Breeding Sex Links - third generation

[mickey328]

Please forgive my ignorance; I'm really new at this and in fact don't have any chickens yet. The coop is in the process of being built however and we're hoping to get underway very soon. From the reading I've been doing, it seems that the Sex Links are the ones that would suit us best. We'll only have 6 hens and will be keeping them in the backyard. We're looking for good layers of brown eggs, so these seem to fit the bill.

Can anyone advise of their experience with this breed? Besides the laying capability, we'd like a fairly calm and quiet bird. Is there a difference between the different colors of the Sex Links, or is it just their color?

Any and all comments, suggestions/advice would be greatly appreciated!

Mickey

 

[Fred's Hens]

Mickey. Sex link isn't one particular strain of bird. Rather it is method of breeding that allows one to determine the sex of the chick at hatch by feather color. You "link" the color to the "sex" of the bird. Red Sex Link uses a Red rooster over a white (silver) hen and the chicks hatch this way. Red/white or buff chicks are female. The yellow/white fuzzy chicks are the cockerels. The egg industry has Zero use for cockerels, so the chicks are hatched at the hatcheries and the cockerels are dispatched by the millions and used for compost, perhaps. The pullet (female) chicks are kept for the egg laying industry.

There are a dozen different kinds of sexlinks or ways to make this happen. They are all different. Have different personalities, different sizes, different egg laying abilities. It all depends on the parent stock used in the cross and the resultant offspring's unique mix.

 

[Chris09]

Fred,
I wonder if the White could be from a Light or White Sussex.
The Sussex has been used for some time in the UK for sex-link type crosses i.e. Rhode Island Red /Light Sussex Cross.
Have you tried crossing a White Rooster over a White hen (say brother/ sister)?


Chris

 

[mickey328]

Thanks, Fred. I appreciate the info! I realized after I posted that I shouldn't have used the word "breed" since they're hybrids. I'm finding it all a tad confusing...since they all have such different names, LOL. I also note that some of the colors are easier to find than others, hence my question about their personalities. It seems they're all good layers so now I'm trying to find out if the actual demeanor varies much between the color or if it's just the individual bird. They're all pretty, and that's a bonus but by golly, we want good eggs! hehe

 

[Fred's Hens]

Fred,
I wonder if the White could be from a Light or White Sussex.
The Sussex has been used for some time in the UK for sex-link type crosses i.e. Rhode Island Red /Light Sussex Cross.
Have you tried crossing a White Rooster over a White hen (say brother/ sister)?


Chris

Chris, yes, we have done brother/sister and father/daughter and son/mother. We can only guess what the genetic corporations use for these hybrids. I know, from their own public information, that they use two red birds on the rooster side to make the red rooster and they use two white birds to make the white hen for the eventual cross. Suggesting that the 4 grandparents are all individual strains/breeds. My guess? They use highly developed grandparent stock. The corporation calls them "pure bred" grandparent stock, but you gotta know they are very, very selective about them. The ISA/Shaver/Bovans/Babcock/DeKalb/Hisex conglomerate is European based, with world wide operations and they control a huge portion of the commercial market. Likely a dominant portion.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Thanks, Fred. I appreciate the info! I realized after I posted that I shouldn't have used the word "breed" since they're hybrids. I'm finding it all a tad confusing...since they all have such different names, LOL. I also note that some of the colors are easier to find than others, hence my question about their personalities. It seems they're all good layers so now I'm trying to find out if the actual demeanor varies much between the color or if it's just the individual bird. They're all pretty, and that's a bonus but by golly, we want good eggs! hehe

The ISA Brown would make a wonderful choice. I typically have 20-30 ISA Brown hens I brood from chicks each year. Nothing, in a brown egg layer, lays like them. That the bird is pleasant and friendly, thrifty on feed and easy to keep? A genuine bonus. I recommend them heartily, with no reservations. Just realize they are not likely to live for 7 years and certainly won't lay heavy for more than 2-3 years. Their genetics are "designed" for fast, fast fast and big, big big. This is what the commercial industry wants. As far as I know, Townline Hatchery is the sole licensed seller in the US.

A Black Sex link is VERY common and most every hatchery sells them, using their own "formula". You couldn't go wrong with them either. Just couldn't. The BSL has a totally different personality. Most folks report theirs to be calm and businesslike. But remember, folks are getting birds from a dozen different hatcheries, so generalities are harder to state with the BSL.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Chris09

The roots of the ISA Brown go back 30 years. They stormed the commercial world with this strain, a decade or two back.

The French "designed" the bird originally, as I recall. I only know they've kept their "formula" amazingly secret all these years. Often copied, that is for sure.
Whatever one of the White bird stock is, it is amazing. I'd love to know myself whether it might be Sussex. Do you think they could have gotten that high level of laying ability out of a Sussex though? My experience has only been with Speckled Sussex and they laid a small egg and were weak layers all the way around.

 

[Fred's Hens]

We probably hatched over 70 chicks. Only two were ever a red mix. Only two. The coloration was not "right". It was almost a negative reverse of how a first gen ISA pullet is colored. Yes, the two red were pullets.
The White of the ISA rooster dominated the resultant chicks. By gen 3, the white was almost completely free of any tone, ticks, or spots of black or red. The birds are virtually as snow white as White Rock or Leghorn. We found it interesting how quickly the red disappeared from the descendants.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Breeding Sex Links Evaluation and Observations.

When we began, we honestly thought the results of ongoing breeding of the Black Sex Link would be most desirable. We supposed that our starter group of BSL were RIR over BR birds. We found, within each of the subsequent generations, somewhat unexpected swings in coloration, personality, and size of egg laid. The subsequent generations "settled" into a somewhat homogenous bird that was a dark, muddled barred, and yellow legged, but no longer seemed to exhibit positive characteristics of either the Rhode Island Red or the Barred Rock. In short? We got a bird that was typically a big, heavy bird, but a bird that didn't completely please us. The three generation breeding of the BSL seems like a dead end.

At the beginning, our expectation was that the ongoing breeding of the ISA Brown would prove to be difficult and disappointing. We expected we'd lose the egg laying prowess of the original ISAs and envisioned wild swings in coloration. As it turns out, in our experiment, the homogenous white bird appeared with three generations. In the hen, this white bird is slightly heavier than the original ISA hen. Egg laying is down a bit in both size and frequency, but both size and frequency has been maintained at a very respectable percentage of the original. The personality of the white bird that has emerged is extremely pleasant and in fact, has become very much one of our all time favorite birds, which is saying a lot.

We are so pleased with this white bird, that we will continue to intentionally breed to produce more. Further, now that the offspring is maintaining a beautiful silver-wite coloration, we may as well take this experiment forward and in a new direction. We have a silver-white hen, that while somewhat different from the silver-white hen used in the great grandparent cross, might well produce sex-links if put back under a pure-bred RIR. We have a small breeding pen assembled right now to test that theory. We'll be using this young fellow that we just recently purchased.

 

[RoostersCrow HensDeliver!]

Wow, THANK YOU, Fred's Hens! I can't tell you how many months I've been pouring over information on breeding RSL and BSL birds. The research you've done is just amazing. You've answered a lot of questions that I've been pondering and some that I didn't even know I had. I just subscribed and I will definitely be following this thread. Thanks again!