The IMPORTED ENGLISH Orpington Thread

[Lelanae]

Faraday that is so funny! I have never seen a coro sussex hen or lavender orp hen in person either! I had hopes, but lost my lavender pullet and coro-sussex -probably- cockeral- to my dog.
One of my two partridge girls survived that attack--I grabbed a picture of her for you today, but her lacing looks pretty bad in the areas I kept heavily blu-coted. I love her neck. Azalea had a black rather than a red neck , which I didn't like so much, but she was a real dragon lady when broody!

 

[Curnow]

Can anyone tell me if this is typical red leakage on this blue roo? It kind of has a pattern to it in his lower breast area. How might this effect breeding....especially for splash. Just breeding for myself mind you....but curious how it may carry through.
Sorry for the horrid pictures. It is below freezing and very windy here, and some didn't want to brave it outside.

 

[Faraday40]

Can anyone tell me if this is typical red leakage on this blue roo? It kind of has a pattern to it in his lower breast area. How might this effect breeding....especially for splash. Just breeding for myself mind you....but curious how it may carry through.
Sorry for the horrid pictures. It is below freezing and very windy here, and some didn't want to brave it outside.

View attachment 1225936

i'm dealing with the same ??? I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but I have a young cockerel with some gold leakage. It's pretty & looks like lacing, but not the genetics I want to breed. Hopefully some one here with more experience can answer your ?s. (Or you can just breed him for yourself & post pics when the offspring mature.)

Here's my strange 14.5 week old lavender boy. (The other lav sibling is hopefully a male. The wattles say male, but the stance & lack of saddle feathers are making me nervous.... I don't need another lav pullet!)

 

[Curnow]

i'm dealing with the same ??? I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but I have a young cockerel with some gold leakage. It's pretty & looks like lacing, but not the genetics I want to breed. Hopefully some one here with more experience can answer your ?s. (Or you can just breed him for yourself & post pics when the offspring mature.)

Here's my strange 14.5 week old lavender boy. (The other lav sibling is hopefully a male. The wattles say male, but the stance & lack of saddle feathers are making me nervous.... I don't need another lav pullet!)
View attachment 1225950 View attachment 1225951 View attachment 1225952

Does lavender yellow in the sun? That looks like the yellowing my white sultans get from spending time in the sun. The ones that stay in the house are snow white....the roo that spends more time outside yellows on his head, neck, and back.

 

[Faraday40]

Does lavender yellow in the sun? That looks like the yellowing my white sultans get from spending time in the sun. The ones that stay in the house are snow white....the roo that spends more time outside yellows on his head, neck, and back.

In this case, my cockerels feathers are growing in that color. The chick down & 1st feathers were normal lav, but around 11 weeks old I saw sprouts of gold feathers. I believe it's genetic, so I won't be breeding him. I'll probably let him grow out a little more, because it is such an interesting look.
9.5 weeks

11 weeks

 

[Lelanae]

So how is yellow "leakage" different than Isabel coloration--which looks to my (uneducated) eye like yellow and lavender?

 

[Faraday40]

So how is yellow "leakage" different than Isabel coloration--which looks to my (uneducated) eye like yellow and lavender?

Good Point. LOL

There are such designer colors out there that people spend years of selective breeding to achieve. They're considered "project colors" at this time. I guess technically lavender is also considered a project color but lavs have been around a while and there's a decent demand for them in my area.

I did not try to get this outcome. It really surprises me that this gold showed up. I agree that it looks pretty and for that reason I want to see how he looks when he matures. It's a really neat gold lacing effect. However, it's not a breeding project that I want to get into.

 

[EdenCamp]

ISO Nice LF English Orpington cockerel from pure black lines. Any one have an extra they could part with? In Missouri but will travel or ship right boy.

 

[rachelsflock]

Hi out there! From what I've seen it's not always spoken about on this thread, but this past week we processed one of my cockerels. He'd learned to wait until the other males were on the roost and inch over to them and start pecking their eyes in the semi-darkness until I had a cockerel with bloody face and comb and eyes swollen shut with split eyelids *gasp!* and I worried about others' safety. So a picking chicken is still a picking chicken no matter how pretty, so off to processing camp he went!
Anyway, so we wound up with a 5 lbs, 8 oz roaster from that 10 month bird. I did my usual prep and brined for two days, aged for another day or two in the fridge and roasted at 325 until internal temps reached safe and both light and dark meat was done to our preference.

DANG. DH and I were blown away. My preschool age kids thought it was turkey. This was apparently the best cockerel I'd ever served. They are slightly slimmer than show line sussex cockerels of the same age, but much more tender with an amazing amount of meat, especially on the legs. These are fantastic meat birds, they are winter layers of large eggs, broody, and usually non-aggressive to people and usually peaceful to each other. I'm breeding for conformation, but it was great to know that at their core, they are still a fantastic meat breed. I'm going let my broodies hatch to their hearts' contentment soon just for meat cockerels alone, and probably cull my females more heavily this year (to the layer market, that is). If I really wanted to, I guess I could sell chicks too, but I think I'd rather play the get-more-consistent-good confirmation game this year. We'll see. I have nice birds, but the only way to get them even nicer is by keeping and growing out, not selling-although having more red breeders with nice birds will help down the road. We'll see.

I'm really going to have fun with these all around good birds. I'm so glad I stumbled into them a few years ago. I could have missed finding what I was looking for just because I assumed fluffy birds are only for decoration and show.

(Insert picture of my favorite cockerel here, except it's snowing, gray, cold, and miserable right now so the birds don't want to come out, and neither do I!)

 

[Faraday40]

Congrats on the great dinner.
I've processed my extra males. Around here everyone only wants females. I used to give the males away & then decided to stop throwing away all my feed, time, and money. For the neighbors' sake, I process them young between 10-18 weeks -before crowing & mating. We eat the meat the 1st night but what my family really likes is the soup stock with the bones & neck.

I've also processed an 8mo old male & he was very, very large. Too big for my reg roasting pan, so I had to pull out my turkey roasting pan. The flavor is more intense as they age. After making the stock, I froze it in ice cube trays to dilute with water & use as bouillon cubes.

Yes, Orps are very big, gentle birds. Here's our sweet, old roo who is now more of a pet.