The Rhodebar thread!

[Ihilani Coffee]

My main goal is autosexing so I can easily figure out if I have pullets or cockerels, but most chicks will be kept "in house" since I feed a lot of eggs to my dogs, and will either eat the cockerels or feed them to the dogs also.

If eating or utilizing chicken for pet food upsets you, please scroll past this post. Hopefully most here are breeders and understand honoring the life of the bird instead of wasting it.


Sidebar question: How do you feed the chickens to the dogs? Dressed/cooked as for humans, raw, or "whole" (with feathers and entrails but not alive)? We have a lot of cockerels (more than the freezer can hold) but I don't want to put my pit mix "on the scent" for live birds since he is so calm with them (even day old chicks). The barn cat gets any small chicks that expire (maybe we should call it "catpiling" instead of "dogpiling?").

Alternately, how does everyone go about finding the "rooster guy" who takes male culls? I would like to be able to recoup some of the cost of keeping them, and get them gone younger. What is a good way to advertise for this? I've tried craigslist but perhaps I'm not speaking to the right audience or it is a regional thing?

 

[Ihilani Coffee]

wOw!!

What's NOT to love?

My first F1s will hatch next weekend from the really gorgeous Padgett X Underwood HRIR. Are you feather sexing at 24 hours, or just waiting for the wing/tail development? I'll take notes from both those and then wait for combs. I'm not in it for the 4 year project, just crossing to the HRIR and then back to the RB.

 

[RedRidge]

 
My main goal is autosexing so I can easily figure out if I have pullets or cockerels, but most chicks will be kept "in house" since I feed a lot of eggs to my dogs, and will either eat the cockerels or feed them to the dogs also.  

If eating or utilizing chicken for pet food upsets you, please scroll past this post.  Hopefully most here are breeders and understand honoring the life of the bird instead of wasting it.


Sidebar question:  How do you feed the chickens to the dogs?  Dressed/cooked as for humans, raw, or "whole" (with feathers and entrails but not alive)?  We have a lot of cockerels (more than the freezer can hold) but I don't want to put my pit mix "on the scent" for live birds since he is so calm with them (even day old chicks).  The barn cat gets any small chicks that expire (maybe we should call it "catpiling" instead of "dogpiling?").

Alternately, how does everyone go about finding the "rooster guy" who takes male culls?  I would like to be able to recoup some of the cost of keeping them, and get them gone younger.  What is a good way to advertise for this?  I've tried craigslist but perhaps I'm not speaking to the right audience or it is a regional thing?

We raise (and process all our meat - beef, lamb, chickens, rabbit - and squirrel and venison, although we don't raise those lol).
I have quite a few Maremma who love chicken. We prices our poultry twice a year and own a chicken plucker which we rent to all kinds of other poultry folks here in TN on the weekends we ate not using it.
so... All chickens for processing get plucked and eviscerated. All organs that are healthy and necks go into separate bags for later use. The carcasses are permitted to relax for 24 hrs on ice and are then frozen. The Maremma get raw necks. .. Their favorite treat! And periodically they will get a raw half carcass (usually once I have cleaned most of the meat off for human consumption - i am generous and do leave a fair amount of meat for them when we have plenty). Chicken must be fed raw to dogs as the bones are plenty soft this way. Never feed cooked chicken bones to a dog.

 

[RedRidge]

wOw!! What's NOT to love? My first F1s will hatch next weekend from the really gorgeous Padgett X Underwood HRIR. Are you feather sexing at 24 hours, or just waiting for the wing/tail development? I'll take notes from both those and then wait for combs. I'm not in it for the 4 year project, just crossing to the HRIR and then back to the RB.

I immediately divided mine into groups of 3... Dark striped, medium color with faint or no stripe, and light/wheaten. I am using only chicks from the darkest group for F1 breeding. In that group I waited about 2 weeks for tail sexing - which was pretty accurate. About 75-80 of my darkest groups have been female in all three hatches. So my F1 breeders will be chosen from those. As an aside... about 90% of the chicks from the medium group have been male... Just an interesting tidbit. ;-)

 

[melroseladi]

wOw!!

What's NOT to love?

My first F1s will hatch next weekend from the really gorgeous Padgett X Underwood HRIR. Are you feather sexing at 24 hours, or just waiting for the wing/tail development? I'll take notes from both those and then wait for combs. I'm not in it for the 4 year project, just crossing to the HRIR and then back to the RB.

F1 cockerels are definitely much more improved and consistent then the pullets are. My hatchlings that had the darkest, widest, and most consistent stripes tended to be female. I think there was 1, maybe 2, that ended up being male out of both hatches. You can id them pretty early by tail growth.

