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Yes, just slightly off color white, between game eggs and leghorn color.

I acquired some dorking hatching eggs last year to put under a broody. The two hens I got have laid decently. The rooster had the makings of a jerk, he always wanted to leave his hens and go play with fire around one of the game pens, had some bucket aggression which would have eventually have...

The kindness and generosity displayed to strangers on the internet no doubt extended into many personal relationships. A life well lived leaves many sad hearts. I will miss that old rabbit.

Ok, my hens have different brood times depending on weather. I raise some in pens, and most free range in nests of their choosing. I'm going to consider my birds the representation of the wild brooding instinct, as they all go broody and are all broody raised for many many generations. Others...

My broodies are some of the broodinest. Those games really have the instinct. I've got some here with their second brood. I have been sticking my yard birds under them. I affectionately call the hatchlings Dorkingtons and Dorkdottes, that's pretty much what they are. Some of mine leave the nest...

Has anyone heard from that crazy rabbit?

I always butchered leghorns from six to 10 weeks. They grow really fast. They don't grow big, but they grow fast. A six month old leghorn has been full grown for a month or two. I have no way to prove it, but I think the extremely fast growth of the broiler chicken comes from the leghorn that is...

Sometimes forgiveness is easier to ask for than permission.

Just getting rice wet doesn't make it expand any more, or sometimes it is even less, than any other grain. For rice to reach dangerous expansion levels it needs to come close to boiling, at which point your birds have more serious issues than an expanding crop, (which is elastic to handle...

The harmful effects of rice on birds is a very persistent myth. http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/birdrice.asp

Snow birds. Always amazing to see what is possible when you leave nature alone. These are week old chicks. It's 25 out. They have mom's oil to help insulate their feathers. They have been learning to regulate their own body temperature from day one. If they get "too" cold, they only have to...

Those are some tasty looking birds. You know, you don't have to tie the legs. You can cut around the vent, then make a slit at the end of the breast to pull the guts out leaving two hole. Stick the end of the legs through the slit and out the vent hole, no string required. If you want to be fancy.

They love light bulbs.

She uses vinegar to make broth, cooks them twice, drains off and cans the broth. The smaller ones get pretty soft this way, and they do eat a lot of them, most of what's left are the bigger beef and pork bones. That is good to know though.

Here is a pic of what my meat and egg mutts flock looks like. The rooster is out of some eggs I got from a guy locally. He has some BLR and splash wyandottes. The blue hens came from the same place, dark legged pea combs, the only non wyandotte birds he has are speckled sussex and barred rocks...

Where would one find "reliably broody" cochins and dorkings? Unless your definition of reliably broody means that one in ten goes broody at a year or more old and might set on eggs til they hatch, then I haven't found any that were reliably broody.

On the foraging, I believe that that can be learned by all, but some will take it to greater lengths than others. When I started out with the first games I had, I got some from Cackle, just to see if that was something I really wanted. It was obvious that they are not quite the same as some of...

In my opinion, it is not something that can be taught. It's like sending somebody with no musical abilities to singing lessons, they will have better projection when they sing off key and out of time. Or sending someone with chronically poor reflexes to baseball camp. They will know how to stand...

She adopted the eggs, not really voluntarily. I watch all the good nesting spots, and when I see a hen getting pretty tight to her eggs, I go out at night and switch out eggs, give her partially incubated clutch to the pigs, and put something worthwhile under her. These will be next years...

Here is my first brood of the season. These are some mixture of BLR Wyandotte and Dorking with maybe a little BO and redstar thrown in. The hen is a grade asil raised feral, hatched last August. She picked out a vacant dog house, excellent spot, caught the chicks in the kennel with the dog next...