if you had the cochins I would be tempted as they are gonna be milli and we love love milli anything! but you have broodyviile happening!
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dorking is an old heritage breed that traces it's ancestry back to the roman empire. yes it's a broody breed. in some old texts it was mentioned that if the hen didn't go broody in her first year, she was culled. that is one thing i'm also selecting for, even tho i try to break her broodiness after a week or so, because i want the eggs more. i have one i'm allowing to be broody, as i'm hoping she'll move to a broody pen and sit on some eggs i'm getting in hopefully monday. my incubators are full LOL.My apologies for the misunderstanding.......
Are Dorkings a broody breed? I really am not familiar with that breed. I would take the cochins but I understand they are all gone broody & not laying.
thanks
From http://albc-usa.org/cpl/dorking.html
The albc info is good, but not totally accurate. the APA recognizes five varieties. silver grey, red, colored, white and cuckoo. I have 3. sg, red and colored. my silver grey are all that's breeding right now. the red and colored are from Sandhill Preservation Center, but i'm not 100% pleased with the variation in color. a few of the colored hens meet the SOP, but none of the reds do. tho the red cockerels are shaping up nicely, none of the colored cockerels are (yet). but then again they were all hatched april 9 so have a lot more growing to do before i'll make my final decision on them...
I've got some red eggs on the way from Rudy Troxell (Roger Tice lines), and one mature red cock from Craig Russell, so that should help my reds progress to where they should be.
the colored will be a project for me. I feel (as do some other dorking breeders) that they have been outcrossed somewhere along the way, and the colors mixed up a bit, as they don't tend to breed true. so that is my goal. to try and map out the genetics behind the color variety, and see if i can narrow it down to a stable color that will breed true. to map out the genome, i'm planning to outcross to pure BBR oegb (with AI) and then breed the resulting chicks back to each other and again pure bbr, to see what results. the colored pullets i have right now vary from very pale reddish to nearly black with white shafting, but only a few meet what i would feel is the standard for the color. heck, i've got a mixed breed EE that matches the standard for a dorking more than some of the dorkings i have! LOL and the cockerels (only 2) haven't started getting their adult coloration yet, but remain nearly black. but again i'm planning on letting them grow out a bit more, as the baby feathers and mature feathering may be different.
if you're possibly interested in dorkings, https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/118388/b-y-c-dorking-club is a great thread to read... i've chronicled my guys over the last 8 or 9 months and have learned a lot along the way.