Rhode Island White thread :)

[Country Living Farm]

I can not wait for mine to lay. they are RIW as well. What some people do not know is that if you take a single Comb roo and put over a rose comb hens. All the chicks will be rose comb but yet not ture RIW rose comb. The reason is if you breed them together you can get a single comb again. The ONLY way to test your stock is to breed the rose combs and then seperate your hens and collect the eggs. Mark them and heatch them for a period of time to see if you get a single comb bird from two rose comb birds. If you do, then you take that bird out of your breeding program as it is not a true RIW. I have both the single comb and rose right now. I use the single comb for golden comets and meat. The rose I am still waiting for them to lay so I can do my test. As far as I know they are true as this is the only thing they breed. I will find out.

 

[CibolaChooks]

no hatchery bird is a true breed. so you should not expect to get true pure bred chicken from a hatchery just pet quality production birds. they just call them "Rhode island reds" or "buff rocks" they would be production birds that look similar to them

Ive got great pure breed birds from hatchery's. I have also seem plenty of the examples you speak of. But hatchery's can do an amazing job at pure breeds. it just depends on which hatchery and which ones they do good at or don't do good at. every hatchery is different.

 

[CibolaChooks]

You may have a valid point but I have noticed that the RIWs are slightly slimmer than Rocks. Either way I personally didnt buy them as a rare breed and I dont think they costed any more than the Rocks and I didnt even buy a RIW cockerel to breed them. The reason I got mine was becuase I wanted a dom white, silver gened strain of hens to make the Golden Comet looking sexlinks, and they served me well for that purpose. BUT Saying that reminds me off a point that does separate them from Rocks is that these hens carry Dominant white when most strains of White Rocks are Recessive white AND many strains of White Rocks do not carry the Silver genes needed to produce sexlinks. So thats a separating point there and there arent many hatcheries that carry RIWs anyway and so I dont really think it would be worth it to lie about what they are selling as far as that goes, but like someone pointed out earlier. When hatcheries sale Rhode Island Reds, and most rocks and really most other breeds, they are really lying anyway becuase what they are selling doesnt hold a candle to what the breed should be. Sooooooo.

But anyway, I got mine from Privett hatchery and I personally wasnt concerned with their rarity, becuase they arent a breed anyway, just a production strain. I just needed them for their genetic makeup which proved to be from that of a RIW strain, not the White Rocks. Other hatcheries may be different but I wouldnt think so personally.

Though I do believe that Rocks and White Leghorns ( which are also a dom white carrying breed) were probably the main breeds used in their developement.

ive got all mine from privett. They did my barred cochins and silver laced wyandotte and golden lakenvelder really really well as far as i can tell. My ameraucanas as we all know came out bad. i know the white rock wont work for sex links so im happy you have the privett single comb RIW like me and know that they will still work for making Golden Comets. All this talk about the hatchery fooling people scared me. Im glad privett is using good enough of a blood line that they still have the right genes for making sex links. even if they are single comb.