The Plymouth Rock Breeders thread

[Yard full o' rocks]

Hello,

I wanted to introduce myself. I'm Caleb Englin from South Dakota. I am fairly new to poultry but have been learning everyday from reading forums like this or in my everyday experiences.

I started a few years ago with barred rocks from a Guy Roy strain. The a couple years ago I got some chicks from Jeremy Woepple and have been improving them. I struggle with what to cull for and what to "live with" I can't stand ugly headed poultry or bad tails so that has been what I have been working on. It's difficult with the barreds due to their slow feathering.

I added partridge rocks that Don Ryan (white Wyandotte breeder) had been working on. He said one hen came from Joel Gillman and I'm not sure of the rest.

Last year I added some white rocks from Jeremy again and a Gillman hen that I picked up along the way.

Below are a couple white pullets and a partridge pullet that I raised this year. I am new to this so any suggestions or critiques would be helpful?

Anyway, here they are.

This is a solid woepple female


This is a woepple x Gillman female. I like her the best, she the biggest, widest skilled female I have. I would like to see her wider coming out of her tail and her comb isn't perfect.


Here is a partridge pullet. I like her length of back and tail. She's decent headed, couple be darker in color and wider tailed, she's not holding her tail up but she usually isn't bad at that. Apparently didn't want to show off.


This is a 3/4 woepple 1/4 Roy barred pullet. Her tail is still coming in but I like her.

Like I said this is how I see the birds and I am still learning. Any comments would be great.

Thanks for looking and look forward to keeping up in plymouth rocks

Caleb

Caleb

Welcome to the wonderful and overwhelming hobby of raising LF Rocks. Joe and Fred have certainly said a mouthful already and to that I can't add much.

One thing I did notice was you said you raised about 200 chicks total, so I'm assuming roughly 70 of each variety. How are you set up for space? I raise LF Columbian Rocks and the reason for my question is this....in my first 3 seasons of breeding this variety, I would hatch 150-175 chicks/yr....JUST Columbians, to keep 5-6. The variety was in that bad a shape and it took that many to see real improvement.

Keeping multiple varieties will definitely require a lot of space. Just a thought here....the whites (Woepell and many others) are in pretty good shape and you can always get good quality ones IF NEED BE, the next variety in decent shape would be the barreds, same story. However, the partridge are in nearly as bad a shape as the Columbians. SO, what if you took on a plan to raise only a few barred and a few whites each yr, but focused your time/energy/space/attention to the partridge. Raise a BUNCH and cull heavily

What you would learn with the partridge could be easily transitioned to the other varieties when you are ready....I just hate to see you get started and become overwhelmed in a very short period of time and that is EASY to do with multiple breeds or varieties.

BTW - I don't know much about Reds, but I think crossing a Red to the Partridge would be a major mistake....I think you can fix them using Rocks

Best of luck,

Scott
aka Yard Full o' Rocks



This way, you could keep what you have going, but focus in one area

 

[ckenglin]

Thank you guys.

Scott, I have seen some pictures of your columbians. They look pretty good to me!

Your plan sounds reasonable. After some thinking time in a combine the past couple days, I do have a lot going on.

I hatched out roughly 30 whites, and 30 partridge. The partridge were older hens as was one of the whites. And I'm still learning my sportsmans incubator so I didn't get as many as I would have hoped. The remainder were barreds. I culled those birds fairly hard early, Atleast the males, and again as they developed more. I'm down to 3 white pullets, 5 barred pullets and 4 partridge pullets. I kept 2 white hens, 4 barred hens and 3 partridge hens. 3 white males, I have not fully culled the barreds or partridge males yet so that is undetermined.

Space wise I have 2 buildings, a 12x16 "breeder barn" with various pens and cages for individual matings/pairs/trios/groups/chicks...I will get some pictures and post maybe tomorrow if time allows. The other building is a 16x16 "cold barn" where i cycle hens out as I am done hatching from them for the season and I use that as my summer barn as well. The breeder barn has 2 runs, one is 20x40 roughly and the other is 50x60 roughly all opened up. The mature stock has run of the farm during summer. Once the birds are old enough I separate the pullets from the cockerels. The pullets I took to my sheep barn to a 12x20 ft pen for a while. It seemed like I was always moving birds around.

