[Laurieston]

Our first, incubated, chicks are now 4 months old and we are ready to give away all excess cockerals.  Of 10 eggs set we hatched 9, one dead-in-shell, and ended up with 4 cockerals and 5 hens.  7 are Wellsummers, including 3 of the cockerals.  The other two are the poultry equivalent to Heinz-57s.  So, we have 3 Wellsummer cockerals and one rather fancy looking black with lots of grey/silver feathers.  We have arranged homes for all, but are not sure which to keep for ourselves.

All 9 share a father and the Wellsummers possibly mothers too.  This means that the Wellsummer cockerals might be full blood-brothers to some of the hens (as well as certainly half-siblings to the others).  Does this matter much and should this affect our choice of which to keep?

Other possible influencing factors:

the Wellsummers cockerals are generally larger than the black one.
we are not planning to breed much between these Wellsummers.
we are not too bothered about having a pure-breed.
the Wellsummer cockerals are better looking that the black one and possibly friendlier too.
I have seen at least on of the Wellsummers doing his thing, but not the black one (is their a way of knowing if he is fertile before candleing one of his (?) eggs?

One other question. It has been pretty cold where we are, I measured -6.8 degrees centigrade in their house.  Do I need to heat it when it reaches this low?

Thanks in advance for thoughts and experiences,

Laurieston.

[harry]

if they are fully feathered no heat required, mine perch outside all winter in minus temps... if you want a meat bird kee[ the biggest cockeral, i would keep the biggest anywway.

[SuzyJ]

We don't heat our hen house at all and it's been below -22 here recently. We do find that the egg production drops off in extreme weather and also does the same in summer when it's 35 degrees C plus. 

In the winter we do make sure the chickens have plenty of straw to scratch around in, some of our bantams are sharing the barn with our donkey and love to sleep on her back!

[langdon]

well done nice birds there
we have a wellsummer cockerel named eddie.
just one question, we were told by some that it is to early to start to hatch eggs,
well we are really keen to get cracking ourselves!!!!!!
going by you it seem ok to do so?
can we go ahead? we live in pembrokeshire its still a little cold,
but we thought we could do it in the house
will app any advice
hope all goes well for ye 

[Roxy]

Langdon, I assume when you say do it in the house, you have an incubator - and are not sitting a broody hen in the house?!!  So long as you have a brooder, and a heat lamp, which you can keep indoors, you can hatch eggs now.  By the time the chicks are old enough to go outside, the weather will have warmed up (hopefully).

I use broody bantams, so they usually go broody round about Easter, and I will sit them on eggs then.  So, I cannot start until the banties go broody, whenever that will be!!

[langdon]

ta roxy, yes thats what i meant!!
the kids have been asking for so long 'dad when can we have  chicks'
will let you know how we get on

[SuzyJ]

Langdon, I assume when you say do it in the house, you have an incubator - and are not sitting a broody hen in the house?!!  So long as you have a brooder, and a heat lamp, which you can keep indoors, you can hatch eggs now.  By the time the chicks are old enough to go outside, the weather will have warmed up (hopefully).

I use broody bantams, so they usually go broody round about Easter, and I will sit them on eggs then.  So, I cannot start until the banties go broody, whenever that will be!!

We didn't have much luck last year with broody chickens but have been told that bantams can be very good at sitting on eggs - is that true? We have quite a few young bantam hens running about as they were given to us by a neighbour and if it's true would rather they were sitting on eggs so that our layers would keep on producing as normal