Delawares from kathyinmo

[finnfur]

Zanna
You reckon the sheep tolerate the chickens because they keep the flies and bugs off them ?
Like the Oxpeckers do.Thats a cute pic .

Caychris
The head pic is not the best but I would say maybe pullet

 

[crazyhen]

Looks like a pullet to me too. I do not see the feathers above the tail split and turnning to the side , or very pointed. I have some young ones from Kathy and I could feather sex them when the wings started to grow. The full winged ones were female and the males were half feathered half almost naked. No tail early on the males either. It seemed they were always a bit slower to feather in. I love these babies they are soooo friendly.

 

[ChickCrazed]

Hi, I would love to get my hands on some of these. Does anyone offer chicks for sale? My incubator crapped out on me so I'd love to order chicks from somewhere if possible.

Also, how broody is this line?

Thanks!

 

[capayvalleychick]

We could always breed reverse for feathering. No feathers for 16 weeks and that eliminates plucking in the process. True meat bird. Huh

Always comic relief.

I can tell most by 2 weeks, then they go through a stage and I can't tell again until 6 weeks or so. Then, there is the odd one that I can't tell till 10 weeks or so.

Here is a little cockeral I think may be promising......... And some pics of my poor sheep that have to put up with the cockerals, they are very tolerant critters!

Yes, he does look good. Look at all the round lines on that one!
Love the sheep. Mine would not tolerate that.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

@caychris I'll also vote for pullet.

@Zanna , your chicks look great to me. If those with the sheep are cockerels, they are WAY fluffier than my older cockerels. Well done!

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Here are 14 of the 15 chick that are 8+ weeks old. Another pullet was standing behind me. These are all out of Mr. Fatty (ummm, except the two black ones!).

I think we're seeing a bit less peppering on the backs of these this year, which is a surprise as there is more peppering on Mr. Fatty than on PapaDel. Maybe that's because in the end I selected the breeding females for this year pretty much JUST based on hackle & body color. Ha! Not very discriminating, but it was the best my novice brain could manage after I'd pulled out the females with brown feathers. This season I'm going to try to table-top them so I can do better evaluations.

Maybe in September I'll pull a couple hens with the best body shape, regardless of color, and hatch a few more chicks. I'm also tempted to pull a few for correct tail color, though most of those have Columbian hackles and brown feathers. Of course the over-colored females have the most gorgeous orange legs, too.

Also, in this group there are no signs of Columbian coloring in the hackles which started to show up at about this point last year. Last year there were lots of color changes for several more months past the 8 week stage. The Males showed important changes for longer than the females, mostly in their tails, though they tended to get less peppering as they matured. Today I was seeing some brown where the feathers are supposed to be white, but have my fingers crossed that's due to today's rain as it is the first time I've seen that this year. Last year the brown didn't develop until the pullets were coming up on POL, and none of the cockerels showed brown.

You can see the one cockerel who is standing is missing lots of feathers on his shoulders and rump ... I think he is the slowest to feather.

It looks like a decent mix of pullets & cockerels.

The two black holes are the Black Copper Marans that Zanna brought me... the one behind is the cockerel, the one in front is the pullet. I'm really enjoying the BCMs. Got two more wee BCMs from Zanna that I sneaked in with a small clutch of mutts hatched from green/blue eggs last week. Don't EXACTLY need more chicks around here, but the egg customers really like the multi-colored dozens, so we are working a bit to keep that balance as we add lots of light brown eggs from the Delawares.



Here is the box of chicks Zanna hatched for us (again, from Mr. Fatty) and we put with this broody when they were already 10 days old. She is SUCH a good broody ... it really shouldn't have worked to put older chicks with a hen that had only been broody for a few days, but she is doing GREAT with them. You don't get a good sense of feathering or body shape from this photo, but you can start to tell sex based on nothing more than combs. I think these are about 6 weeks old? Yes, the broody found them a bigger nest after this photo was taken.

 

[finnfur]

Think we have broody hen fight.
B13 has been setting and gave her the 6 eggs - she has been on them 3 days.
Today she is on another nest with one egg and B7 was on the six eggs.
Both these are F4s original batch.
Went back and looked at records and these are the same two that went broody when
we were trying to get our first F5 hatch going.
With only five F4 hens and two not laying it was forever to fill the incubator for a run.
Well I took B7 back off the nest and returned B13 .
B3 seemed to have a little comb damage like B7 was forcing her out of the nest.
So need to separate her in the chicken tractor and see what she does.

 

[Zanna]

@caychris I'll also vote for pullet.

@Zanna , your chicks look great to me. If those with the sheep are cockerels, they are WAY fluffier than my older cockerels. Well done!

@caychris pullet, I have a couple that look like that with the Columbian markings. One of the hens I used this year is amazing in every way except for the columbian neck markings so I expected to hatch some of the same.

@LeslieDJoyce yes, all young cockerals. I have about 65 currently over at our other property with the sheep, poor sheep!

@finnfur I don't think the cockerals are helping keep the flies off the sheep, in fact, they poop on them which I think attracts more flies Dorpers just seem to be an amazingly calm, tolerant breed. They are new to us so lots of learning going on right now!

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

@caychris
pullet, I have a couple that look like that with the Columbian markings.  One of the hens I used this year is amazing in every way except for the columbian neck markings so I expected to hatch some of the same.

@LeslieDJoyce
yes, all young cockerals.  I have about 65 currently over at our other property with the sheep, poor sheep! 

@finnfur  I don't think the cockerals are helping keep the flies off the sheep, in fact, they poop on them which I think attracts more flies    Dorpers just seem to be an amazingly calm, tolerant breed.  They are new to us so lots of learning going on right now!

65 is a lot! Good job!

At what age do you send the cockerels off to Boys' School? I've got the Cockerel Colony here with just Mr. Fatty in it.

 

[Zanna]

65 is a lot! Good job!

At what age do you send the cockerels off to Boys' School? I've got the Cockerel Colony here with just Mr. Fatty in it.

6 - 8 weeks they get boxed and taken over there