CalebHello,
I wanted to introduce myself. I'm Caleb Englin from South Dakota. I am fairly new to poultry but have been learning everyday from reading forums like this or in my everyday experiences.
I started a few years ago with barred rocks from a Guy Roy strain. The a couple years ago I got some chicks from Jeremy Woepple and have been improving them. I struggle with what to cull for and what to "live with" I can't stand ugly headed poultry or bad tails so that has been what I have been working on. It's difficult with the barreds due to their slow feathering.
I added partridge rocks that Don Ryan (white Wyandotte breeder) had been working on. He said one hen came from Joel Gillman and I'm not sure of the rest.
Last year I added some white rocks from Jeremy again and a Gillman hen that I picked up along the way.
Below are a couple white pullets and a partridge pullet that I raised this year. I am new to this so any suggestions or critiques would be helpful?
Anyway, here they are.
This is a solid woepple female
This is a woepple x Gillman female. I like her the best, she the biggest, widest skilled female I have. I would like to see her wider coming out of her tail and her comb isn't perfect.
Here is a partridge pullet. I like her length of back and tail. She's decent headed, couple be darker in color and wider tailed, she's not holding her tail up but she usually isn't bad at that. Apparently didn't want to show off.
This is a 3/4 woepple 1/4 Roy barred pullet. Her tail is still coming in but I like her.
Like I said this is how I see the birds and I am still learning. Any comments would be great.
Thanks for looking and look forward to keeping up in plymouth rocks
Caleb
Welcome to the wonderful and overwhelming hobby of raising LF Rocks. Joe and Fred have certainly said a mouthful already and to that I can't add much.
One thing I did notice was you said you raised about 200 chicks total, so I'm assuming roughly 70 of each variety. How are you set up for space? I raise LF Columbian Rocks and the reason for my question is this....in my first 3 seasons of breeding this variety, I would hatch 150-175 chicks/yr....JUST Columbians, to keep 5-6. The variety was in that bad a shape and it took that many to see real improvement.
Keeping multiple varieties will definitely require a lot of space. Just a thought here....the whites (Woepell and many others) are in pretty good shape and you can always get good quality ones IF NEED BE, the next variety in decent shape would be the barreds, same story. However, the partridge are in nearly as bad a shape as the Columbians. SO, what if you took on a plan to raise only a few barred and a few whites each yr, but focused your time/energy/space/attention to the partridge. Raise a BUNCH and cull heavily
What you would learn with the partridge could be easily transitioned to the other varieties when you are ready....I just hate to see you get started and become overwhelmed in a very short period of time and that is EASY to do with multiple breeds or varieties.
BTW - I don't know much about Reds, but I think crossing a Red to the Partridge would be a major mistake....I think you can fix them using Rocks
Best of luck,
Scott
aka Yard Full o' Rocks
This way, you could keep what you have going, but focus in one area