Breeding For Red Stars

[PegramPoultryProprietor]

Is there anyone who is working on or has been successful producing Red Stars? I personally have decided to try. I purchased some babies this summer; a small bunch of RIRs and twice as many White Rocks. For some reason I missed the need for the silver gene in the WR hens but fortunately it seems I got lucky. Several of the WRs have clean yellow legs and a white down under their new pin feathers, the others have the same nice white pins coming in, but their legs have a slight greenish wash on the lower front and their down is a dusky grey. Does this sound right for the recessive silver? I hope I haven’t missed anything on the RIRs. Their parent stock is from MM so I was fairly sure I was getting Production Reds. I will say the parent stock looked real nice and were much darker and compact than the pictures I have seem of other P Reds. Well this is where I am so far; I would enjoy someone else’s experiences.

 

[nicalandia]

Quote:
at one point I was but I started with ISA Browns, and a Ameraucana roo, I all cared was production of lots of Green eggs... I wonder if all you want is eggs too as I see no reason to start with RIR and RIW, Sex linked are hard to beat at laying eggs, a few RIR will come close at laying as many eggs and saving you on feed bills, RIW are behind RIR in egg production so you will end with birds that dont lay as good as the Real thing and will expend more on feeds as they are bigger...

just get a leghorn male and mate them to ISA or Red satars or whatever Production hens you can get...

in about 4 generations of back crossing you will end up with True Production Type Red hens and Red males..(just cull them/sell them)

I wish you good luck as I did not have it...

 

[PegramPoultryProprietor]

Thank you, nice advice. Since I have already started with 20 WRs and 11 RIRs I am pretty much locked in to this project. I picked the Red Star cross mostly because it is so popular here; 4-Hr’s and such. The need for the sex link comes with so many urban chicken owners emerging in the Nashville area and only wanting pullets. I am constantly asked and would like to eliminate the sexing thing as I am poor at it. As far as the cockerels, I hear they aren’t bad to fatten up for dinner. I do pan to keep all of the RIR pullets as well. For the moment my concern is whether or not the color signs I see on the White Rocks now, that I hope have the silver gene, are going to disappear with age. I’ll probably band them just in case. If I can get a picture on here this weekend I will.