What I like about birds is that you can get a lot out of few. Other species must envy them. We have been doing a bit of ET work in our cattle and sheep operations the past couple year on our elite females. And everytime I start setting up the donors I think, this is so much easier in chickens. There are no drugs to superovulate them, no timed breeding, no having to haul the female somewhere to have the embryos flushed out, freezing them, thawing, and having recips lined up to put the embryos in and hoping they are correct in their cycle and that they take the egg. Oh and did I forget dealing with hormone enraged cattle that would more or less want to smash you into a fence rather than get stuck with a needle for the 2nd time that day. Chickens you just feed, breed, wait, and hope.

Thanks again

Caleb

 

[Findtex]

Had to post this pic for you Fred. 2 chock men.

 

[emenheiser]

I didn't start breeding poultry to be told I can't do something. I do expect to hear negative comments, without them how can I better my birds. Do I think they are perfect...absolutely not, compared to the parent stock I feel they are better. And I take that as an achievement even if it is myself celebrating. What I'm looking for is advise to better them. Not to be told to throw out 2 varieties that I have already put time and effort into. I see good in all those birds. I was hoping others would note good things as well. Otherwise it tells me they are not worth messing with and I should give up.

Caleb, interesting to hear your livestock background. I sensed that you had some stock sense in your first post and therefore didn't BS you in my reply. One of the great things about chickens in comparison to cattle or sheep is that you can make a huge amount of progress in a short amount of time. It also means that everyone else can, and so if you are at all interested in competition, it means that the little details are critically important. And as easy as it is to make quick progress, it's even easier to screw up and go the wrong direction.

It feels good to look at a few traits and get a sense of accomplishment because a young bird is better than its parents, but in the big picture, that bird is really only an improvement if there were no backward steps in any other traits. And that very seldom happens. So many of the important traits in any breeding venture are antagonistic, and it takes a lot of experience to learn to manage that. In cattle breeding, an individual animal, its pedigree, etc. are so much more important. In poultry, you quickly realize that you are managing populations more so than individuals. You'll figure out how and why your 'best" young birds don't necessarily come from the "best" parents, and how all of the traits you are managing are like alternating pistons....they all have to be right for the engine to hum. It's too narrow in focus to look at linear progress in a few traits, because it won't be but a few years until you realize the linear decline in other traits that matter.

The more breeds and varieties you try to work with, the less likely you are to be able to hatch and raise the numbers you need to be able to understand all of the intricacies. You already need to hatch more than "normal" because the varieties you described are a combination of several strains. It's challenging enough to fully see what is happening in your line when you start with one variety from one source. Scott's advice to concentrate on the least common variety is wise, but even as established as whites and barreds are, you'll quickly realize that "coasting" by only hatching a few doesn't work out very long. Particularly if you lack the background to wrap around everything you need to consider. Find a good mentor who will spend time looking through your birds with you in person, because the answers you really need aren't available through an internet forum.

 

[desertmarcy]

I am sure having a hard time this year with my Barred Rocks. Today, after coming home from a poultry meeting, I found one of the three remaining cockerels huddled by the fence with his head and upper neck completely bloodied down to the meat. He was only in with 2 others in a large 10' X 17' pen. Either the other two ganged up on him or the Black Copper Marans pullets in the pen next to them reached through the chain link and picked him bloody. No way to know. I isolated him and covered his bare areas liberally with Blue Kote. His face is swollen. I don't know if he will make it or not. Anything else I can/should do? I guess I'd better take the 2 remaining cockerels and put them each in their own pen. I am afraid to keep them together now. Is it possible a young male would allow himself to get picked through a chain link fence and not move away? It seems so bizarre. I had all 33 cockerels together until the predator attack. I had moved the 3 that escaped in with the pullets and just yesterday moved all the pullets in the larger pen where the cockerels were attacked (having since shored up the outer fence to hopefully prevent further dig-ins). So these 3 were by themselves together for the first time, really. Maybe that's what caused the problem, the rapid changes? The Marans can be rather aggressive as well but they could only get at him if he sat by the fence and didn't move away.

