B.Y.C. Dorking Club!

[ki4got]

I'm sorry,I can't contribute to the genetics discussion.

But on a couple of other threads I follow, people are talking about customizing feeding regimes for specific breeds, or different phases of the chickens' life cycle. Have any of you found a custom supplement or mix that seemed to make a significant improvement in the growth/condition/hatchability of your Dorkings?

i free range as much as possible, so everyone pretty much gets chick starter/grower and i offer free choice oyster shell. if they're in a breeding pen, then i use layer pellets since there's less waste involved, plus oyster shell offered. i will say tho, my free range eggs are much harder than my breeding pen ones... go figure. now if they made a starter/grower PELLET, i'd be all set.

 

[ChcknGrl]

Does a Silver Gray Dorking count as a dorking, sorry kind of a dumb question, but everyone is showing pics of dorkings that aren't silver gray

 

[Rockashelle]

Does a Silver Gray Dorking count as a dorking, sorry kind of a dumb question, but everyone is showing pics of dorkings that aren't silver gray

Yes... SG is the color, and Dorking the breed.

 

[Sydney Acres]

i free range as much as possible, so everyone pretty much gets chick starter/grower and i offer free choice oyster shell. if they're in a breeding pen, then i use layer pellets since there's less waste involved, plus oyster shell offered. i will say tho, my free range eggs are much harder than my breeding pen ones... go figure. now if they made a starter/grower PELLET, i'd be all set.

Purina FlockRaiser comes in a pellet, and is intended for use in young birds. It is 20% protein, instead of 18% for the Start & Grow chick crumbles. I have found the FlockRaiser pellets to not be as hard as the layer pellets, so there tends to be more broken pellets and "fines" (powder or tiny pieces) than with the layer pellets. This is useful when first transitioning the chicks but annoying later. These pellets worked great when the chicks were 8-18 weeks old, too young for the layer pellets, but physically large enough that they were almost choking on the tiny chick crumbles.

Neopolitancrazy, as far as customizing the diet for specific breeds, I customized the diet of my 2012 group of chicks and it worked great for the Dorkings and terrible for the Barnevelders, so there are some risks. I ordered 25 straight-run chicks from Sandhill, 13 Red Dorkings and 12 Barnevelders. When they were around 3-6 weeks old almost all of them started feather picking, to the point that it was quite predatory. None of the usual reasons for this behavior applied (overcrowding, boredom, unbalanced diet), but they were clearly hunting for bloodfeathers. To give them a substitute form of high protein, I added 10% dry kitten food to their diet. This slowed down but did not fully resolve the behavior. The next week I mixed up their diet to 20% kitten food. That resolved the problem by ~98%. The next week I gave them treats of salmon once daily and continued the 20% kitten food until they were 12-14 weeks old, which stopped the feather predation completely. I then started reducing the percentage of kitten food daily but added in GameBirdChow (30% protein, but all vegetarian-based instead of animal-based in the kitten food) until they were back on just Flock Raiser and GameBird Chow, with the final mix equalling ~24% protein. I continued this, plus the daily salmon treats, until the pullets started laying at ~19 weeks old, then switched to Layena Plus Omega pellets and daily salmon treats.

Obviously, these are much higher protein levels then are recommended for chickens. And the Barnevelder cockerels didn't do well with this protocol. The Barnevelder breed has some Croad Langshan in its foundation, so the males go through a very rapid growth spurt to produce that beautiful tall carriage. And rapid height gain plus high protein diets tend to produce joint problems. Two of the five cockerels (40%) had leg problems by the time they were 6 months old, so customizing diets can have serious consequences. In this case all the Barnevelder pullets were unaffected, and all the cockerels were meant for the freezer anyway, so lesson learned very cheaply.

