BCM Roo x Buff Orpington, BCM Roo x RIR, BCM Roo x Barred Rock

1876 Farm

Songster
7 Years
May 7, 2012
602
47
138
Northern Illinois/ Waukesha WI
I have a BCM rooster that I picked up a couple of months ago. In the last week I have had 2 Buff Orpington's go broody (both in separate coops). 1 hen is laying on 7 eggs, while the other is laying on 6.

Anyone have any idea on what color the chicks will be when hatched due to these crosses? I would like to have some idea on what I might see due to these 3 crosses.

Thanks!
 
BCM Roo x Buff Orpington Buff head neck and breast the rest will be black- some may have buff on the back

BCM Roo x RIR Black with some red on breast and some red in the hackles.

BCM Roo x Barred Rock look like barred rock but the males may show some red in the hackles. The males will not show the red until they get older 6 months or older. Females will be black or black with a little red in the hackles.


PS. Edited to include information on females in the last cross
 
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Thank you t. Adkerson. I can't wait to see them when they hatch and as they grow. They are expected to hatch the weekend of June 16 and I'll try to get some pictures to post.

I checked out your web page - your Topknots and Moniques are really pretty.. I love the tuft of feathers on top.
 
Eggs should be hatching today... I'm so excited to see! I was told she was not laying on the eggs last night, but standing over them.. like she was ready to run.. I believe her eggs were starting to hatch. I'll post tomorrow once I find out what's going on. :)

Looks like 4 of the 8 eggs have hatched so far!

I am now struggling with if I keep the chicks with their mother, or do I take care of them myself. I'm afraid if I leave them with her the other 10 chickens will hurt them. Any suggestions out there??
 
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If you can't separate her and the chicks from the rest of the flock,don't leave the chicks with her. If cooped together the other hens will probably kill the chicks.However if they are roaming outside,the hen will be able to keep the chicks out of harm's way unless you have a lot of predators in the area.
 
Congratulations! I would like to add to tadkerson's comments about the barred rock crosses being barred. This is only partially true. Any non-barred rooster (such as your BCM) over any barred/cuckoo hen (such as your barred rock) will produce sex-linked chicks. The males will hatch out with barred rock coloring and will (usually) get red/orange leakage as they feather in. The females will hatch out black and grow up to be mostly black hens with some red/orange feathers leaking through, mostly around the neck. The 4 barred rock colored-chicks in your photo are all cockerels.

As for whether to leave chicks with momma or take them and brood them yourself, that depends on your set up. If you have a smaller coop and run and your birds are confined to the coop/run most of the time, it could be very dangerous to leave them in with the other chickens. If you free range or have a very large set up, then a broody hen can get away from the other birds and protect her chicks from the rest of the flock. If you do not have a large run, but have a separate pen/coop where you can put a broody and her chicks, then it's perfectly safe to leave the chicks with mom.

When my orpington hen went broody, I set her up in a small A-frame tractor and gave her some chicks that I had hatched in the incubator. After the first 4 or 5 days, I opened the tractor and allowed them to join the rest of the flock in the yard. It worked ok, but my hen did have to kind of re-sort her place in the pecking order a bit even though the other chickens could see her and the chicks the entire time they were separated. When my Ameraucana hen went broody, I decided to let her incubate and hatch in the coop because she was already lowest girl in the pecking order and I was afraid she wouldn't be able to reintegrate into the flock if I separated her out for 3 weeks to set a clutch. We did loose two of the three chicks she hatched. One had some problems with it's legs and I found it dead in the nest box before the hen had even taken her chicks out of the nest for the first time. I'm not sure if it got crushed by her or another hen, pecked to death, or if there was just something else wrong with the chick that we couldn't see and it died because of birth defects or deformities. The other one I am fairly sure was unable to get out of the nest box on it's own and was pecked to death by another hen (the broody had taken her chicks out of the nest and my husband mistakenly thought that the cockerels from an earlier hatch had bullied them out of the nest so he put the broody and both her chicks back). But once out of the nest box, even my lowly hen has had no problems with the other chickens (5 other grown hens and 13 juvenile chickens from earlier hatches this year, most of them cockerels) bothering her baby. This is largely due to the fact that my flock has my entire back yard to "free range" in 24/7.
 
Thank you Chicken Obsessed! Any idea if the little red one is a BCM roo x Buff or a BCM roo x RIR?

My coop is 50' x 25' so I'm hoping that gives the mother and chicks enough free range to keep them safe. So far, she's doing a great job of keep the other chickens (10 of them) at bay.
 
This is a BCM over a BO , my year old Alpha Roo. I'm in the process of uploading pics of some of his offspring (slowly but surely) in my public album.

 

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