Redcaps

daniel rainey said:

Im a redcap man from the UK and after reading a fare amount about and observing more than enough pictures of the American redcaps it seems there mostly quite far off the breed standard and seem not to have the same qualities as the breed should have. But the stock where i am based and around these areas are still very well breed and i think that America could benefit greatly from some new blood! Any one who is interested pm me please

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Can you show us a "real" redcap?

Here's a link to the British Redcap Club-lots of pictures.

http://www.derbyshireredcapclub.webeden.co.uk/

NeilsHamburgs said:

Can you show us a "real" redcap?

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http://www.derbyshireredcapclub.webeden.co.uk/
Here are some real redcaps

wow, no one's been on this thread in a few months ... sigh.

We just got redcaps this summer. My daughter wanted them to show so we got two females and then the hatchery sent us a male along too. So far they look really close to the pics from England. We'll see how the boy grows out as the year progresses.

We just entered them in the county fair and no one knew what they were. And after reading up on how rare they are, I guess we need to build them their own pen and start breeding them.

Has anyone else had luck hatching eggs? Any tricks to it? (we hatch a lot of other stuff - ducks, turkeys, mutt chickens ... so we know what to do but every species seems to have its foibles)

There are a few of us out here. The hatchery birds from this country are way undersize according to standards. I really like the breed They are nice, friendly birds. How did your fair entries do?

They don't judge til tonight. Our boy is pretty big. I haven't weighed them yet but he's larger than my silver spangled hamburg was at the same age. The girls are bigger than my dominick hens of the same age, too. But I've just started learning about them so I've got a lot to figure out.

What kind of weights and sizes are standards?

Off the top of my head... Rooster 71/2 lbs, hen 6 lbs.
Good luck at the judging.

I wanted to update that I ended up selling my entire flock of Red Caps. The Red Caps from McMurray did so poorly over this past winter (very cold in Wisconsin). While I expected the drop in eggs, I did not expect to see such a weak bird that lacked vigor. My Sand Hill birds were a flock of very dissimilar looking birds. The rooster was pretty nice and had a large comb, but was very, very flighty. The females all laid a brown egg. I was very disappointed, and have thoughts of starting over, but not sure if Ideal has better stock than McMurray?

I placed an order with Ideal Hatchery for some Red Cap chicks. They are to arrive the first part of April. I am hoping that these will work out for me. Wonder if they have their own flock, or use the same supplier as McMurray?

NancyinAlaska said:

Here's a pic of a female I got from McMurray last year,I took it from above because that'as the best was to see her "red cap". She was the ONLY one out of 10 that survived past 2 weeks. I had an experienced person raise them for me and she thought the breed was extra sensative, and maybe closely bred, she couldn't understand why she lost so many of them, When she grew up, she was not at all what I expected.
I've got 10 coming from Ideal this year, so maybe next spring...........I'll hatch some myself..

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I've had a doozie of a time with a batch from Ideal. The first 12 all croaked. I'm down to six on the replacement batch. I don't think I'll be getting more from a hatchery although I am interested in the breed.