But the Dorkings are a different story. All the Dorkings did great on this very high protein diet, with both plant AND animal based proteins. If you think of the history of the breed it totally makes sense. This is a very old breed that has been around for centuries before formulated pellets were developed. They were mostly kept in the UK and around the Mediterranean coast in Europe (Italy and France). This is the time and place where Dorkings were developed, molded and perfected, so the breed developed to do best under the conditions that were available. At that time and in those locations, birds were fed what was available on farms and from fishermen. If you read the old journals from the English poultry fanciers they talk about mixing meals for their birds using fish scraps (heads, skin, innards), meat scraps, fat, milk, vegetable scraps, and local whole grains, in addition to either free ranging or rotational pen confinement to supply grass and insects. The birds that didn't do well under these management techniques went to the stew pots. The birds that thrived went to the breeding pens and their lines continued, eventually producing the Dorkings that we have today. It only makes sense that today's Dorkings might benefit from a little more Olde English countryside and a little less "perfect kibble #1."

Plus, this breed has short legs, so you don't get the growth spurts from high protein diets like you do with the taller breeds. This makes leg problems in Dorkings less likely with high protein diets. (I always wondered why there were so many short legged breeds from the UK. You would think that farmers would want long legged breeds in countries with so much rain. But it makes sense when you think about it from a dietary basis. If your economy is such that fish scraps are a free and plentiful food for your birds, and that leads to a very high protein diet, and high protein diets lead to lameness in long-legged breeds but not in short-legged breeds, then it makes sense that coastal communities would favor short-legged birds.)

On the flip side, there are many experienced Dorking breeders that do not recommend high protein diets, and have reported that their birds do best on 16% protein instead of the standard 18% in chick starter. I know of one very experienced, very well educated poultry fancier (retired animal management professor) who turns all his heritage cockerels out into a wooded pasture when they're 8-12 weeks old and supplements them only with a 14% protein diet. So there's not a single right answer here. Management is much more than just diet or just housing. It's a total husbandry package, and what works great in one package could be a disaster in someone else's setup.

Neopolitancrazy, where were you finding the threads that discussed customizing diets for different breeds? I'd like to read them.
--April

 

[ChcknGrl]

Thanks!

 

[pysankigirl]

Too funny. I chose Dorkings and Barnevelders as my first two breeds this year.

 

[bethbug74]

Hi guys, I just got a pretty pair of Silver grey Dorkings from a lady in Stillwell, OK. I met the lady to avoid germ transfer. Her birds were her own hatch, but were from Ideal and Murray stock originally. They didn't seem to be in the best condition...it's January, to be sure, but their combs were very pale from cheap feed, their wings have been hacked at for absolutely no reason (we all know that Dorkings like to stay close as long as they are happy), and they both had dirty butts. I am sure they have internal parasites contributing to this, but another factor would be the rolled oats the lady insisted I must feed them. She even gave me a big can of it. If I ate nothing but rolled oats, I would have a pasty butt too. I thought she meant just as a warm treat in the winter...but no, she continued talking about how her grandma taught her to feed chicks rolled oat mash as they grow - I'm pretty sure I understood her to mean EXCLUSIVELY. As expected from this nutrient deficient diet, they are very small for any Dorking. They are supposedly 10 months old, but are both just about the size of a 5 month old RIR, maybe 3 pounds each. They both had some small facial injuries, but I think that was a result of the close confinement two young roos and one hen that she brought so I could pick from the boys. They had big fat lice, despite their $50 price tag, and they lady's insistence that "They shouldn't, we spray all the time!" Needless to say, there was some serious haggling....after I drove for an hour for them. Their feet were very dirty and wet. One of these days it's going to occur to me to ask people directly whether or not their birds are parasite-ridden, injured, overcrowded, or malnourished. Then again, the answer is always no, anyway, regardless of the truth. No bumblefoot, thank Whatever you like to thank. They are currently in quarantine. I gave them a few drops of ivermectin pour on immediately, dusted with diatomaceous earth, and spiked their water with Red Cell and probiotics, as well as making Red Cell/condensed milk soaked treats of old pancakes, spinach, cottage cheese, stale triscuits, and apples. Neither seem to know what to do with greens ("what's spinach?") even though their bodies seem desperately to need the real nutrition. I currently have them on chick starter exclusively (plus vitamin soaked treats and yogurts) to try to make up for the stunted growth the lady caused with her oats diet. They have a long way to go before they really look presentable by my standards (which aren't really that high, as I simply insist on both healthy and happy birds), but here they are:















What can you guys tell me about them? General conformation? I really don't plan on breeding for sale, just table, but would like to know what I have.