You can see the difference in this pic between male and female
by a couple weeks old. Pullets started feathering out much faster




I have a hard time getting rid of cockerels that I don't want to keep for the freezer, thus one of the reasons I really want a decent autosexing flock. I don't have the room or finances to keep feeding a bunch of cockerels that I won't be able to use. Along with helping out the Rhodebar line, improving them will make the cockerels I do keep much better for the table.

Penny

 

[Cynthia12]

It's buggy me..I'm back with photos of the one that folks thought was a boy at first, and I do understand that as I go through the photos posted here..but I am pretty sure that this is a girl. I love her coloring, even if it's a bad thing. lol...Love love the bars! I sold the darker females. No, I'm not breeding or showing. Just for fun, because she is so pretty. And, she is starting to come around to me. Will be 5 months old in May. Pretty quick here.


So help me, if you guys tell me that it looks like a boy, well..guess I'll keep him to breed
to that HRIR right there. There is more comb on the RIR than the Rhodebar! Same age,
only a couple of weeks apart.

 

[melroseladi]

It's buggy me..I'm back with photos of the one that folks thought was a boy at first, and I do understand that as I go through the photos posted here..but I am pretty sure that this is a girl. I love her coloring, even if it's a bad thing. lol...Love love the bars! I sold the darker females. No, I'm not breeding or showing. Just for fun, because she is so pretty. And, she is starting to come around to me. Will be 5 months old in May. Pretty quick here.


So help me, if you guys tell me that it looks like a boy, well..guess I'll keep him to breed
to that HRIR right there. There is more comb on the RIR than the Rhodebar! Same age,
only a couple of weeks apart.

Looks like a pullet to me. I think the issue with her was she was not easily autosexed as a chick, whereas your darker chick looked female. Autosexing is an extremely important part of the Rhodebar breed that is why it was suggested that regardless if it turned out male or female it would not be good to breed her as a Rhodebar. She is very pretty though.

Penny

 

[nicalandia]

its a pullet

 

[malndobe]

Sidebar question: How do you feed the chickens to the dogs? Dressed/cooked as for humans, raw, or "whole" (with feathers and entrails but not alive)? We have a lot of cockerels (more than the freezer can hold) but I don't want to put my pit mix "on the scent" for live birds since he is so calm with them (even day old chicks). The barn cat gets any small chicks that expire (maybe we should call it "catpiling" instead of "dogpiling?").

It depends. If I am just going to feed the dogs, all I do is butcher the chicken then usually cut the flight feathers off. My dogs will consume the rest and pluck off any other feathers they don't feel like eating. The only issue I have found feeding them like this is if they do eat any flight feathers, those will cause them to throw up later, hence the trimming.

If I plan to eat part of it myself then I will butcher the chicken, do a rough hand pluck, remove the parts I want (I use it skinless), and feed the rest to the dogs.

If I was going to store the chicken for future canine meals I'd do a better cleaning and plucking job just because it seems odd to freeze it "whole". Although I suspect that would work fine, it just seems "wrong" LOL. But with as many dogs as I own, plus rescues that come and go, I would have to butcher a LOT of chickens for them to not be able to consume everything in a day or two.

I haven't found this to have any effect on the dogs behavior towards the chickens. The ones that were trustworthy before being fed this way are still trustworthy. The ones who would happily kill anything they can catch will still do it.

 

[jerryse]

It depends. If I am just going to feed the dogs, all I do is butcher the chicken then usually cut the flight feathers off. My dogs will consume the rest and pluck off any other feathers they don't feel like eating. The only issue I have found feeding them like this is if they do eat any flight feathers, those will cause them to throw up later, hence the trimming.

If I plan to eat part of it myself then I will butcher the chicken, do a rough hand pluck, remove the parts I want, and feed the rest to the dogs.

If I was going to store the chicken for future meals I'd do a better cleaning and plucking job just because it seems odd to freeze it "whole". Although I suspect that would work fine, it just seems "wrong" LOL. But with as many dogs as I own, plus rescues that come and go, I would have to butcher a LOT of chickens for them to not be able to consume everything in a day or two.

I haven't found this to have any effect on the dogs behavior towards the chickens. The ones that were trustworthy before being fed this way are still trustworthy. The ones who would happily kill anything they can catch will still do it.

I do something similar. On older cockerels 6 months and up I skin them cut off wings in the process fillet the breast meat off the bone cut off leg and thigh in one piece and remove meat with two cuts down the length of the bone on each side. Remove heart and liver and feed the raw carcass to my hunting beagles. Same result trustworthy dogs can still be trusted around chickens. I like to crockpot the chicken meat then add cream of chicken soup and veggies. Nothing wasted.