Rhodebar Information sought

[Pastoralist]

We plan to have a fairly large flock of hens on our farm to raise pastured eggs and I like the thought of having a breed that's "autosexing". I've read through the Rhodebar thread and I'm kind of confused as to where to get a start as far as breeding fowl are concerned. I want chickens that lay an adequate number of decent sized brown eggs and are autosexing. If the Rhodebar fits the bill can someone help me out as to where my breeding stock should come from? (Any help is appreciated!).

Another question I have is why does it appear to be so little interest in the Rhodebars? Is it the rocky start they got off to when they were first started being promoted or what?

 

[Rod-T]

We plan to have a fairly large flock of hens on our farm to raise pastured eggs and I like the thought of having a breed that's "autosexing".  I've read through the Rhodebar thread and I'm kind of confused as to where to get a start as far as breeding fowl are concerned.  I want chickens that lay an adequate number of decent sized brown eggs and are autosexing.   If the Rhodebar fits the bill can someone help me out as to where my breeding stock should come from?  (Any help is appreciated!).

Another question I have is why does it appear to be so little interest in the Rhodebars?  Is it the rocky start they got off to when they were first started being promoted or what?

I think people that just want brown egg layers..they just buy sexlinks. . There cheap ..lay alot..
With rhodebar you could hatch yourself.. but you have to have rooster. Some people can't have them.. being purbreed they will lay less.. also what ya going to do with all the male chicks?
If you are gonna raise them for meat then you really don't need a autosexing breed. .

 

[dannypritchett01]

My thoughts on this is that when GFF introduced them they were super cool, but then several peoples Rhodebars began laying green eggs. I myself had the same idea as yourself. I have sourced out several breeders, visited their farms (some hundreds of miles away to see their stock, how they were breeding them, and to make sure they could easily be autosexed. I then had them to save every female and male they hatched for several weeks and I returned to pick them up. If you are looking for some still I know someone with some that would ship you some. I now have probably 100+ running the ground and in the next few days I will be evaluating them for future breeders, and the rest of the hens will go into my laying pen, and the roosters sold or eaten. Then next year I will start raising just rhodebars for my laying pen. If good records are kept and only the best layers are kept you can get nice looking rhodebars with good egg numbers. Set a goal. Example minimum of 280 eggs per hen. If they lay 280+ keep them for breeding, any less don't breed them. I read this somewhere the other day on how leghorns were made lay so much, each generation the eggs were counted and they had hens laying 300 eggs and they would call it the 275 line as 275 w guaranteed. Then it increased to 365 eggs and they guaranteed 350.

 

[rc50]

If you do a little more research I think you will find that you should chose males from hens that lay well too...

 

[dheltzel]

You may also need to cull for egg shape and viability. My flock lays a lot of malformed eggs and I get poor hatch rates and high numbers of males (sometimes 10 males per female). Overall, I find this breed frustrating compared to my other autosexing breeds (Cream Legbars and Welbars). I am planning to sell my entire flock and use the space for more Welbars. I probably obtained poor stock, but since there is so much of that out there, your experiences might be similar to mine.

I might try them again sometime if I get confirmation that the breed issues are resolved and some great breeders are selling top quality stock, but I don't like them enough to become one of those breeders.