The IMPORTED ENGLISH Orpington Thread

[rachelsflock]

Good to know. I like to get attached to my breeders, and I'm soft for the males once they get past the annoying phase. If it stays for more than a year or two and is sweet tempered I can't bear to kill it.
I'm lucky. Our roosters don't start crowing until sometime around 6-8 months so I let them all get big and beautiful...at least until the noise or bickering annoys me. We still haven't gotten through the meat phase of this roaster, but soup is on the menu this week.

Your guy is beautiful. I love it when the roosters get old enough to calm down and understand you're their partner in keeping everything safe and stable and then you CAN handle them without terrifying or upsetting them (lol, that plays a big role in the whole getting attached thing). Our last cock was like that, so when I decided to stop with the red cuckoo breeding I offered him for sale and sold him to a friend. I could seriously just walk up and pick him up and carry him around. You can't eat a bird like that.

I really love this branch of the orpington breed.

 

[Faraday40]

The old roo pictured with my daughter on the sofa was always sweet. He & his brother were hatched in spring, but were the only males around that summer. (Former roo was unpredictable & frightened my kids. He never actually attacked a child, but I didn't trust him. He was "given away.") The hens had to wait for the spring chicks to grow up. That particular rooster has been my daughter's fav since hatch. He started crowing at 9 weeks and was mating between 10-12 weeks old! A true over-achiever. I knew it was him because we were seeing fertile eggs but got rid of the former roo 4.5 months prior. The rest of our roosters usually start crowing between 5-8mo, and mating a few weeks after that.

During that 1st summer, I was honestly nervous about his level of testosterone, so kept the brother as a back up just in case. The young cockerel was very attentive to the mature hens (ignored pullets of his same age) and was always the gentleman. When we hit the 6 month mark, the brother also began mating/crowing, but still they never fought. I guess they worked everything out in the brooder. Around 12 mo, with peak spring hormones, the brother did a minor food challenge that lasted less than 2 min. No blood, feather loss, or even a nicked comb and everything was back to normal.

We can simply bend down & pick up any of our roosters. Even the one unpredictable roo wasn't all bad. He was just going through his 1st rush of spring love and had an intense hatred of the pooper scooper. I just felt with so many wonderful, gentle roosters out there, why should we put up with a hormonal one? Our old roo got an injury two years ago. He has a limp which is the main reason why he's semi-retired. His great grandson and our laced orp will be the breeders this year.

 

[Curnow]

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!)

So glad to read this! Meat is one of the reasons we added English Orpintons to our flock!

 

[kidcody]

Yes, red leakage has been seen many times over and over. This does not go away on its own. This chicken should not be used for breeding as this is considered major red leakage, sorry, but from time to time this does happen. Just make this chicken a pet and do not use for breeding as this will surface over and over for many generations to come. I wish you all the best, but this is all apart of the learning curve of breeding the English Orp.

 

[Faraday40]

Yes, red leakage has been seen many times over and over. This does not go away on its own. This chicken should not be used for breeding as this is considered major red leakage, sorry, but from time to time this does happen. Just make this chicken a pet and do not use for breeding as this will surface over and over for many generations to come. I wish you all the best, but this is all apart of the learning curve of breeding the English Orp.

Here's what my "Dinner" looks like now. The leakage looks like pretty lacing. I'm beginning to wonder if I accidentally set one of my blue pullet's egg. (If her eggs were large enough to look like my mature lav hen eggs at that time.) Genetically, the blue's a rainbow mix of colors and if the mom, it might explain what I'm seeing. The blue had a mauve mom with a recessive white gene & a lav dad. So I'm guessing my blue orp could produce a lav chick = who is now the male pictured below.
(The only other option is that my very young laced orp cockerel mated a lav hen in the fall...... but my laced orp should not have any lav genes. Highly doubtful, but I did get the eggs from another person, so I do not know the full genetic history.)

If I didn't know better, I'd think he was an Isabel Orp. I'm hoping to find a family flock in need of a good rooster. (He's fine with kids & dogs, so I think he'd make a good backyard protector. He's very tall, almost 5 mo old, and gets along with the other roos here. He'll be HUGE when he eventually fills out.)

close up of feathers.

This is the guy (2 mo old, black/lav split), I'll grow out & probably breed. The only thing I dislike so far is his beak. (Left side has some white) Hopefully that can be bred out.

 

[Faraday40]

Having issues with fertility, so I did some more feather trims. This time on the hens.

Here's my very personal question: Is this enough trimming? (pic below) I don't want the hens to lose their pretty fluffy-pantiloons, but I do want to get some hatchable eggs.

Spoiler: warning: chicken butt pics

I trimmed above & below. I've done it in the past to reduce sticky poop, but never needed to for fertility. None of the trimming shows unless her tail is lifted like below pic.

 

[Faraday40]

Here are some of the chicks from a test hatch.

The two standing in back are from Oopsie. She's a genetically a mauve orp but has a strange recessive white gene - sport? (so she looks creamy-yellow white instead of mauve) and her chicks can be a wide variety of colors. The smaller one laying down is a black orp. Father was likely a lav or blk/lav split orp.

What colors do you think Oopsie's chicks (2 in back) will be?
dark Mauve & Blue?
or
Blue & darker blue?
or
Blue & Black?

The back 2 switched sides for this pic:

Here's a pic of the mom (from 2 years ago) to show her unique color

She looked like a mauve at hatch but feathered in white & stayed that way.

 

[The Moonshiner]

Could Oopsie be a splash mauve?
One chocolate gene and two blue genes?
Just curious

 

[Faraday40]

Could Oopsie be a splash mauve?
One chocolate gene and two blue genes?
Just curious

I'm not sure. I got her as an egg when DD was doing an experiment on chick gender, so I do not know what went into the mix. DD needed to identify gender at hatch, and friend had some orp eggs that would be sex-linked. I think blue was male & mauve = female. There were other chicks that would be barred if male & solid if female. I don't remember all the details. When some of the "mauve chicks" began to grow in white feathers I joked "Oops. It looks like you may have had a visiting rooster." (Hence the name Oopsie.) She's a lovely bird with a sweet personality and one-of-a-kind color. She even went broody for me a few times. Last summer she made black, blue & choc chicks when paired with a lav or blk/lav split. We also got some cinnamon/mauve colored chicks when paired with a double barred choc cuckoo orp male. Like the mom, the mauve cuckoos all feathered in white & were later discovered female. (Never could see the barring, but I also didn't keep any until adulthood.) I think that paring also made choc cuckoo & black cuckoo chicks.

Would a splash mauve be able to produce all the colors I mentioned? The double barred choc cuckoo also came from the same place as Oopsie & they were able to produce chicks together very similar to Oopsie. That's why I was thinking it was some recessive gene.

 

[The Moonshiner]

No she wouldn't. If she was splash she could only pass one blue so she wouldn't produce black chicks even if bred to black rooster.
Back to being mysterious.