I will tell you about my freinds australorps from hatcheries below but I will tell you about my experiences first with SQ strain as well as husbands production flock, he breedds roosters strictly for production.
I can tell you from over the many years with them, I would say most australorp roosters are protective of thier girls. When he is alone and not near the girls hes easy to deal with.. We have a rooster at my husbands production flock that will not come near you to save his life..He is very good at setteling disputes between hens but he has never in 3 years attacked anyone, he runs and hides or just looks at you while you work around his hens. It is unknown the foundation of his flock, he collected them over the years from different people for high egg production only
My rooster seen below is VERY protective of his girls. I have a set up in wh8ich I can work around him without having to deal with him directly..He even grabs my pant legs through the fence as I get close to the egg parlor . He does not do a good job of setteling disputes like my husbands rooster. which kind of suprised us as protective as he is.
He will jump as high as your face if he hears any one of his hens cry when I have to pick them up. Like I said I have a set up where I take a little rake and herd the hen I want into a little pne then close the door so he cant bother me and I can get her. Ive gotten to be pretty good at this . When I settled the breeding hens into the breeding pen with him, there was one, ..she was one of our best but she was very skittish and picked on by the other 2 hens so had to swap her out for a different hen, now all is quiet in the pen. I really want to use that one hen so when I get enough out of the three I want. I will herd them out and put her back in.
One of my freinds bought australorps from three different hatcheries, cackles, mcmurrays, and another that I cant remember..I went up to see the flocks , he kept them all seperate. He told me that he liked the egg quality of Cackles the best, they lay a little smallish egg but in thier second year the size increases to large depending on how well they are fed..He asks me a lot of questions..Biggest tip I could give him was when hes breeding , greens greens greens. makes nice healthy babies and breeding birds. His cackle birds are large nice looking birds and he told me there egg quality over all was better than the other 2 hatcheries. he has a lot of repeat customers for that groups eggs..and YES the rooster is pretty protective..he came blazing through the flock at us but we both had snow pants on so ignored his couple of assults..he didnt get carried away but he let us know that we were where we wernt supposed to be. Just by what I saw up at his farm. and I cant speak for other peoples experience, but I would recomend the cackles birds, they are large bodied nice typpe birds that could be dual purpose, the mcmurrays were quite a bit smaller , nice looking, and the last group had too much white in feathers head and parts of body. he said they got quite a few spots in thier eggs, and cackles birds didnt. He bought all three groups at the same time and they were all fed the same way. My freind also raises delawares and new hampshires also in thier own roaming areas. Australorps should be a good sized bird and cackles didnt dissapoint. bit curley in the combs but like you said, you wenrt interested in showing So I wouldnt worry about that. there were a few that were up to the standard in his flock. My camera is broken otherwise I would take pics of the three groups for youso you could see the difference in size ect..a;so the rooster was right in front of the whole while we were looking them all over, the mcmurraay rooster was too. didnt pay too much attention to the last groups rooster.
This is the fella that is VERY protective, sorry I dont have a pic of the other rooster yet. hes a really nice looking australorp but has much more of a production look than this rooster.
