Yeah, my brabanters are laying -- and one is trying to go broody, even though they're supposedly a non-broody breed. Unfortunately, the girls are in a mixed flock right now. I GOTTA get those pens built!
I ordered 5 cockerels from Ideal this past spring. I only thought one of them was worth breeding -- and of course that one died this summer! I think I'll probably order 5 more this coming spring, and see if I get anything worthwhile. We Shall See!
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Yes, that's a cream brabanter roo. Ideally he should have much smaller and/or hidden wattles, but big wattles seem to be a common problem in the breed!
There's a really nice pic of a white brabanter roo's head, here:
http://bkuclub.net/
Go to "brabanters", then click on "wit" (white). It's all in Dutch, but there's several nice pics of the different color varieties.
ETA: there's another good pic of a brabanter roo face here...
I've got a few extra hens, but you probably don't want to pay for shipping that far!
That "Big W Ranch" whose pictures I found was in Washington, you might google for them....
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Speaking of huge wattles.....if you want to see some huge wattles on both gold and cream brabanters, look here:
http://www.nantahala-farm.com/chicken-brabanter-s.shtml
That's where I bought my first brabanters from -- before I knew any better. I selected out youngsters that were...
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Hmmmm. This gets so confusing. That pic is from a "Big W Ranch", with brabanters and spitzhaubens amongst others....I guess there's more "W Ranch" names out there than you might think!
Hiya Carla --
I have heard speculation that cream brabanters may be the descendants of golds crossed with spitzes -- and given the tendency of the roos to have wattles, I wouldn't be all that surprised. Nonetheless, I like the contrast of the cream with the black spangles, so that's the color...
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Well the description says beards and the pics showed no wattles...........makes me wonder where they are getting the wattled version from?
Oh cmon. There should be no surprise that a hatchery ends up producing imperfect birds. It's just a matter of insufficient culling and overproduction.
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Depends on your definition of "aggressiveness". My girls are hell on bare legs. They are absolutely certain that you are covered in tasty bugs, and they intend to peck off every one of them!
I'm definitely in the beard-over-wattles camp. I don't care if the cock has wattles buried...
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How do you mean half bearded?
And yup, those pics are of my keeper pullets. I bought 15 in the spring, and I'll use about six of those for breeding next year.
With my very limited experience, it seems to me that reasonably good brabanter roos are harder to come by than reasonable brabanter pullets. I got 20 chicks this spring -- 15 pullets and 5 cockerels. But I wasn't really impressed with ANY of the cockerels. I'm going to use one of them, but only...