Australorps breed Thread

[Red Barn Farms]

They are lovely!

Thank you! They are the most friendly of all my chickens. Their plumage is extra soft feeling, almost as if they have conditioner on their feathers.

 

[groche]

Hi Redbarn,
nice Aussies! I like the broad feather and don't they have a lovely 'feel'? I think this is something else they got from the Langshan, as these feel like silk to hold. Nice beak color on your Amish birds too. Some appear to be a bit 'cleaner' in the face than is 'normal' in Utility strains. I presume that they lay well or I doubt the Amish would have persevered with 'em. Some of the tails are quite 'Langshany' ie. V-shaped, rather than the more curved variety that our Standard calls for. This is said to indicate a good layer, that and the quite tight plumage. They seem similar to the Utility bird I posted a little while ago. It's sometimes only the camera, but if you have birds with brown, rather than black, eyes, Ray Connor recommends that they not be used for breeding Exhibition birds.
Cheers Geoff from Aus.

 

[groche]

Hi folks,
sorry about the double post earlier. Been having technical problems posting. Kept getting "fatal error!" messages when I hit submit! Anyway, a quick observation re the color red. Just Just hatched 40 chicks and was checking brooder temp. Thermometer has a red bulb. Chicks immediately attacked the red part! Also, re polystyrene and aluminium foil, although I agree that chicks will peck at anything new, they continue to 'attack' these long after they've lost their novelty value. Not saying all chicks do these things, but strongly suggest that most do!
Cheers Geoff from Aus

 

[groche]

Hi Aveca,
haven't had time to have a closer look at your boy. Still can't really make out the face clearly, but in general conformation he strongly resembles my young boys as is evident from the pics. This doesn't surprise me as everything that I've read suggests that the fluffy Partington Orp. was added to the Aussie to make it more "attractive" on the showbench, much in the same way as Partington added, was it Cochin?, to the original Cook Orp. and basically replaced it in the showpen. As we've discussed, many of us here think this has been overdone in the Aussie and that's why some of us are experimenting with adding some Utility blood to tighten up the feathering and improve laying. Using Langshan would certainly do the same thing. However, if I was adding Langshan, I'd rather use the Australian Langshan, containing the Wakfer blood mentioned earlier. 'Unfortunately', we've bred clean legs out of these, and it took quite a while to get feathered feet/legs completely out of the original Aussie and these were bred from clean legged Wakfers. Nevertheless, some folk here are trying adding Langy too. Since import restrictions were put in place here, the only way we have some breeds is through recreating them, usually, but not always, using a variety of elements of the original recipe. We sometimes lose sight of the fact that all our breeds were created. Certainly the Aussie was originally created from the Cook Orp. by many, many commercial farmers, each of whom was tweaking the recipe, adding a little bit of this and that, to try to gain some market advantage. When they finally decided to create a Standard, they had quite an array of 'Australorps' to choose from!
Cheers Geoff

 

[groche]

Some writers suggest that the reason for publishing these illustrations of the "ideal" Aussie with the original Australian Standard, with no photos, was because at the time they couldn't find an 'ideal Australorp' to snap!

 

[aveca]

My freind and I kind of went back to the drawing board..sat down , talked it all over except the langshan crosses were a complete suprise to me and quite stunning...need to be brought back down in size...The things we knew was in Australia, SOP US version birds were not avail..so they used english orp, early version..in england lot of cochin was added almost to a fault in orpingtons , in a lot of opinions ruining the type of the birds..so we used some old timey english orps, just to get that rounder body type..the end goal is to put in place more SOP type tail and keep along the lines of the SOP, just tad bit rounder..its not easy..sometimes suprising, sometimes I anticipate things to think, this is going to be terrible and it isnt..the cockeral in the picture is at my freinds and when I get over I will take lot of pics..its pretty suprising. at this point he does look a lot like your avatar...My freind has 250 acres of land to play on..I only have 10..so he has room and money to bring things along..Im keeping some SOP birds going that need some work..and with weasle attacks this year lost a few very good birds..weaSLES DONT EVER PICK BIRDS YOU WOULD LIKE TO GIVE AWAY, THEY MOST LIKLEY pick the yummy ones you want to keep.. I just liked the look of the australian birds.the eye is fantastic..the old times english orp kind of brought that out a little more..When they come along , I will post good pics ..as it goes, a work in progress..the english cleared up a lot of comb problems ..bigger round eye..ect but lot of things to work out..

the bird pictured below pic was saved as inspiration for this.

 

[groche]

Hi Aveca,
sounds and looks like you're really starting to get towards your goals. A little surprised at you having issues with size in the Langshan cross. The Australian Langshan is not as big as our exhibition Aussies, so I presume that your friend added Croad. I'm not familiar with Croads at all, but, as I've mentioned, Croad did get in there in the Cook Orp. and more was added here. Be really interested to see pics. The beauty of adding Langy is that you don't put that green sheen at risk, as a good Langy can easily rival the Aussie in this feature.
Cheers Geoff

 

[lildinkem]

Pic of a cockerel from my small Aussie flock.
He looks just like his daddy






Here is his brother. He has a bit more of the Akers Aussie look to him.
Not sure which one an APA judge would like. I prefer the top boy. He is definitely a bit beefier then I would want.

 

[aveca]

beautiful specimin bill.

geoff, lot of the langshan here are monsters..huge my freind also crossd a langshan pullet with a blk orp cockeral i gave him...that is bar none the biggest chicken i have ever seen...ever.

im working com center right now disaster preparedness for perfect storm moving in , evacuation center set up ect...pretty scared looking faces this morning so gotta go. frankenstorm approacheth

 

[groche]

Hi Bill,
really like your boys. You're getting birds that are starting to look more like my avatar than the Utility types more common there. Not knockin' them by the way! A really nice head on the bottom boy. Nice eye and how'd you get that clean face? The tail is getting fuller and rounder, which seems to be one of the main 'problems' over there. This site won't upload any pics for me at the moment, so I'll keep it brief.
Thinking of Aveca and those of you in the path of the storm at the moment. Hope it doesn't turn into the predicted monster!
Regards Geoff from Aus