Folks, let's just cut straight to heart of the matter, shall we? If you get Barred Rocks or any other variety of Plymouth Rock from a bin at a feed store you cannot expect that the birds are little more than scrubs. That is what Bob Blosl used to call them. I know it's hard for folks new to Standard bred poultry to understand but chicks mass produced by the hatcheries and re-sold at feed stores are generally way, way off. They lack the size, proper shape, distinctiveness of color, barring or pattern features associated with the Rock. There are not likely 6 folks in the United States that have breeding stock of quality Columbian Rocks. Partridge and Buff Rocks are no better off.
Just because a feed store tapes a sign on a bin selling chicks said to be Columbian Rocks doesn't make than even close to what that variety is supposed to be. Same with Partridge Rocks, Buff Rocks, Silver Penciled Rocks, etc. These birds of high quality are extremely rare and those varieties need folks willing to work for years and years and years to restore them to what they should be. In most cases, they are little more than mutts posing as the real deal.
99% of the birds sold as Barred Rocks have so much Dominique and Leghorn mixed in them to zoo up egg production and mass produced for so long that if they birds were not speckled a bit with cuckoo in black and white, no one would peg them for a Barred Plymouth Rock. Most of the females shown on BYC has no barring at all, just some messy, random cuckoo, to say nothing of proper size or type.
It takes a good foundation of stock and a lots and lots of work to keep these birds in proper Rock form. Remember, these breeds are man made, they are not species. The pilgrims didn't find them wandering the woods of the new world. Without dedicated folks working hard to maintain these breeds and varieties, they fall apart into mutt-ville and scrub-dom in fairly short order.
That's what this thread is about. Folks working, sharing and encouraging each other in the preservation and building up of true to standard bred Plymouth Rocks.
