Breed/gender ID + detailed history

[member578380]

So, 14 months ago my wife(teacher) brought home our first 8 chicks from her school that was doing educational hatching in school. I called up the particular hatchery to get an idea of the breed and they told me they only had Rhode Island Reds and a few white Longhorn roosters. From the pics you'll see, I was skeptical about that, not that it matters to me, we love our birds and they're great layers for us. I'd just like to know a little more about them. So cut to two weeks ago, we hatched 2 chicks that were a product of our rooster and our favorite layer(she lays very large, round, easily identifiable eggs) they were both easily identifiable from hatchlings to adult. 3 of our 5 layers are pretty much white, the other two, one looks pretty Delaware and the other is our brown hen that we hatched the eggs from. The rooster seems Delaware-ish and the hen looks Isa Brownish. I'll post pics from the last year through now, I hope it's easy to follow. Thank you for any input! Ps the other roosters found other homes so there is no confusion...

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

They look like mixes of mixes, likely RIR x leghorn crossed with RIR x leghorn, possibly with some Delaware thrown in.

 

[ColtHandorf]

They do appear to be sex-linked birds that were bred for more than one generation. So while still having the characteristics (production) of their parents, they no longer have the ability to be sexed at hatch. I can certainly see the Rhode Island Red (production versus breeder quality) in the body shape and clearly there's some White Leghorn in there. You can see it in the rooster's body shape. There might be something else going on with the small size of their combs, maybe Delaware. But perhaps that is from the RIR side of the family.

 

[member578380]

They do appear to be sex-linked birds that were bred for more than one generation. So while still having the characteristics (production) of their parents, they no longer have the ability to be sexed at hatch. I can certainly see the Rhode Island Red (production versus breeder quality) in the body shape and clearly there's some White Leghorn in there. You can see it in the rooster's body shape. There might be something else going on with the small size of their combs, maybe Delaware. But perhaps that is from the RIR side of the family.

Thank you. This helps.