The Heritage Rhode Island Red Site

[cmom]

I'm going to put metal roofing on all of my coops. Right now the newer coops have metal roofs but the older ones are leftover rolled roofing we had from other projects. I'll replace the rolled roofing one coop at a time with metal. I won't have to worry about a ridge because all of my coops have shed roofs.

 

[Ur-ur-ur-urrr]

@Ur-ur-ur-urrr Very nice coop and birds even with the cookoo in the nest.
Did you see my four pullets? What do you think?
Here is one of the two males I kept for a guard until his replacement arrives.

I agree with Fred on the two he pointed out. I'd still wait until they're 7-8 months old before culling any of them from the breeding program. Just my 2c...
From what I can see in the pics, that's not a bad looking cockerel. What is it that makes you want to replace him?

 

[Ur-ur-ur-urrr]

I'm going to put metal roofing on all of my coops. Right now the newer coops have metal roofs but the older ones are leftover rolled roofing we had from other projects. I'll replace the rolled roofing one coop at a time with metal. I won't have to worry about a ridge because all of my coops have shed roofs.

I love metal roofs. Once and done...

 

[Fred's Hens]

Zip ties are temporary, awfully handy and serve a great purpose, BUT dangerous if neglected as the birds grow.
Spirals are mostly junk and don't serve much purpose.

The plastic numbered bands, such as sold at Twin Cities Poultry are fine, but, but with some birds, they will not stay on. They also get dirty quite easily and then they're hard to read. Size 11 for most LF females and 12 and 13 for the LF males.

The best bands are the metal bands that lock, sometimes with a locking tool. For many small keepers, most of this is over kill. Most shows do require the birds to be banded when cooped in for ID purposes. If your juvenile numbers get so high that banding is required to keep track of the birds, then look into the plastic numbered bands for their juvenile days but the metal bands for something almost permanent.

Toe punching remains something I still strongly suggest for pedigree breeding.

 

[Ur-ur-ur-urrr]

The Rose Come is from my Dexter. My other male Junior, I put his eggs in the incubator quite late and they developed but only 4 out of 18 hatched and of them 2 survived. Don't know why they made it to lock-down then quit. I had quite a few blanks too and attribute that to possibly the heat as when I put those eggs in the incubator it was already in the 90's. If you want to do an experiment I tried, Put your RC male with 2 or 3 of your SC females and you should get both RC and SC. There is a breeder who has RC and about every 4 years he puts in some Reese/Mohawk SC in the mix. I tried it and got both RC and SC. I put them in my general population coop and pen but did sell them eventually.

I had a similar experience with my last hatch. 14 went into lockdown, and only 2 hatched. One zipped halfway around the egg then drowned in albumin fluid. The SC has had bad feathers since it first started growing them. I thought it had angel wings for a long time. The wing feathers have straightened out considerably, but as you can see in the pics, his feathers don't look normal. They may never be normal. That's okay... I have two decent (and older) cockerels from his family.

 

[cmom]

They may be junk but the spiral leg bands work fine for me.

 

[waddles99]

@Ur-ur-ur-urrr Very nice coop and birds even with the cookoo in the nest.
Did you see my four pullets? What do you think?
Here is one of the two males I kept for a guard until his replacement arrives.

His tail looks kinda messed up to me. It doesn't look "full" at all but he could just be getting picked on. Also, it appears he is holding his wing down too.

 

[Fred's Hens]

His tail looks kinda messed up to me. It doesn't look "full" at all but he could just be getting picked on. Also, it appears he is holding his wing down too.

Gotta have some experience, I think, in raising out these young K's to perhaps understand their grow out appearances. The tails are sometimes slow to furnish. Given the age of the cockerels shown, waiting to see is the best advice to give. Same with the wings. The weather is too hot and the birds are too young to judge at this point. It's easy to see lots of "faults" at this age, but I assure you, most them are outgrown with time and their final feather moult at 7-9 months. If you judge these males too harshly, too quickly, you'll kill or sell off a bird you really shouldn't have.

 

[Ur-ur-ur-urrr]

Gotta have some experience, I think, in raising out these young K's to perhaps understand their grow out appearances. The tails are sometimes slow to furnish. Given the age of the cockerels shown, waiting to see is the best advice to give. Same with the wings. The weather is too hot and the birds are too young to judge at this point. It's easy to see lots of "faults" at this age, but I assure you, most them are outgrown with time and their final feather moult at 7-9 months. If you judge these males too harshly, too quickly, you'll kill or sell off a bird you really shouldn't have.

+1. Make note of how they progress, and realize there will times when they can/will go in the opposite direction. The only way to know what they will look like once mature is to grow them to maturity. There is no instant gratification in this hobby...

 

[Fred's Hens]

Allow me one more view point on IDing your birds, then I'll just get off the subject.

The purpose of IDing the chicks right through to maturity is to know the pedigree and to observe the birds by some method. Eggs have a penciled code for both the sire and the dam. I punch all the chicks on day two or three in the brooder. The toe punch codes tells me the dam and the sire. This is essential for pedigree breeding and is a big step up from either flock breeding or small pen breeding. Most folks can tell you who the sire is, but haven't a specific answer as to who the dam was and again, this is MY personal prejudice, but I cannot over stress the importance of the dam. The secret is in the dam with most of the breeds I have worked with through the years. There's a famous book by that title that I recommend to all those serious about breeding for breed improvement.

Once the brooder grouping is moved out, I like the colorful little zip ties to ID chicks for many purposes. The color can represent the brooder batch. I can add a second color on the left or on the right to ID something I need to "see" without gathering up the chick to read the punch. I can add a third color if I tag a chick for a particular reason such as size or fast feathering.

At 9 weeks, those all get cut off and replaced with small numbered bandettes and with a new zip tie, pulled very loosely. Now remember, if you're only raising out 10 or 12 birds a year? This is pretty needless fussiness. This suggests one has 50 to 250 chicks to keep records on. Chicks can grow out just fine without any bands at all. You won't have to worry about them getting hung up on something. If they're toe punched, that's all that's needed. The bands on juveniles is for evaluation or other breeder record keeping purposes, something a backyarder doesn't really need to do.

I have personally had too much bad experience with spiral bands. I won't get into all the horrors, but suffice to say, folks can do whatever they wish or find workable, as you feed them, they're yours, but I completely ditched the use of the things after a horrible, one year experimentation with them. Awful things. Anyhow.....

When I finally gather up the "finalists" for conditioning for a show stretch, I clean them up. New show bands will go on just before packing them up for the show. If I wished to invest in crimp on metal bands with the tool, I would do so. Those bands are on for good and they're much good to be said for them. The ABA sells bands to their members and folks rave about them. I've not ordered any yet, but might do so next year, as they are year specific.