The Rhodebar thread!

[nicalandia]

Quote:
No, we are lucky to have(if you find any) some people breeding Cochins(my pic) and Brahmas,... most people breed GAME breeds and Native stock chickens called Araucanas and Chiricanas but they are not rumpless, they look like EE/Ameraucana and lay blue eggs and have purplish skin(Rapa Nui blood)

 

[ortluk]

This is fascinating...and again I will go back to the premise that crossing a double barred Rhodebar cock/erel with HRIR females, tossing all the F1 males and then backcrossing the F1 pullets to the double barred Rhodebar sire is one way to get F2 autosexing with better type/lay rates?

Keep in mind that when you back cross you are going to lock in the traits of the parent you back cross to. so if you cross the pullets back to the inferior male that you are wanting to improve you will simply lock in the faults of the original cockerel. That's why you use the cockerels in the f1 and back cross them to the HRIR hens that have the traits you want to improve in the strain. and keep repeating that until you have those traits locked in. Then you breed those back to the pure stock and work on getting back your auto sexing without losing the new traits.

 

[DMRippy]

OK trying to get my mind wrapped around this. Are we sure we are looking for a barred RIR????? I think they type would be right but not sure about the coloring.

http://books.google.com/books?id=nA...EwAzgK#v=onepage&q=Rhodebar standards&f=false

Here is another SOP in the UK with a pic of a Male

 

[RedRidge]

Quote:
No, we are lucky to have(if you find any) some people breeding Cochins(my pic) and Brahmas,... most people breed GAME breeds and Native stock chickens called Araucanas and Chiricanas but they are not rumpless, they look like EE/Ameraucana and lay blue eggs and have purplish skin(Rapa Nui blood)

so pardon the naive question but is it possible to receive eggs shipped there?

 

[RedRidge]

If you have quality rir then at a minimum you want one cockerel. You can work with that.

My 2013 pure rhodebar hatches averaged 70%. That worked out great as it gave me a lot of cockerels to choose from. I put many birds in the freezer and kept only 2 of each sex. I did NOT sell my culls as I believe the breed needs so much improvement that that would be inappropriate. I put more than 60 in the freezer. There are a lot of folks selling Rhodebars as eggs or chicks just because they have that breed and are not working towards improving it. This will devalue the breed and create a mess by lowering the standard. This is not a long established breed that has quality and consistency. The genetics are only valuable if they are an improvement on the previous generation. Keeping only the best ones to breed will improve the breed much quicker. Do not breed your third and fourth choice just to put more birds on the ground because what you will be producing will be inferior. No matter how many you hatch each year if you will cull hard and deep then that is the key to improvement. Too many people breed many of (or all) they have of a breed that is not yet consistent in type and quality and all they do is perpetuate the poor quality.

At what age do you butcher the cockerels, and what is the carcass weight?  I'm not yet breeding them, but I might, and that answer is an important one for me.  I have 11 eggs in the incubator now and only planned on keeping the pullets to maturity and then (perhaps) buying a cock/erel from someone local (though there is only one that I know about and not sure if he is a "breeder" or a "producer").

Sorry, I may have missed this post.
The carcasses on the cull cockerels were terrible. .. . Didn't bother weighing them.
This is one of the many things we hope to improve with our HRIR blood since they have such excellent carcasses.

 

[DMRippy]

Redbridge......would you be willing to sell me some f1 crosses with your HRIR or some hatching eggs? Or maybe I can trade you something I have you want?????????

 

[nicalandia]

so pardon the naive question but is it possible to receive eggs shipped there?

yes its possible but very expencive

 

[mrshawman]

~~Ok so my second hatch is going on now. I have 6 hatched so far. This is where it gets confusing to me! The seller gave me 5 Marans eggs because she had no extras. After 2 Rhodebars and 1 Marans had hatched, there was two dark shells and one light. One of the Rhodebars came from a dark egg. It was marked M for marans. After closer look it seems like it is a different color. More like a rir egg. So far 3 males with no head spot 1 female and 2 Marans have hatched. others are coming out soon.

 

[DMRippy]

Marans can hatch wheaten and would look like your roos. even BCM can throw wheatens regularly. wheaten chicks hatch yellow.

 

[mrshawman]

Very interesting. Still no head spots on roos have me puzzled