 

[neopolitancrazy]

I don't think their combs look all that pale for the dead of winter. I am jealous, and wish I had them.
I don't know if it fits your paradigm of chicken husbandry, but there was a thread on rescuing neglected chickens that were afflicted with internal and external parasites, started by username Beekissed. (The road less traveled...back to good health! They have lice, mites, scale mites, worms, anemia,...) She tried several things that might be applicable to your rescued Dorkings.
Again, I wish I had something like that in my barn.
Angela

 

[ki4got]

Hi guys, I just got a pretty pair of Silver grey Dorkings from a lady in Stillwell, OK. I met the lady to avoid germ transfer. Her birds were her own hatch, but were from Ideal and Murray stock originally. They didn't seem to be in the best condition...it's January, to be sure, but their combs were very pale from cheap feed, their wings have been hacked at for absolutely no reason (we all know that Dorkings like to stay close as long as they are happy), and they both had dirty butts. I am sure they have internal parasites contributing to this, but another factor would be the rolled oats the lady insisted I must feed them. She even gave me a big can of it. If I ate nothing but rolled oats, I would have a pasty butt too. I thought she meant just as a warm treat in the winter...but no, she continued talking about how her grandma taught her to feed chicks rolled oat mash as they grow - I'm pretty sure I understood her to mean EXCLUSIVELY. As expected from this nutrient deficient diet, they are very small for any Dorking. They are supposedly 10 months old, but are both just about the size of a 5 month old RIR, maybe 3 pounds each. They both had some small facial injuries, but I think that was a result of the close confinement two young roos and one hen that she brought so I could pick from the boys. They had big fat lice, despite their $50 price tag, and they lady's insistence that "They shouldn't, we spray all the time!" Needless to say, there was some serious haggling....after I drove for an hour for them. Their feet were very dirty and wet. One of these days it's going to occur to me to ask people directly whether or not their birds are parasite-ridden, injured, overcrowded, or malnourished. Then again, the answer is always no, anyway, regardless of the truth. No bumblefoot, thank Whatever you like to thank. They are currently in quarantine. I gave them a few drops of ivermectin pour on immediately, dusted with diatomaceous earth, and spiked their water with Red Cell and probiotics, as well as making Red Cell/condensed milk soaked treats of old pancakes, spinach, cottage cheese, stale triscuits, and apples. Neither seem to know what to do with greens ("what's spinach?") even though their bodies seem desperately to need the real nutrition. I currently have them on chick starter exclusively (plus vitamin soaked treats and yogurts) to try to make up for the stunted growth the lady caused with her oats diet. They have a long way to go before they really look presentable by my standards (which aren't really that high, as I simply insist on both healthy and happy birds), but here they are:

What can you guys tell me about them? General conformation? I really don't plan on breeding for sale, just table, but would like to know what I have.

i would say, being under-nourished, and in generally not great shape, they don't look horrible... give them 3-4 months of good food and care (and i agree wholeheartedly with ridding the parasites NOW and working on a more natural method later, if you choose to...) and re-evaluate their size/conformation at that time.

my mcmurray dorkings are averaging 6.5 for the roos and about 5-5.5 pounds for the girls... my line-crossed birds are about a pound heavier i'd say. the only one i have that's close to 'standard' weight is Thing2, my red cockerel, who'll be a year old in april or may. he's from roger tice / dick horstman lines. at 7-8 months old he's already about 7 pounds.

 

[bethbug74]

I am actually not too worried about size, really, since I raise showgirls and this boy will have to be able to get along decently with a new paint showgirl cock raised here. I don't have the luxury of tw separate pens for two different males to preside over. I'm hopeful that this will work out, since Dorkings are so purportedly gentle and easygoing. We have plenty of girls, both bantam and LF, so they will both have their pick unless confined temporarily to ensure fertility. A smaller stature Dorking roo is just fine with me, though I hate that they are so terribly skinny right now. Our LF RIR, EE, Marans, Polish, and Brahma ladies have been virgins for too long, they are peering longingly through the privacy fence at the sexy boy in quarantine, every chance they get.