The IMPORTED ENGLISH Orpington Thread

Faraday40 · May 26, 2020

ColtHandorf said:
Three large dogs tore through all of my friend's coops and outdoor breeding pens. They killed all of his exhibition large fowl Brahmas, Swedish Flower Hens, and all the English Orpingtons. That happened Sunday night and he was bringing them on Monday. .

How devastating!

paxfarms · May 26, 2020

ColtHandorf said:
Yep, I hatch little brown ones out all the time. I have asked a dozen breeders and none of them can tell me why. I too assumes split to Gold-laced, but the chicks feather in Silver-laced. Mine also carry recessive white, which makes everything fun when eggs start hatching. There are a couple of mixes (black and blue chicks) but all the others are White or Silver-laced.

Prudence is still setting. And I got some pine bedding finally to try and set Duchess up. She’s such a colossal grump. Lol MovingPrudence was a breeze. I just put a blanket over her box and carried the whole thing to the broody coop. I scooped her out, put her on the eggs, closed the nest box, and that was that. Duchess will be in a more open concept, so I’m going to hope she just sits tight and doesn’t pop off the nest. She’ll be in a quiet space. But not necessarily dark.

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So, do you suppose the brown chicks that are feathering silver are cockerels that are silver split to gold? How would a recessive white work with these birds?

Central Flyway · May 26, 2020

ColtHandorf said:
Sounds like a great introduction. The last hen I introduced integrated fairly well in a day or two. She’s a little smaller and a bit more nervous than my girls, but she’s settled in nicely. I’m getting about three or four eggs a day from the five of them. Provided I don’t go out and find something like this of course...

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I just knew there was one in the nest box because the hay was piled in the middle and the golf ball moved to one side. I poked and prodded with a little stick and nothing happened. I raised up the hay with the stick and the stupid thing struck at me. So after I wrestled it out of the box with the hoe I threw it across the pen and went to town. I had such a horrible day I actually managed to kill it in two swings and took the head completely off. Of course then I was horrified to find out the head was still very much alive. It tracked me and would open its mouth to strike every time I walked past it until I got it on the burn pile and disposed of it in proper fashion with a lot of fire. Gave me the heebie jeebies.

I don’t know what I ever did to deserve so many snakes. Makes me want to ring the whole property in fire. If they can get through that maybe they deserve the eggs. And it’s always the Silver-laced pen. Never the pen being covered by Sterling. Or the Whites. The turkeys haven’t laid an egg in a nest box yet. They just drop them on the ground. You’d think that would be easier to get an eat. But apparently it’s more fun to nearly give me a heart attack by waiting for me to find them in the wall nestboxes. Blech.

What kind of snake is that?

ColtHandorf · May 26, 2020

Faraday40 said:
How devastating!

Very. Like obviously I'm upset for him losing his birds, but I'm pretty bummed out about losing the chance at nearly five-month old Lavender Silver-laced Orpingtons too.

paxfarms said:
So, do you suppose the brown chicks that are feathering silver are cockerels that are silver split to gold? How would a recessive white work with these birds?

My brown chicks have been both pullets and cockerels. I'll see if I can find some of the genetic stuff some people much smarter than me discussed last year when I first started hatching them.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say how would recessive white work with the birds? If two breeding birds have recessive white then a portion of their chicks will get two copies of the white gene, thus feathering in white instead of Silver-laced.

Central Flyway said:
What kind of snake is that?

Rat snake.

Honora · May 28, 2020

Just found a source for hatching eggs from England! Now I have a dozen large & a dozen bantam BBS Orpington eggs on order! Of course I have no more room in my coop so DH will have to start building.

My little buff chick is 3 weeks old now & feathering in fast. I think she’s a pullet.

ColtHandorf · May 31, 2020

We have babies! Prudence had three peeking out when I checked in her this afternoon. I’ve got some incubator babies too. I’m thinking of slipping them under Duchess, who is not a good setter. She keeps breaking eggs. Maybe 14 was too many for her? But she’s much larger than Prudence. I don’t know. After sitting for a week on eggs and a week in the barn, do you think she’d take chicks?

Faraday40 · May 31, 2020

ColtHandorf said:
After sitting for a week on eggs and a week in the barn, do you think she’d take chicks?

Congrats on the broodies and babies.

If she's been sitting for 2 weeks, then she should be able to adopt chicks. Easiest to do when chicks first hatch. They stay under mama and she gets used to them and even 'talks' to them as they bond. If they're a few days old, the chicks may poke their heads out. Sometimes a new mama will peck at them when they poke out. If that happens, then put them in a darkened place (prevents chicks from wandering out from under mama.)

ColtHandorf · Jun 1, 2020

I sunburned horribly yesterday while working in the yard and I wasn't up for moving the chicks under her last night. I'll sneak them out tonight when it is dark. Prudence has eleven or twelve chicks. She lost one, and I'm not sure why. It was much larger than the other chicks. I haven't seen her get off the nest with them, but I did take the six eggs she had left and put them in the incubator just in case. If she's not brought them out to eat and drink by the time I get home from work I may have to confiscate the little things. Or else lock her out of the coop and give her a box on the ground so the sprouts can wander around eating for themselves. I did have all nine turkey poults hatch. They started two days early so I was so surprised I lost track of the Orpingtons. I don't have a clue how many of them hatched.