B.Y.C. Dorking Club!

[ki4got]

Quote: i find that in the reds (and silvers too) the pullets head markings are darker and wider than the cockerels too... not only being well defined.


in the pic above, the sg's were all pullets, the one toward the bottom with it's head on the sg back and the one who's head is at the very bottom were both pullets too.
the lightest one with just the dark stripe, and the 2 below and to the right were cockerels...

of that hatch (combination of my own and sandhill reds) i ended up with 20 pullets and 7 cockerels. LOL (plus a few oddballs in the mix too, like the lavender cochin off to the right).

 

[dalalune]

i find that in the reds (and silvers too) the pullets head markings are darker and wider than the cockerels too... not only being well defined.


in the pic above, the sg's were all pullets, the one toward the bottom with it's head on the sg back and the one who's head is at the very bottom were both pullets too.
the lightest one with just the dark stripe, and the 2 below and to the right were cockerels...

of that hatch (combination of my own and sandhill reds) i ended up with 20 pullets and 7 cockerels. LOL (plus a few oddballs in the mix too, like the lavender cochin off to the right).

I went through my 25 Reds today and it appears that only 5 are male based on the markings. They have all been banded, photo-ed and recorded, so I will find out how well I "guessed" on their genders. Love that pic, above. After my lovely young "assistant" and I were finished with my bunch, that is pretty much what they looked like. Worn Out! Had to wake them up to put them back in the brooder. Too Cute!

 

[ki4got]

edit: pic removed because i didn't have the owner's permission to use...

but i'm still excited that my reds and silver greys produced such nice looking chicks and i'm glad she had such a good hatch from the eggs i swapped her (for 2 pairs of sfh)

 

[Rockashelle]

Hey all! I had someone contact me about purchasing 15 chicks. Unfortunately, I am in Washington State and she is in Grass Lake, MI. Anyone close enough to help/sell her some chicks? I don't ship chicks. She's very interested in helping preserve the breed and is a newby so will need a little help up initially. She's only had adult chickens. Anyone close to her?

Thanks!

 

[countrygoddess]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to purchase 2 or 3 Red hens. This is my first year breeding SGs but my hens are all short in the back and I'd like to make improvements to my line by adding in the reds. If anyone in New England (specifically Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, or even upstate eastern NY) has large, long, fairly typey Red hens they'd be willing to sell, please PM me. Or if you know of anyone who might, have them contact me. Much appreciated. =)

Heather

 

[greenhorn]

Hey all! I had someone contact me about purchasing 15 chicks. Unfortunately, I am in Washington State and she is in Grass Lake, MI. Anyone close enough to help/sell her some chicks? I don't ship chicks. She's very interested in helping preserve the breed and is a newby so will need a little help up initially. She's only had adult chickens. Anyone close to her?

Thanks!

Just sent you a PM. Grass Lake is 150+ miles away. Not sure if that's too far or not. We sometimes visit a town about half way between, Clare, MI. Plan on going to a pig roast there in late May I believe it is. Otherwise she'll have to make the drive. Left more info in the PM......

 

[greenhorn]

Just wanted to let everybody know we are having much better success with our hatches since we started using the GQF Professional 1500 for incubating. We have been using the Repti Pro for a hatcher but to be honest the thermostat on that thing isn't near sensative enough to be a serious incubator. Like somebody mentioned previously, opening the door is a must to help control temp and especially humidity.

I'm in the process of building a new hatcher/incubator specifically for hatching. It's just a tad larger than the GQF and we made it from a single half inch sheet of birch laminated plywood. Painting it white anyway, darn cat decided to use it as a scratch post and it matches the GQF better anyway. We ordered a GQF heater element and water tray and a real sensative thermostat from incubator warehouse. It was the biggest cost but it keeps the bator within .2 degrees F of the set temperature. I'm a perfectionist and although that ReptiPro works kind of OK for a hatcher it's small and makes it difficult for me to separate the dif matings. This one is big enough to grow into for years to come.

I'll post some pics when it's finished. We already had it together and it tested out nicely. We used 140mm computer fans from new egg.com and a used12 volt ac adapter. Took 2 tries to find one that made the fans run fast enough. We got fans that put out the highest CFM for about 10 dollars each. In the end it probably cost me about half as much or just a tad more than purchasing a new one from GQF. It has taken all my free time and then some to build it though. Always seems that much more satisfying when you build it yourself and it works like it's supposed to. It's been fun but wish I would have built it over the winter instead of waiting til hatching season......

Oh well have to start somewhere..

