Thank you capayvalleychick. We do feel fortunate to have such a nice chicken coop for breeding our Dorkings. It cost more than we were hoping but it's a good sturdy structure and should last a long time. The birds will have excellent protection because they are completely enclosed, inside and out. During the day when we can observe our whites we will let them out to free range. Can't be too careful, we've lost some nice birds to dogs and other predators in the past.
I have to say our Dorking chicken dinner was excellent. We will definitely be keeping Dorkings on the farm from here on out!
Thanks everybody for sharing your experiences and knowledge. Yellow House you have been a blessing to our farm and we can't thank you enough for sharing your whites and your knowledge. I look forward to trying out that recipe for 6 month old cockerels. Our kids all loved the Dorking dinner also and wow is that dark and white meat awesome from those birds. One of the few meals we can make without at least one of the kids complaining, and it's super good for them.
We finally got a new card reader and it's all set up so we will be sharing more pictures now. Hope to find time to get more pics of the hens, particularly the white ones. Finding more white eggs every day. Some are getting larger and some look like first timers. By hatching season we should be all set. I know the cockerels are already fertile because we had a broody ISA Brown hen hatch two five toed chicks with rose combs. Wasn't on purpose or anything, we just didn't have space to keep the cockerels and laying hens separate at the time..... We get a few mutts here from time to time and it's kinda fun really. The kids love raising up chicks and it helps them understand a little about genetics and breeding. Not that I consider that breeding at all but they can see how certain traits are dominate like five toes and rose combs for instance. Or how we can track down which kind of chickens were the parent birds etc. We won't be hatching anymore mutts anytime soon though, got rid of the broody hens eggs and the cockerels are no longer sharing space with them.
I had 2 black hens that kept flying the hen coop so we rounded those 2 up and added 3 more and took 5 black hens over and put them in with one of the smaller white roosters. The coops are covered over there and i don't think the blacks are laying yet. This will let me know when they begin to lay just so i know. Right now there are no big plans to work with the blacks though. We may let them free range separate areas from the whites and hatch a few just to keep them going. Didn't find any great black cockerels at all though. We got mostly hens from the blacks but did find 2 or 3 I like. The 2 black hens that kept flying the coop are together in the picture above this post.
Will be back with more soon....
