Barred Rocks Good Shepard Poulty Ranch

[Robert Blosl]

Great will look forward to males side shots like this. If you get some like this I hope more will come. Sometimes if new blood is introduced into a line like Franks they blow up and sometimes I think Frank did introduce new blood of some type over the years. However, tails in barred rock males have been poor for many years. Some times they look good and when mature it looks like a firecracker went off in their tail. At shows they can not compete and win and move up on Champion Row. Lets hope this will change over the next two to three years.

 

[desertmarcy]

I butchered a 4-1/2 month old cockerel yesterday, hatched on 3/3.. He dressed out at 4.75 lb, including giblets. Not really filled out in the breast yet, but good sized legs. I think one more month of growth will make these a good sized processed meat bird.

 

[Fentress]

That sounds good to me. Can you describe your managment methods? Do you keep the cockerels separate from the rest of the flock. How much free range did they have, if any? I suspect that free range may be keeping the meat off of my chickens. Thinking about getting the GSBR for a variety of reasons. Would you be willing to post pictures of the dressed carcass.

Thanks,

mark

 

[desertmarcy]

That sounds good to me. Can you describe your managment methods? Do you keep the cockerels separate from the rest of the flock. How much free range did they have, if any? I suspect that free range may be keeping the meat off of my chickens. Thinking about getting the GSBR for a variety of reasons. Would you be willing to post pictures of the dressed carcass.

Thanks,

mark

The cockerels were in a mixed sex pen but I recently separated all the males and females, like a week or so ago. They do not free range but they have big pens. It has been really hot here, so they do not do a lot of running around, mostly sitting around and panting. I do feed certified organic feed to all my birds and I think it makes a difference. They are on a 19.5% protein ration right now. At least my live bird customers always exclaim how nice my birds look compared to others they see around town.

The bird is all bagged up and ready to sell, taking them to customer tomorrow. Not sure I have the energy to photograph, we woke up this morning to no water, pump on the well went out, and it has been a stressful day. I had 10 gallons set aside but it did not go far when watering all these growing birds. Went over to the neighbor's and refilled them this afternoon. But no running water from the hose, we could not wash out bowls like normal, it is such a pain. Hopefully the repair guy will have it up and running again in the morning, but I'm facing a big bill, need to replace the pump and motor plus labor, ugh. Glad I got the processing done yesterday, though--that is one job I am not doing with no running water.

 

[Fentress]

Thanks! I appreciate any info I can get on meat production. Don't worry about the pic's and good luck with your repairs.

Mark

 

[suncatcher]

Just marking my place!

 

[Robert Blosl]

just stopping buy wonder how many people have this line of barred rocks anymore and how you like them. bob

 

[desertmarcy]

just stopping buy wonder how many people have this line of barred rocks anymore and how you like them. bob

Hi Bob,

I like them a great deal, but have to admit they are my first "real" Barred Rock. Having some trouble getting a good male that has the desired gravy bowl front end. I hope I get a couple that do out of all the ones I'm growing right now. The barring is awesome and I personally do not mind the slow maturation of these birds. I lost my breeder male a few weeks back---he just dropped dead. He was only 1-1/2 years old. I'm guessing heart attack? He was fine the night before and that morning, but found him later in the morning stiff, all stretched out. Good thing I have a lot of his offspring growing up.

 

[Fred's Hens]

We like them as well. The slow maturity rate is what it is. Very slow. Egg laying is better than expected and type and barring is very good to excellent. We even had a few cockerels with decent enough tails and good front ends.

We have struggles, quite honestly, with hatching rates. We'll keep working on that. We put almost 40 chicks on the ground this year. They are very good foragers and extremely calm, laid back birds. Our original group is from the XW Poultry Ranch of JWhip through Kathy so I do not know what, if any, differences there might be.

 

[catdaddyfro]

Here here too.

I like them pretty well.
They do definitely take some getting used to with their slow maturity and slow feathering but once past that slow point they are good as any of my other "h" type stock I have here. Most assuredly nice to look at and easy on the eyes.

Jeff