Tain's and things like that they'll go what's called broody which means that if you have a rooster in the flock they will raise their own chicks naturally they will sit on the fertilized eggs certain times of the year and they will hatch out you know a little a little nest of birds so we have not experienced out here we don't have a lot of those types of birds but it is it is neat and it's nice to see them you know being producing in a natural way some of these birds that have been you know modified and and bred they you know some of the meat birds and things like that you know that they can't walk by the time they're you know a certain age that's just not for me so hopefully this helped you out in in some small or large way we love having our roosters here and if it's allowed in your suburban or city setting I would recommend having a rooster in any flock that you have if you have to have only hens that's fine of course but roosters really really around things and make things nice so as always guys thumbs up on the video if you found this information useful throw your comments down below what do you think what do you guys think of having roosters or not having roosters I think that worth it or not I'd love to hear from you guys so as always thanks for watching have a good one [Music]

Channel: SSLFamilyDad

Views: 1,778,925

Keywords: ssldad, ssl, dad, gardening, farming, farm, simple, diy, michigan, suburban, living, sustainable, sustainability, family, roosters, barred rock, plymouth rock, chickens, coop, raising chickens, isa brown, city, country, crowing, loud, noisy, are roosters noisy?, do you need a rooster for eggs?, eggs, laying, hens, aggressive, fighting, protection, flock, free range, run, tsc, family farm and home

Id: BP2ibB2_XOk

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 05 2018