Breed?

[SampyArctica]

Hey guys, moving house soon and adopting the current owners chickens. They have two silkies but then also this girl, which they just said "was a big red one" (they didn't know breed either). When they first said that, I thought maybe an ISA brown or just a red-sex link, but we have both of those currently and now that I've seen the chicken, it doesn't look anything like either. I also thought maybe a sussex just because of the feather colouring around the neck and in the tail, but the red in the rest of the body is much darker than any pictures of other red sussex's I've seen, and the neck feathers aren't as distinguished (colour-wise) as in the Sussex. But I dunno, I'm really just blindly guessing here, I'm still a chicken amateur, haha.

Any help is much appreciated!

 

[ramirezframing]

Hatchery RIR

 

[SampyArctica]

Thank you very much! What features does this have that makes it a hatchery chicken? Just curious.

 

[Fred's Hens]

In Australia, the Standard for Rhode Island Reds is somewhat different than the in the US, the home of the breed. Your bird is actually better than most hatchery quality RIR here in the States, but somewhat less than breed standard for a better bred bird. A bit of an "in between-er" as it were.

Really nice Red.

Here is a bred to standard female about the same age, bred to the American Standard.



Here is my young Red cockerel.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Thank you very much! What features does this have that makes it a hatchery chicken? Just curious.

Photos are difficult to evaluate, but the bird is too short on its legs. The body "shape" isn't too bad, as the Red should have an oblong, horizontal rectangle of a body, ie, a brick. The feathering on your bird is simply not deep and even enough, nor deep mahogony in color, neither at the surface, nor in the under color particularly. The feather is coarse and lacks the shine that the feathering a well bred Rhode Island Red should have. Hatchery stock virtually never has the proper body shape required for the breed, nor does it have the quality of feathering required for the breed. The comb is much too large for a female, betraying the fact that other, fast laying breeds have been been co-mingled to increase production, a common hatchery practice.

To me, the bird is likely from stock mostly intended to make red sex links, the red side. These are used by Warren, ISA, Hubbard, Tetra, etc to make commercial layers.

Hope that helps.

 

[SampyArctica]

Oh wow, it does help a lot indeed - thank you so much for taking the time for that! Very much appreciated!