Faverolles hatchery vs breeders.

[redrose5396]

I've been considering getting faverolles in the future, and I have heard that many people with hatchery Faverolles have poor quality birds (some are really small, no muff, no beard, not friendly, etc). Do you believe this is due to them being from hatcheries, or due to the smaller gene pool that the faverolles are constricted to? If anyone has faverolles that they believe are excellent quality, where did you get them from?

 

[wamtazlady]

I got mine Salmon Faverolles from a hatchery. They are not show quality but they aren't awful either. They have their muffs and beards. They are very large birds compared to my other chickens. The major fault I have noticed is color. The females are darker than I would like. I have no idea how friendly they might be as I've never tried to make them into lap chickens.

Hatcheries are hatching a large number of chicks. Hatcheries aren't going through their breeding stock and removing all the chickens that are not show quality. Only a small breeder can do that. Hatcheries keep their okay birds. I doubt that they use birds with obvious major faults for breeding. You can take two great looking show quality birds and breed them together and get chicks that are nowhere near show quality. You do increase your chance of getting a few quality chicks by carefully choosing your breeding stock, but that is no guarantee.

 

[tupaia]

kinda late response, but:
i have gotten faverolles from a registered breeder/shower and from an ebay listing. polar opposites both were magnificent. i have not seen a hatchery "example" photo i would consider good quality (except the textbook illustration) so i won't take the chance. the ebay pictures looked good and were cheap enough to risk.
the breeder i ordered both an adult rooster and hatching eggs from is: https://www.poultryshowcentral.com/tn-salmon-faverolle-large.html
the ebay listing is gone now.