Australorps breed Thread

[tigercreek]

fox - I think I would take the 18 mo old hens over the POL s. You will have to quarenteen either, so you may as well get the eggs while doing so! If they go into a molt, this would be a good time to worm if you think that might be necessary. The 18mo olds have only gone thru 1 laying cycle, so you should get 2 or 3 more decent cycles at least, plus your other birds should be begining to pick up the slack with spring here. Best of wishes wich ever way you go! .....stan

 

[jmc]

Australorp Roosters:

Will they adopt and 'defend' their girls, or are they just wimps--big sweet wimps.

I want a bird that will go on alert and not run off.

I am also talking hatchery birds here. I have no means of getting SQ, nor am i interested, in fact, in SQ.

Maybe you folks have seen some of both???

 

[aveca]

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.

 

[daytonfarm]

Are there chocolate or brown Australorps? I have a two week old chick that is either Australorp or Orpington and very definately brown, dark rich color, through the beak, very dark legs. The chick is from hatchery aust. hens and a black Orp roo. I can't seem to upload any photos, Anyone have a brown chick??

The chick on the left is a blue Orp

 

[Davaroo]

My first ever chickens were A-Lorps. Id like to have them again {{{{sigh}}}}

 

[Davaroo]

Quote:
To be precise - no. The Australorp, as a defined breed, does not include brown in it's plumage.

I have a two week old chick that is either Australorp or Orpington and very definately brown, dark rich color, through the beak, very dark legs. The chick is from hatchery aust. hens and a black Orp roo. I can't seem to upload any photos, Anyone have a brown chick??
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/15530_019.jpg
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/15530_047.jpgThe chick on the left is a blue Orp

If you have one with obviously brown plumage at maturity, it is certain that some smearing of its genetic lines has occurred.
This may have been deliberate or not, but it will fail the test as a bred-true Australorp.

You can use whatever parent stock you like, including Australorp, and breed birds to your hearts content.
You can call the resultant offspring whatever you like, Blue or Frazzle or Fizzle... whatever.

But to put a fine point on it, the reason we have breed standards is to differentiate imposters from the real thing. If it isn't included in the breed standards then it is something else.

It's about precision, as you may have guessed by now.​

 

[daytonfarm]

Ok so if the chick is an australorp then it just has some mutant gene that rose to the surface? I only had australorp eggs in the bator but at the last minute put a couple of orp eggs in there also, just not sure where the brown came from. The orp should be blue only splash/black cross. So this chick could be a messed up blue. As chicks the orp and aust look very similiar, so I'm trying to decide where the brown came from. I'm not trying to breed for brown/choc just happened that way.

 

[Davaroo]

Quote:
You got it! All of us, humans and chickens alike, are at the mercy of our "genetic soup" - the makeup of our genes.

A-lorp chicks come out with some tan/brown markings, mind you. But, these disappear as they mature.
However, there are problems we have no control over.......

- Who bred the stock from which you obtained the eggs?
- And more importantly, HOW?
- Did they know what they were doing?
- Where did they get THEIR parent stock?
- Do they, or any previous breeders up the line, keep mixed flocks?

True breed types, genotypes, are the result of VERY careful and selective breeding over a long period of time. Tossing a few birds together, or even allowing a random one into the mix, can give you any sort of result.

All that said, what do YOU think? You know more than any of us about the pedigree of the birds. How do you suppose the brown got in?

 

[aveca]

It does look like it is either a stray gene or may be orpington mix would explain it. . Seems built more like australorps in ways, very big bird. was it from a breeder? out of your flock?. They do have a chocolate australorps in Australia you can see them at :
http://www.australorps.com/19.html

This is a grreat site with australias standard . they show whites, blacks chocolates ect...We have been way behind them in australorp breeding, but little by little we are catching up. I have been seeing better and better australorps every year that I go to shows due to some dedicated breeders.

Here is a chocolate champion from that site. You can see him under 2008 champions

 

[daytonfarm]

The chicks are from my stock, however, the a-lorp hens are hatchery birds, my black orp roo is from very very good orp bloodlines. He is very large, I was trying for a little more size on my austrolorps, can't find any breeders around here so I figured I have a great black roo, that should put a bit of size on my girls. Didn't have great fertility (roo is very fluffy!) so I put in a few orp eggs so I wouldn't end up with two chicks. I have 5 (started with 19eggs). All the orps should be blue and the lorps should be black. I have 1 definate black, 3 blue and 1 brown.
When I read up on the choc orp, they originated from 1 chick that was brown and went from there, of course that was years ago. My Orp hens are splash so I figure that it would be harder for brown to show up from a splash/black combo then a black/black comb. I don't know anything about genetics but will order a book and look into it further.

I do have a group of pullets/cockerals from a "mistake" hatch Speckled Sussex and Blue orp cross she went broody and I didn't think he was "active" yet, both very young (just started to crow, she just started to lay, sounds like high school doesn't it!) figured nothing would come of it. Any way to make a short story long! The sussex hen is a little larger then these a-lorp hens(hatchery) but this chick is much bigger then those chicks were.

Hope that helps with the genetic mystery. Love all the help I can get. Of the 5 chicks this one is the most calm and easy going, I can even pose him/her.