Has anyone breed RHODE ISLAND RED ROO with RHODE ISLAND WHITE HENS?

I started this project last year after reading up a little on the ISA Browns.
I know I can't produce the "TRUE" ISA Browns but this looks like a good project.


I ordered about 16 RIW hens, 30 RIR hens along with 5 roos from ea breed last year.

The laying habits of the two breeds are as follows:

Out of 16 RIW hens I gather average of 14 eggs/day
Out of 30 RIR hens I gather 26 eggs/day average.


I plan to cross the RIR rooster with the RIW hens. Both breeds seem to be great layers and i'm hoping this will give me a good sex-link.

Anyone else done this?

MIKE555444 said:

I started this project last year after reading up a little on the ISA Browns.
I know I can't produce the "TRUE" ISA Browns but this looks like a good project.


I ordered about 16 RIW hens, 30 RIR hens along with 5 roos from ea breed last year.

The laying habits of the two breeds are as follows:

Out of 16 RIW hens I gather average of 14 eggs/day
Out of 30 RIR hens I gather 26 eggs/day average.


I plan to cross the RIR rooster with the RIW hens. Both breeds seem to be great layers and i'm hoping this will give me a good sex-link.

Anyone else done this?

Click to expand...

The ISA has more than 2 breeds in it's background.
They had closer to 8 pure bred breeds.



Chris

Yea... apparently it secret

It is very easy to make production red sex links birds. As you already know, put a productive strain red (gold) over a productive strain white (silver) and ta da. Will they actually be Strain #374 yada yada from such a such poultry genetics firm? No, but nonetheless.

Ditto with black sex links. Anyone can make them. The problem I see in it is the costs. Maintaining two parent breeding lines just to make layers has costs involved. Feed isn't getting any cheaper. With production strains so readily available, it just seems more stream lined to just keep one and done. Shrug. Just thinking out loud.

You’re right. You cannot recreate the ISA browns. There is a lot more into them than just egg laying. They are fairly small in size so they are pretty efficient at converting feed into eggs instead of having to use some of that for big body maintenance. They lay fairly large eggs, don’t go broody much at all, and several other things. They are as specialized in their own way as the broilers.

Meyer Hatchery does what you are talking about, RIR rooster over RIW hens. They are not true RIW hens since the comb is single instead of rose but are as close as you are likely to get with a hatchery chicken. You can go to their site and look at their Gold Buffs. I just went to their site. They’ve changed it a bit. A couple of years ago when I got Golden Buff roosters from them they claimed they were crosses between RIR roosters and RIW hens. I did not see that claim this time. The photo of the roosters looked the same as what I got. Here’s what some of my roosters from Meyer looked like.



I’m not going to guarantee you that every RIW hen in the world has the silver gene that they need to make the red sex link chicks. Silver by itself won’t give you a solid white chicken. They need either dominant white or recessive white for that. Obviously Meyer’s have the silver and work to make sex links. It’s certainly possible yours do. Even if you don’t get sex links, you still should get some good egg layers out of those chicks.

There is no genetic link between them being sex links and egg laying ability. The good egg laying ability comes from their parents being good egg layers. The only thing them being sex links does is that you can tell sex at hatch.

Good luck with it. It should be a fun project.

You're trying to produce a AKA Cinnamon Queen or Golden Sex Link. To produce this you must have the Rhode Island Red rooster mated it to the Rhode Island White hens. The trick lies in your white hens weather they are carrying the silver gene or the white recessive gene? Knowing that the Rhode Island white was created from the White Rock and why the hatcheries have single comb Rhode Island and white is probably a better chance that the DNA for recessive for silver is tied to the single comb on its allele of same strand of DNA. Thus probably easier to find the silver gene to produce the Cinnamon Queens from Hatchery Rhode Island White with the single comb! The hen should come out red and the rooster should come out yellow at hatching.