Our Dorkings have been laying very well, blacks and whites. Eggs are mostly large and no major hatching issues now. Seems the optimal humidity here is about 42% to lose the 13-14% egg weight. We on our second hatch since we got the GQF and have blacks and whites hatching today as I'm typing this message.

Since we are only breeding our best birds we aren't getting a huge number of hatching eggs, about 50 per week give or take. That's from black and white breeders... Wasn't going to work so much with the blacks but we have lots of space and won't be able to get the white numbers up where we want them for maybe another year or 2 so figure why not go for it. When you only use a few birds for breeding you can only produce so many chicks and we are culling a lot of the blacks right out of the hatcher... The kids seem to understand the whole thing pretty good and I'm quite impressed with my 10 year old daughters almost natural common sense approach to breeding theory lol. She totally gets the idea that you breed the 2 birds that will complement eachothers traits and doesn't have a problem with me culling the inferior birds....

It's been a hectic year accomodating the dorking breeding project but we are getting great satisfaction from it already. I've been doing a lot of thinking since the big blow up here and don't think most folks really understand me very well. Not sure if that puppy mill remark was pointed toward me but if it was somebody really has it wrong. I built a brand new coop to give my birds over 4 sq foot per bird when there is 25 birds per section. There are 5 sections but we take very good care of our birds and during the winter 3-4 birds in a 10x11 coop is hardly over crowding. Our birds eat our home grown fodder, fermented grains, scratch, table scraps and we even offer them that Purina Layena bag feed though they'd rather have fodder and fermented feed. They only seem to appreciate the fodder when it's offered to them outside in their run but that fresh green grass is premo nutrients for birds in the cold months when grasses just aren't available.

We go all out man but we aren't in over our heads other than how much cash we spent on the coop, birds, incubators and feed. We're not rich, work from home and work hard. Nobody handed me anything that I didn't work hard for. A few good folks here had some nice things to say about our coop and dorking project but I have to admit i've felt jaded on this forum overall. I figured i'd think this out well before I made the post and I have. I don't like getting personal and talking about these kinds of things but I feel it's kind of necessary at this point to let folks know what I'm about. Now I have and those who want to think I'm in this for the money ought to think again. It's going to probably take the rest of my life just to get paid back what I have into this and I'll be surprised if it ever happens......

We all know chicken feed isn't exactly inexpensive, even when you get it from the elevator and grow it out or ferment it. Anyway the reason we got chickens was to raise our own quality eggs and meat. Dorkings are supposed to fit that bill and we want to help save this endangered heritage breed. We breed Dorkings, that's about it outside of the crazy ISA brown back cross project I have going (which will always be on hold during Dorking breeding season). Folks who have puppy mills can't control their desires and usually have too many breeds and do a poor job of breeding because they can't raise enough animals to make proper selections. That's just not what we are about at all.

 

[heritagehabitatfarms]

i have been following your project from the start and am really glad to see you working with the blacks... when i get Dorkings that is the color i would like to start with... can u post some pic's of yours??? i dont remember seeing any pic's of blacks sense they where young birds... keep up the good work!!!

 

[greenhorn]

The blacks are in a serious state of repair but I think there is hope but wow lots of culls. The 5th toe placement is a problem and size is also a problem. We tried some experiments with crossing our biggest white (He has some black here and there) to our best black hens. I was told black would be dominate but as I replied the 2 lines should be in good shape and breed homozygous before crossing. Looks like I was right or there is more to it than that. I can't say black was the dominate result as we have birds of all colors from those matings. The blacks need so much work I figured it couldn't hurt to out-cross because it's going to take years to get the blacks consistent and homozygous.

We got at least one color I haven't heard of yet, maybe I haven't researched enough but it's grey. I showed it to my friend yesterday and he informed me that the color is considered blue in the chicken world. So Blue Dorking?

Anyway the plan is to take the best blacks from the out-cross and go from there. May have to back cross to the blacks again but I'm hoping not...... It's a fun project though because there are really no rules outside of shape and feet.

The initial plan was to go with the white off the bat but like I mentioned earlier we have way more space than we will be able to fill with the whites this year. Next year the blacks might find themselves on the back burner here. Depends on how many premo whites we end up with this year.

And thanks HeritageHabittatFarms, appreciate the kind words.

 

[Rockashelle]

Just sent you a PM. Grass Lake is 150+ miles away. Not sure if that's too far or not. We sometimes visit a town about half way between, Clare, MI. Plan on going to a pig roast there in late May I believe it is. Otherwise she'll have to make the drive. Left more info in the PM......

 

Hey Greenhorn! I forwarded her information via PM! Thanks so much!