Barred Rock

I love my barred rock Layla! She has always been my best egg layer and the top hen in my flock. She is always willing to try new things, and is the first to try a new or unusual treat. She is very friendly and outgoing, and is not scared of me at all. One con about my barred rock is that when I introduced new younger chickens or when one of my chickens was injured, she was the most aggressive towards them and picks on them, but that is just a part of being the top hen. I have since trained her not to peck and don't have a problem with her anymore. Overall, she is a great bird!

My barred rocks are amazing layers. They need to be handled quite early or else they are hard to handle.
They are very smart and lay an egg every day. They also lay HUGE eggs, sometimes with double yolks.
They come when I shake my mealworm container!!
They are very, very hardy birds and are perfectly happy in the cold.
I think barred rocks are a GREAT breed and hope that others enjoy then too!
~Chick

I love Barred Rocks they are one of my favorite dual purpose breeds. If you are looking for LARGE brown eggs then look no further.

They are a beautiful heritage breed, a great layer, They are very smart, my girls always come when i call them when they are free ranging. They eat right out of my hand. Will talk back to me. Very talkative girls. Love attention Do well in the cold weather with their heavy bodies and heavy feathers as well. I have nothing but good to say about them.

I have 10 barred rock hens and 2 barred rock roosters and absolutely love them. They are very friendly with the young kids we have around here often, they lay tons of large brown eggs, and lay them all winter long. They are pretty birds that will come right up and visit with you. I talk to the girls and they talk right back, sometimes coming over to my lawn chair and hopping up on my lap. They are very good foragers and do a great job of picking bugs around the yard. Also they have done very well with taking care of my garden snakes that scare the hell out of me every time I see them. The roosters are very good breeders, not too rough on the girls. They do a great job of watching for predators, and will fight with just about anything that tries to go after the girls. Had one poor hawk try and get one of the girls this fall and the poor thing got one heck of a whooping from my two big roosters. The Roosters have never been aggressive or mean towards any of the kids or my wife and I. I have a golden retriever that likes to lay out with the hens in the yard and the roosters pay him no mind.

Great birds! Have 4 right now. I get a constant supply of eggs in the summer! I will get 4 eggs a day usually. I had one male that was about 5 months old, but he got very aggressive and mean; territorial. We unfortunately had to get rid of him. I have 3 Buff Orpington chicks that are about 8 weeks old, and after reading other reviews I am not sure how well their integration is going to be with these bossy rocks! But, overall a great chicken!

The barred rock will be one of the later hens to start laying. When they do start you will be pleased with the egg production. They are moderately broody and really great mothers at raising other hens eggs. They are easy to free range and keep close to cover and prefer to forage inside of when available. They seem to want to keep close to other chickens when free ranging for safety. A great addition to any flock. Not that good as a pet.

I got 4 Barred Rock chicks my second year of keeping chickens. 2 were very sweet until they died of unknown causes as chicks. the two remaining grew up together with 2 Australorps. One (named Fluffy Feathers, Feather for short) is still alive, rather mean but a decent layer and good buddies with the one Australorp I have left. The other (Daredevil, rather adventurous as a chick) was very sweet, sitting in my lap all the time(the pecking at sequins was annoying though), tolerant of the hen who picked on her (poor thing, she was the lowest in the peck order) and one of the best layers until killed by a skunk.
This year, I ended up with both the Barred Rocks I got being roosters. One is your typical bossy boy (but he will sit on my lap occasionally), but the dominant rooster is very good, protecting the Rhode Island Reds I have and being sort of a father to my fall chicks. (those RIRs really love him)
I like their personality and laying, so i think I just have a bad hen. I highly recommend them to any new chicken keeper, for meat or eggs.

This is Thelma I have only had her and Louise for 2 weeks, they were sold to me as laying hens, but they have not laid yet. I will just have to be patient. They are very friendly, a little bossy but found there place as the middle 2 in the pecking order among the 4 hens that I have.

These are some really nice birds! The barring is lovely and they have a quiet disposition! We have had both a pullet and a cockerel. The cockerel was a little aggressive toward the girls but he wasn't very aggressive. The pullet was more of a quiet girl than her flock-mates and enjoyed pets every now and then. The girls and boys are also easy to tell apart because the ales have lighter barring them the females. I have also heard they are a cold-hardy breed. Over all very kind, nice chickens!

