I was just looking up this thread to see what week huntertj butchered his Dorking's and saw your post, I have a thread on my Dorking x RR cross as well as all my RR crossings. I am starting to really like crossing Red Rangers because the males are as meaty as I always hoped dual purpose and the females grow and develop fast but do not get huge nor develop a high budget appetite. The crosses prefer to free range rather than spend all day at the feeder too. I have only crossed 3 heritage breeds to the Red Rangers so far so time will tell if this is an ideal way of making my own dual purpose birds. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/crossing-my-red-ranger-hens.1281099/ The first one just hit 18 weeks and weighed in at 6.5 pounds live weight. I have pictures of the ones I hatched about a month later next to a dorking male from the same hatch and they are about double the size of the pure dorking. Also my Dorking hens are laying larger eggs now. They went broody and both broke eggs and quit. Its been a month since that happened and hopefully the go broody again. One of the main reasons why I got dorkings was because I wanted a reliable broody breed.
That’s awesome! My red dorkings are laying larger eggs now too. I had a hen that was broody for quite some time but it was still too cold outside. Now I’m hoping another one goes broody soon but we will see!