 

[Happy Chooks]

I am sure having a hard time this year with my Barred Rocks. Today, after coming home from a poultry meeting, I found one of the three remaining cockerels huddled by the fence with his head and upper neck completely bloodied down to the meat. He was only in with 2 others in a large 10' X 17' pen. Either the other two ganged up on him or the Black Copper Marans pullets in the pen next to them reached through the chain link and picked him bloody. No way to know. I isolated him and covered his bare areas liberally with Blue Kote. His face is swollen. I don't know if he will make it or not. Anything else I can/should do? I guess I'd better take the 2 remaining cockerels and put them each in their own pen. I am afraid to keep them together now. Is it possible a young male would allow himself to get picked through a chain link fence and not move away? It seems so bizarre. I had all 33 cockerels together until the predator attack. I had moved the 3 that escaped in with the pullets and just yesterday moved all the pullets in the larger pen where the cockerels were attacked (having since shored up the outer fence to hopefully prevent further dig-ins). So these 3 were by themselves together for the first time, really. Maybe that's what caused the problem, the rapid changes? The Marans can be rather aggressive as well but they could only get at him if he sat by the fence and didn't move away.

You can give him 1/4 aspirin crushed up in 1 cup of water for pain. He's probably in shock. If you have access to Vetericyn wound care spray, I'd use that too - it's amazing stuff. They can heal from some awful wounds. Good luck.

 

[desertmarcy]

You can give him 1/4 aspirin crushed up in 1 cup of water for pain. He's probably in shock. If you have access to Vetericyn wound care spray, I'd use that too - it's amazing stuff. They can heal from some awful wounds. Good luck.

He was still alive and standing this morning. I gave him a partial baby aspirin, some water with Red Cell in it, and 4-5 small globs of Nutrical. I know chickens can bounce back from some amazing injuries. Still nothing in my traps but there was a bobcat wandering around the yard this morning. I was busy butchering some cull BR pullets but our helper poked his head in the door and told us there was a bobcat that just stood there and looked at him like the cat owned the place.

 

[racertomtom]

I'm embarrassed to post these pics but I might as well show everyone that experienced breeders screw up too.
I chased this hen all over the farm in an attempt to get a good picture, didn't work. This girl was the dam of the heritage project, my attempt to bring Barreds to the table in a timely fashion. She matured very quickly and has stayed a decent bird.


All the birds in the rest of the pics will be 5 months old on Halloween and have been crossed in some manner except the Columbians which are 6 months and pure. The White is also pure. These are my mad scientist pens and the white and CO were added for reference purposes.

The heritage barred pullets are out performing the whites at this age.

I'm keeping an eye on the center barred cockerel, he's already as big and meaty as any supermarket chicken. Not thrilled with his leg color but I suspect his type will be pretty good in another 7 months. The whole flock got rainy day back as soon as I spooked them with the camera.

This guy is half SP. I culled him yesterday and he was a BIG bird at less than 5 months. I'm hoping to put a little bit of that size and type on the SPs. The black birds with the silver hackles in the above pic are the females from that cross and will be used next year.

As you can see, sometimes you have to make a huge mess before you can make big progress. I culled and butchered birds all weekend (I'm tired) and still have approximately 80 birds on the ground. I'll cull again when I get my feed bill!

 

[Fred's Hens]

Hey Mr Wheeler, good to "see" you again. It's been awhile, but I see you've been very busy down in the lab, late at nights.

 

[Fentress]

This K fleshed out way ahead of the others (I only have 5). The others are starting to catch up, but I think he would have been a good meal at 20 weeks. I wish I had payed closer attention to the pullets re: rate of growth. I am understanding the importance of record keeping. Hopefully next year I can get geared up and do it the right way, So much to do. This really is a lot of work to do it properly, especially if you are relatively new to keeping chickens. The pic is at 22 weeks.