Did I accidentally get all male Barred Rocks?

[Chicken Heel]

If you collect the eggs every day and store them in the fridge, or even at typical house temperatures, you will never know they were fertilized. They will look and taste just like any other egg.

Roosters do not keep hens very much safer. A rooster is still a chicken, and a predator that wants to eat eat chicken is not fussy about which chicken it eats. Of course, if the rooster gets eaten first, that does mean the hens were spared on that particular day. And yes, he might sound an alarm that will let the hens run to safety, but some hens do that too, so it's not something only a rooster can do. A predator-proof pen is much more effective protection than any rooster ever could be.

Whether a rooster keeps the hens happier would depend on the rooster. Some roosters make hens miserable by too-frequent mating and chasing them around trying to mate when the hens don't want to. Some other roosters look out for the hens, stop bullying by hens and don't act like bullies themself, and generally do make life better for the hens.

Some roosters try to "protect" their hens from people. This does not make life better for anyone (the rooster, the hens, or the people.) Some roosters recognize that people are not predators, so they spend their time looking for actual predators instead of wasting time defending against non-threats (like people.)

Whether your particular male will grow into a good or a bad rooster is something that you will have to see as he grows. If he turns out to cause problems, I recommend turning him into chicken soup: I think it's the tastiest solution to rooster problems. If you are always eyeing him as potential dinner, it's easier if you do need to make that decision

I'm not trying to talk you out of having a rooster, just trying to mention several sides of the matter in case you got a one-sided view from some other source. Personally, I like to have roosters in a flock, but I'm picky about which roosters. There are enough good ones I see no reason to put up with ones that cause problems.

I have had several Barred Rock roosters (Large and Bantam) over my lifetime and none have shown any aggressiveness toward humans. Now Black Australorps are a whole other story.

 

[NatJ]

I have had several Barred Rock roosters (Large and Bantam) over my lifetime and none have shown any aggressiveness toward humans. Now Black Australorps are a whole other story.

You can find at least a few good roosters in any breed, and at least a few aggressive ones in any breed.

Your experience and mine are a nice demonstration of that. When I had a large flock with 7 roosters of various breeds, the only one that attacked me was the Barred Rock.

 

[Raubkatze]

Four weeks old and they all kind of look the same right now.

 

[NatJ]

Four weeks old and they all kind of look the same right now.

They really like to keep us guessing, don't they?

 

[Raubkatze]

Five and half weeks old! Feeling fairly confident in 1 boy and two girls, even though the boy is smaller than the two I think are girls, their comb is coming in faster and is very red.

 

[NatJ]

Five and half weeks old! Feeling fairly confident in 1 boy and two girls, even though the boy is smaller than the two I think are girls, their comb is coming in faster and is very red.

Looking at those pictures, I'm thinking they may not be Barred Rocks after all.

They look like they're getting crests behind their combs, which would definitely be wrong for any kind of Rock. The barring looks a little off too, which certainly can happen with actual Barred Rocks but is more likely if they are something else. Then again, what I think I'm seeing with the barring could be something temporary, caused by them losing baby feathers and growing bigger-baby feathers, so it may not mean anything. But those maybe-crests are definitely interesting.

This was a straight run from my local farm store.

I'm now wondering if they are some kind of Easter Egger or Olive Egger. Cream Legbars can be mixed with other breeds to produce chicks that look a lot like what yours do right now.

I suppose we'll see how they look as they keep growing And assuming at least some are females, we should know a lot more when they start laying eggs (brown vs. white vs. blue or green).

 

[Raubkatze]

Looking at those pictures, I'm thinking they may not be Barred Rocks after all.

They look like they're getting crests behind their combs, which would definitely be wrong for any kind of Rock. The barring looks a little off too, which certainly can happen with actual Barred Rocks but is more likely if they are something else. Then again, what I think I'm seeing with the barring could be something temporary, caused by them losing baby feathers and growing bigger-baby feathers, so it may not mean anything. But those maybe-crests are definitely interesting.



I'm now wondering if they are some kind of Easter Egger or Olive Egger. Cream Legbars can be mixed with other breeds to produce chicks that look a lot like what yours do right now.

I suppose we'll see how they look as they keep growing And assuming at least some are females, we should know a lot more when they start laying eggs (brown vs. white vs. blue or green)

A few people on my local FB group mentioned they look like Diamond Duchess, who do get mohawks like my lot are currently sporting, but DDs are exclusive to FFH, and I got mine at TSC.

This group made me aware that hatchery stock aren't always the most well bred and tend to not follow standard "rules" when it comes to coloring, which is what I was attributing their lack of double barring or really any barring to originally, but the one with the red comb is really not following the coloring rules of a true barred rock if he's a boy.

Who knows, FFH and TSC use the same hatchery in my area, maybe they accidentally sent a FFH shipment of DDs to TSC instead of barred rocks since they look the same as chicks!

 

[nuthatched]

Five and half weeks old! Feeling fairly confident in 1 boy and two girls, even though the boy is smaller than the two I think are girls, their comb is coming in faster and is very red.

Those are some sort of legbar based ee.

 

[Raubkatze]

Here's a picture of the one I originally thought was a boy. They were the biggest of the three for a while and also turned very grey in comparison to the others. However, they are now the smallest of the three and also have the most pronounced Mohawk going on.

 

[Raubkatze]

Those are some sort of legbar based ee.

Does EE stand for easter egger? Does that mean I might get blue eggs from them?