Plymouth Rock thread!

[Mr MKK FARMS]

Molts.... lol

 

[Silver Rock]

My Danny Padgett SPPR chicks are very happy with the extra room they have in their chick house and my wife is very happy the chicks are outside and out of our house. lol All 11 chicks are doing great. It is interesting in how much color difference there is between the two lines as chicks.

 

[jdoane]

Can't wait until I have room for more chickens. The sppr and the columbian pr are at the top of my list!

 

[kwMississippi]

A few pics of my barred rocks. They are around 5 months.

 

[ghostwolf211]

looks like my 2 9 week old pullets

 

[sgribble]

Nice Birds....what line are they?







A few pics of my barred rocks. They are around 5 months.

 

[kwMississippi]

Kraig Shafer

 

[catdaddyfro]

Kraig Shafer

Wow I see males with tails too. nice and good job, nice looking little ladies too.

Keep posting on their progressions as they continue to fill out for the next few months to year olds please

Jeff

 

[cbnovick]

This is my 7 week Barred Rock (Hatchery chick - sexed at Meyers as a Pullet). Would love some opinion from folks who know Rocks really well on gender. At about 4 weeks people were telling me it was a cockerel because there was a little burst of comb development. Comb hasn't had another big growth since then - pretty similar to how it was at 4-5 weeks. From the darker coloring and dark splash down legs I was thinking Pullet. Also as a little chick it did have a pretty defined head spot. "She" does have a pink comb but it looks exactly the same color as my Golden Sex Link Pullet so I'm a bit confused by the whole thing about Pullets combs not pinking up when I know my Sex Link is a Pullet. All this is so confusing.

Any thoughts? Guidance on understand the whole guessing gender thing?

100% pullet

 

[cbnovick]

Kraig Shafer

Excerpted from the Plymouth Rock Quarterly Summer 2013 edition

Member Biography
By Director Kraig Shafer

I’m Kraig Shafer from Lima, Ohio. Chickens and I go back a long ways. As a child I was always entranced by
the activities in our poultry yard. As I grew, so did my interest in poultry. I’ve dabbled in all types and uses for
poultry. As a teenager, I got involved with some old time cock fighters here in Ohio. Now I don’t know or care
what your opinions of cockfighting are, but if you want to learn how to condition birds, pick the brain of one
that’s been at it a while. Those guys know every facet of the chicken, from shell to old age.
As I grew older I progressed to some commercial growing, mainly breeding for commercial hatcheries. I
would breed the odds and ends that nobody else wanted to fool with. I probably never made a dime, but by
golly, I enjoyed it.
My vocation through my early adult life was butchering and meat cutting. That’s a tough life, and when I got a
chance, I went to work for the Ohio Department of Agriculture as a Meat Inspector. If you ever wonder how
screwy the government is, ask a guy that worked for them for 30 years. That job kept me from showing for a
few years, and I retired 4 years ago with anticipation of showing again.
My poultry interests never wavered, and after buying a farm about 20 years ago, I got right down to breeding
my favorite, Plymouth Rocks. I enjoy the bantams and have raised a good many varieties over the years. I settled
on Barreds and still have them. It’s a long term project to breed them to compete with the Whites, but I
like a challenge and enjoy looking back at birds I’ve had in the past and being able to see improvements I’ve
made. Many thanks to good friends that have helped over the years, Matt Lhamon, Max Stacy, Dallas Mulholland,
Kirk Keene, Hugh Barnett, and probably a bunch of guys I can’t think of right now. Their opinions and
criticisms helped keep me from getting coop blind. Never be satisfied with an ordinary bird. Breed to get the
best you can.
Bantams are a lot of fun, but my absolute favorites are Large Fowl Plymouth Rocks. I’ve had several varieties over the years, Whites of course from several sources and some pretty nice Buffs from Mark Peterson. Then Matt Lhamon and I were in Michigan showing about 15 years ago or so. We were all sitting around critiquing the judge’s handy work and I said to Earl Jones I’d like to have some good Barred Rock Large Fowl. Earl got a funny little smile on his face, and when we were loading up on Sunday, here came Earl and Dick with a trio of young Barred Large Fowl. Earl said they were from a lady that never sold birds, Ruth Whitney. Now I never met Ruth Whitney, but I’ve heard they were Ralph Sturgeon birds that Ruth’s grandfather had set a strain of back in the 30’s or 40’s. Earl didn’t give me a lot of info, but by golly, they were pretty good type and barred right to the skin. So I bred that trio and ate a heck of a bunch of culls, keeping only the top 4 or 5 to continue the strain. Those were the years work kept me away from the shows, and I culled them hard. A few times I tried birds from other breeders, but when they grew out, I didn’t like them as well as what I already had. So in the freezer they’d go. When retirement became a reality, I had a pretty good base to work with and the breed-ing pens all got filled up. And later in the summer, the local butcher shop got a workout as I culled them hard again. But now I was keeping 25 or 30 that I couldn’t bear to put to the knife. I feel I’ve improved on what I started with by being very critical of what I saw. I’ve learned not to be a "comb sorter”, but let those birds ma-ture more before you start picking through them. And if you wouldn’t put it in a show pen, put it in a freezer bag.
I’ve visited a lot of poultry people over the years and seen all kinds of facility setups. Mine are relatively sim-ple, a big old barn for growing out young birds. They get turned out all day to run all over my barnyard, pas-ture and orchard and shut in at night. My breeding pens of bantams are in 4 by 8 pens in the barn during the breeding season, and when it’s over, the hens go outside with the young stuff. My large fowl breeding pens are 30 by 50 buildings with lots of ventilation and lighting for an early start around the first of the year. I like to hatch until May, and then let the hens have the run of the place to get them back in shape. Last year I was flooded with requests for hatching eggs, so I kept the breeders together until June 1st, and that wasn’t bad. I’m not a fan of late hatched large fowl. They don’t seem to mature right to me. Bantams you can probably get away with it.
Showing has been a pleasure for me, win or lose. Meeting other breeders is always an education. My chicken friends are top notch folks that I value above all others. Matt and I have a lot of stories from years gone by. And they are all true. But those are stories for another time.