br crossed with rir

[zachbelle]

I have a small flock of a dozen chickens 6 barred rock and 6 rir my rooster however is a rir. egg production is very high averaging 8 - 10 eggs a day thru a maine winter. i would liketo try hatching this spring. this may be a silly question but whats going to happen with the crossed ones? will i be able to tell them apart? will theyre egg production still be high? and what about for meat?

 

[Egghead_Jr]

It will make for a great cross. An RIR over Barred Rock will produce sex links. Your pullets will be black and males barred. What this means at hatch is the males will have the white dots on head and females wont. It's a Black Sex Link a.k.a Black Star. The Stars grow larger than Barred Rocks so the males will make for fair meat at 12 to 14 weeks.

Birds produced by productive parents are also productive, hard to know how productive the males mother was unless you've bred them or from a hatchery.