I will be watching this thread because I am soon to mess up my perfect ratio. I am saying "perfect" because the two roos are real buddies and take care of 17 hens. They hang around together and are constantly on call when a hen is in distress. They all free range. I also have three roos and one hen who aren't mature yet but the roos are starting to crow.

That will mess up the ratio, I think but then we also have 50 little four week old pullets that won't be joining the flock until November. I just hope the 5 roosters will play nice until the 50 new girls are ready! (This is all getting so confusing!)

I'm curious too. I have eight 9-week old polish tophats, and 4-5 of these seem to be developing saddle feathers, uh oh.

I think I've read that 1 to 8 is the recommended ratio but when I had 2 roosters and 16 hens it was too much for the girls and I had to get rid of one roo. Kinda depends on the size of their yard and the personality of the roos, but I'm thinking somewhere between 1:12 or 1:16 is better for me.

As for the noise level, my experience is that the crowing gets louder as the roos get bigger.

roo to hen ratio will depend on the goals of the breeder/keeper. practically, 1 roo should be enuff for a general backyard flock; use him on the best 5 fema;les for the next years offspring crop. I keep 1 roo per 5 hens and a few extras incase of a death or sterility problem. Some breeds are more sexually active than others and some breeds have naturally lower fertility, as most rosecombed breeds may be. Too many roos per hen can cause hen damage and lowered production.

Sheila, I guess by now you have got the idea that the answer to how many roos is... it depends. What I'd do in your situation is cull back to four and then see what happens. If everyone is healthy, happy and not getting torn up - and the crowing is not a problem - let the extra roos stay. If a problem results you can deal with it then, knowing you tried to give them a chance.

Thanks for the responses, I think I will be pushing it with my current ratio but hope to thin a few out soon and like you say Maggie see how things go.

Yesterday I let all the chickens free range together (my big girls have been separated and penned together with only an open window inside the coop connecting the two flocks together. Oddly enough they really didn't venture over to each others side.

Yesterday because it was so hot I only opened the new chickens door to coax the big girls through the window and out to free range in the backyard and stay cooler in the deep shade. Well there was some serious sparring going on, my big girls were taking on the roo's at their own game!

My other hope is that with this mixing of chickens and having them all free rangee the big girls might forget about picking at each others feathers! I just hope it doesn't back fire on me.

-Sheila

Great question. I have been wondering something similar. We have a ratio of 1 rooster to 6 hens and then a bantam rooster with two hens. I have seen the big rooster mate with the bigger bantamÂI think she may be a cross between a full size and a bantam. We had two roosters (this was not intendedÂwhen we got the one rooster we thought he was a she) but had to take out one as the hens were in rough shape.
Now we have 24 7- week old chickens, about half of them male. Our intention was to keep the females for laying and use most of the males for meat. IÂd like to keep one or even two of these young males for roosters but that would make 3 roosters (4 counting the bantam) to 18 hens. IÂm wondering if the roosters will mate with those outside their original group or do roosters have "harems".
Another possibility is to kill the rooster we have (heÂs been aggressive to me) and let one or two roosters of the new batch take over.
My goal: peace and harmony in the chicken yard.
Question: what is considered a lot of crowing?Âours has been going at a rate of about 5-6 cock-a-doodle-doÂs per minute for the last couple of hours.

Claraserena, that amount of crowing personally I would consider a lot. Mine tend to go in spurts like 6-9 a.m. and then quiet until afternoon. Then early evening, right now it's quiet and nice. The one roo that bothers me the most is a white americana, he's hyper and crows a high pitched screech....I won't miss him at all since he is also the more aggressive guy of the bunch. Some of the others are not as ear pearcing like my welsummer boys.

My black Marans were/are the loudest, probably also the biggest, I had planned on keeping them for breeding but our largest one boomer turned out to get too aggressive and VERY loud, it was sad to see him go. Choosing which roo's to stay is very hard, I don't like it one bit, it makes it easier when they turn mean but not all of them do.

-Sheila