New to chicken keeping - what breeds are my hens?

[surfingdevil]

Hi everyone

I live in Mallorca, Spain and bought 3 hens and 1 rooster at the end of June. The hens look like Catalana's but I am not sure. We got them for egg laying but they haven't laid yet, although one of the girls is looking ready, we are checking every day!

The buff girls and white cockerel


not a great shot but the best I have for the time being.

I have no idea what the rooster is. Everything I read about Catalana's never shows a white rooster!!




I hope someone out there can help me identify the breed. People keep asking me and I have to tell them I have no idea!! perhaps they are a mix?

 

[hdowden]

he looks like what we in the US call a Delaware.

 

[Mr MKK FARMS]

The second picture looks like a Delaware, first picture I'm not sure about!

 

[surfingdevil]

He has very dark sickles. A dark green/black colour. I'll try to find another picture of him.

 

[surfingdevil]

This is the best I can do for now and it's not a great shot - through the chicken fence! But you can see the green sheen on his tail feathers. He has a single comb.

 

[surfingdevil]

I have just had another look on the internet at different breeds and he looks like a light-sussex! Would anyone agree? His colouring seems more like one anyway.

 

[hdowden]

no not a sussex he has the wrong leg color

 

[surfingdevil]

Ohhh! it's more complicated than I thought! perhaps he's a cross breed.

 

[Cowgirl71]

Did you get all four chickens from the same place?

If you did, and if you were in the U.S., I'd say you have a type of Red Sexlinks, a Rhode Island Red/Delaware cross (a crossbreed bred here in the U.S. to be sexable by color, and for high brown egg production). But I'm not familiar with what the common breeds are in Spain, LOL. Perhaps this cross is as common there as it is here.

 

[surfingdevil]

Yes all four came from the same 'chicken man'. He had crates of the brown (buff) girls and crates of the white boys. I know where to find him again but he doesn't speak any English and when I tried my Spanish on him he didn't understand that either! so no hope of him trying to explain what they are to me. Lol. He did ask me if I wanted them for eggs or meat, I told him eggs, so hopefully they will be very productive. They are well over 20 weeks now (not sure exactly) possibly 24 weeks but not a hint of an egg yet, only plastic ones on a couple of the nests.