BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

[Our Roost]

You find them attractive? Unlike the barred Plymouth rock, they have a little tighter barring pattern with the hens being darker in color than the roosters. They have shorter legs with big feet making them ground thumpers because of their weight. Sounds like thunder when they all come running after you for a treat or exit the coop in the morning. Make some room and talk to me late spring / summer next year. They should look even better after this outcross.

 

[JRNash]

I'M going to get some

 

[hellbender]

You find them attractive? Unlike the barred Plymouth rock, they have a little tighter barring pattern with the hens being darker in color than the roosters. They have shorter legs with big feet making them ground thumpers because of their weight. Sounds like thunder when they all come running after you for a treat or exit the coop in the morning. Make some room and talk to me late spring / summer next year. They should look even better after this outcross.

Well keep in touch and perhaps by then, I'l have something to do with them. I'm especially interested in the turkey-head variety because I'm making every effort to use only non-straight combed birds here.

Still the straight combed variety is very impressive and alternate combed birds are dominant to straight combs. Just another step or two in the process. I'll be doing that with the White Rocks and my beloved NN/Turkens.

 

[JRNash]

I noticed that some of the plymouth rock chicks I received from Macmurray have light willow shanks. Any thoughts?

 

[bnjrob]

I noticed that some of the plymouth rock chicks I received from Macmurray have light willow shanks. Any thoughts?

Since you don't know the lineage of the flock, it could be a result of a recent crossbreeding by the hatchery, or it could be old genes just happened to surface in the chicks you got. No way to really be sure since they are hatchery stock. The hatchery may not even know the full historical lineage of the flock they hatched those birds from.

Plymouth Rocks have a long and somewhat complicated history and are intertwined a bit with my chosen breed, the Java. It is generally accepted that the Plymouth Rock breed was formed using Javas as foundation stock. There were a few Javas in the 19th century that had willow colored shanks, but it was not many. In the late 1800s, there was a push to get a number of white feathered chickens accepted into the SOP. Despite Javas being the older bird, Plymouth Rocks captured popularity very early, and had many more fanciers that exhibited the Rocks, compared to the smaller number of Java breeders/exhibited. So when there were multiple white chickens being considered for admission into the SOP, the Plymouth Rock fanciers threw hissy fits and the APA caved to their demands and required that the White Javas have their SOP changed, mandating willow legs with on the White Javas, to differentiate them from the White Rocks. It was difficult to get the required willow shanks on the White Java, so the White Java pretty much died out and was removed from the SOP.

Willow shanks and other seemingly odd colors/traits do occur in birds, depending on their breeding background and how their DNA happens to mix. Learning about the breeds history and how they came about and what, if any, foundation stock was used to make a breed, can help you in the future when you encounter these types of issues - especially if you desire to breed your birds to any kind of standard of uniformity.

 

[Fentress]

very funny! He wrote about culling all the slow feathering chicks as they were identified, thus only breeding faster feathering birds. He wrote that in about 3 years he had very few slow feathering chicks in his hatches. That is sort of what I am doing, although I have only culled the very slow featherers, keeping the medium slows until I think I have figured out a little bit more.
Angela

I need to get that book. So, faster feathering is correlated with rate of development? Do you still track weights. At what age do you make the feathering decision on the chicks? I would like to keep my BR, but sometimes they make it tough, with their slow rate of development.

 

[DesertChic]

I need to get that book. So, faster feathering is correlated with rate of development? Do you still track weights. At what age do you make the feathering decision on the chicks? I would like to keep my BR, but sometimes they make it tough, with their slow rate of development.

Your BRs are slow to develop? This surprises me. I know my BRs were only hatchery stock, but they developed very quickly. My BR pullets were the first to start laying at 18 weeks of age and my BR rooster was already over 5 lbs by that time.

 

[ronott1]

Your BRs are slow to develop? This surprises me. I know my BRs were only hatchery stock, but they developed very quickly. My BR pullets were the first to start laying at 18 weeks of age and my BR rooster was already over 5 lbs by that time.

Fast egg laying is not a surprise since hatcheries make money off of selling chicks hatched from eggs. My guess is that the cockerels will get to a smaller adult size faster.

The goal of the hatchery is egg production. The goal of the breeder is an SOP quality show bird. Over time you get different production from the breeding goals.

 

[gjensen]

Your BRs are slow to develop? This surprises me. I know my BRs were only hatchery stock, but they developed very quickly. My BR pullets were the first to start laying at 18 weeks of age and my BR rooster was already over 5 lbs by that time.

Hatchery Barred Rocks, are not Rocks. They are cuckoo patterned layers that are pretty good at what they do. Lay eggs. They are not comparable though, the two. They are a tale of two extremes. The right place to be, from my point of view, is in the middle.

And you would not want Rocks laying by 18wks. 24 wks. is a reasonable time frame for their type and size. 18wks is most appropriate for small and light weight layers like Leghorns where the hens do not get much larger than 4lbs. A Rock hen should be 7lbs.

The numbers, dates, and weights etc. do have a correlation. The sooner we get a feel for this, the better we understand our birds, their type, their nature, their performance, why, etc.

 

[gjensen]

I need to get that book. So, faster feathering is correlated with rate of development? Do you still track weights. At what age do you make the feathering decision on the chicks? I would like to keep my BR, but sometimes they make it tough, with their slow rate of development.

You do not have the variability to make that fundamental of a change. You have three choices. Kill them all and start over, outcross, or crossbreed.

The author, obviously, had the variability within the line he was working with. The gene you are dealing with is a recessive. It is not rocket science to separate yourself from the recessive, but it is a process.

You can do this and have a respectable flock in a few generations. They will not be respected by the purists, but they will among the general enthusiasts, would actually be good Rocks that perform, and put the hatchery examples to shame.

We could use some good utility lines of Rocks, so I would like to see you do it.