I have a mixed flock with 6 different breeds and these are my absolute favorite! We have two and they are the friendliest birds of all. They like to interact with us and both of them let us handle them a lot more easily than our other birds. They make tasty eggs and awesome pets, but can be a bit obnoxious at times because they like to cuddle. We will definitely be getting more of these in the future!

We have a Barred Rock in our flock. Her name is Donut, and she's a very pretty bird. She just loves to get treats, and when she sees me she'll run as fast as she possibly can to reach me first, and will then cock her head and look at me with just one eye. She's a beauty, but she doesn't like to be held.

Here's beautiful Donut:

We added three 8 week old Barred Rock gals to our flock of 6 GL Wyandottes (12 weeks old, 5 hens and one roo); took our time and introduced them slowly over the course of a month. The Barred Rocks are still very cautious of the older birds and spend a fair amount of time on perches above the Wyandottes in the run unless we let them out to free range, in which case the three of them hang out together near the house while the Wyandottes wander to several places in a separate group. When they are in the run I make sure there is a feeder near the perches they can access without the Wyandottes running them off (and yes, we call that the Barred Rock Cafe....). Despite the fact that the Wyandottes were raised by me from day one, the BR's are much tamer and more docile, and the Wyandottes are thugs in a group and rather shy of being handled individually. The BR's are just starting to lay now and we're still getting tiny eggs (compared to the Wyandottes HUGE creations), but overall I like the BR's very much. Glad to have added them to the group. Nice color contrast to the Wyandottes as well. Happy to report that overall I'm happy with the whole flock and they are doing well.

I train this breed of chicken to do tricks. Luna, my best trained hen, knows her name! I think that this breed is pretty smart (not every chicken is super smart). Four out of four of the barred rocks I own pay attention pretty well. Luna and april are pretty pecked up now; their feathers are not looking their best. Oh well! So, anyways, this breed is a very nice breed. Get them!!!

We got two barred rock chicks with eight other breeds (silkies, a buff orpington, rhode island reds, a light brahma, and a wyandotte) to add to our small flock of three older hens. Both barred rocks turned out to be hens. One is much larger than the other, but they are both sweet and good with people. They don't like to be held very much, but they are curious. They are also beautiful birds. I haven't noticed them being bossy and they are in the middle of the pecking order with one very old, grizzled black sex hen link at the top!

I have a mixed flock of 5 1/2 month old chickens. They are the first chickens Ive ever had. In our flock of six, two are Barred Rock. We named them Francine and Starr. Both of our Barred Rock are ve ry sweet and docile birds. They are also the most curious in the whole flock. They have to know what's going on at all times! Francine seems to be the leader of the flock, though I don't think she realizes it. Everywhere she goes, they all follow. And she and Starr have never shown a mean side at all. I'm looking forward to when they start laying, which should be very soon! Francine runs to me as soon as she hears my voice.The picture is of Francine.

i loved my barred rocks!!...they talked to me alot, jumped up in my lap and loved being cuddled...there was only one who didn't want to be caught, but she would jump in my lap if it was her idea!...endured the long, cold winter very well...some frost-bite the first winter, but left the top vents on the coop open last winter and there was no frost-bite to any of their body parts....laid well until they clearly aged...this is a breed full of great personalities that kept us in eggs and always gave us some behavior that kept us laughing !!

This is my first time with a Barred Rock and I think they are great! I am in love with the colors they have and how their feathers are so fluffy. Sometimes we can be a little aggressive when it comes to food, but this can be do to age, clout and well hungry like any other animal.

I had Barred Rocks as my first ever 4-H birds. I thought they looked like zebras and was in love (of course that was all I cared about then)! They were fabulous for show (3rd in pullet class), great layers, and really easy to fall in love with! HIGHLY HIGHLY RECCOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN NEW TO BIRDS!

We have had a pullet and a cockerel, the pullet was a quiet girl but the rooster was sometimes bossey to the girls, also very heat and cold hardy, overall great breed!