Breed RIR with ?

[txbirdlady]

I met an older woman at the feed store and she spent an hour telling me all the things I should ever need to know about homesteading. She said to breed a RIR with another bird to create the best meat birds, but after an hour of talking with her I completely forgot what breed she suggested. Maybe a Delaware? Do y'all have any ideas or suggestions?

 

[Parront]

A Rock, White or Barred, would make a nice eating bird.

 

[Mosey2003]

A Barred Rock female will give you black sexlink chicks, allowing you to separate pullets from cockerels upon hatch. The cockerels make pretty decent meat birds, for a dual purpose type. The pullets are excellent layers and can be sold as pullets straight away, which is often a plus.

 

[Ridgerunner]

A big part of the problem is that we all have different preferences and experiences. What is "best" for that lady might not be all that good for someone else because they want something different in a meat bird. In my opinion a Delaware would work as well as any other dual purpose bird. You can eat any of them, even pure RIR or pure Delaware.

 

[txbirdlady]

A Barred Rock female will give you black sexlink chicks, allowing you to separate pullets from cockerels upon hatch. The cockerels make pretty decent meat birds, for a dual purpose type. The pullets are excellent layers and can be sold as pullets straight away, which is often a plus.

Thank

A Barred Rock female will give you black sexlink chicks, allowing you to separate pullets from cockerels upon hatch. The cockerels make pretty decent meat birds, for a dual purpose type. The pullets are excellent layers and can be sold as pullets straight away, which is often a plus.

Thank you! Yes, I now remember her explaining that sex-link chicks would be the result of the breeding, which was why she lived the mix so much! Now I have to decide if I want to risk getting a notoriously aggressive RIR roo

 

[U_Stormcrow]

If the individual Roo is notoriously aggressive, I'd avoid. If its merely that someone(s) have told you that breed X Roos tend to be aggressive, then if you can, buy young and socialize it well.

Otherwise @Ridgerunner 's advice is sound and thorough. and by choosing a RIR for your stud, you will find no shortage of information available on expected crossings with various breeds, etc.

As you hunt about on google, you will find a lot of trade names for various sex link birds, mostly for purpose of egg laying, but the cockerels are plenty tasty for meat, they just aren't CornishX (for good or ill, dependent upon your needs and expectations). Sadly, the trade names don't tell you the exact mix, but it should still give you a good idea in a general sort of way. i.e. at least two big hatcheries sell "Golden Comets", a red sex link bird. I have some myself, from one of them. In the case of one hatchery, its a "Cherry Egger" (their RIRs) over a Rhode Island White, in the case of the other, its a RIR over a White Leghorn. In either case, you get a roughly 4# hen +/- who produces a prodigious amount of good sized brown eggs (lg+ typically) beginning at a very early age (18 weeks +/- on average, seasonally dependent).

tl;dr - its a well respected rooster for producing some commercially important crosses - hard to go wrong with that as the foundation for your flock raising.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You are not limited to a RIR rooster to make sex links. Chart #1 in the first post in this thread tells you which roosters you can use on the left side and what hens you can use on the right side of the chart.

Tadkerson’s Sex Link Thread

http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=261208

There is nothing magical about sex links except that you can tell the chick's sex at hatch. I hate to make suggestions because there are many combinations that will work well, but if you are buying them get a New Hampshire boy and some Delaware girls. From what you've said I think that would suit you well.

You do not get guarantees as to rooster behavior. Any breed can be good, any breed can be bad. Don't get too hung up on that.