The Sussex thread!

[Flaisure]

This is my Sweetie. She is a year and a half.

 

[Leela NH]

The only thing that I'm a little concerned about is her appearance. She has a mostly white belly and looks nothing like those pretty pics I have seen. At about what age do they outgrow their baby feathers and look like pretty adults?

Also about how long do they take to lay the 1st egg.

She will get her first true feathers around 3-4 months. The white on chest will go away. Different lines mature at varied times. Hatchery birds generally mature and produce earlier. Exhibition lines usually lay first egg around 6-8 months depending on the time of year they hatch. If I hatch chicks in May or June, they generally don't lay until the following early spring. If I hatch in Jan-March, they will start laying that fall.

All the best,

Leela

 

[3riverschick]

Leela is Right,
Historically speaking, in the Sussex breed, the best winter layers are hatched in March.
Best,
Karen

 

[LeeRoadPoultry]

Do you have a copy of the American Poultry Association Standard of Perfection? If you are in the US it should be your first purchase as a new breeder. You can find a ton of info there about how to breed to standard. 
I can't really start selecting until at least 26 weeks. If I see defects, bad faults or birds that are just not up to size for age then they are culled. 

The hardest part of breeding is keeping the males long enough to make a really informed decision. Even at one year sometimes they will fool you...and going into year two as well. 
Some good changes, some not so good. 

Females I can't get a really good grasp on until they start laying and they have their first molt. 

This means hanging on to the better birds for longer than most breeds. 

Feel free to post pics and we can try to help you with critiques. 

Leela
Kindred Hill Farm, NH

I have been relying on resources here and what I can find online. I've been going through the pullets recently since they are getting close to 12 weeks and already have them sorted in my mind for body length/width. I only have two Roos. One with this batch of pullets and one about 2 yo.
When do you consider them adult?
Am I wasting my time because I'm not dealing with special birds?
Only hatchery stock from 4 different hatcheries.

 

[MarshallPrime]

Im in northern indiana and am looking to get some speckled sussex to breed a little and for my kids to show NEXT summer in 4-H. I have cream legbar, black copper marans and blue laced red wyandotte so Im looking for my 4th breed.

If anyone has hatching eggs for sale or chicks, please message me. I could be convinced to take older birds if of good quality and breed them for chicks. Im flexible.


thanks so much.

-Matt

 

[RoosterCogburn7]

Yes, I have a flock of Coronation Sussex, I am hatching a set to check fertility and am pleased my boys are doing their job. A lot of little fuzzy Coronation Sussex hatching.

 

[3riverschick]

Hi ,well it's hatch day here and we have 14 chicks out so far. 7 pure English strain Light Sussex (yellow) . 7 Light Sussex/Cuckoo Marans cross (black) which have been sold. can anybody tell me what the sex might be on the black ones? am I looking at five males and two females? what does the white dot on the head signify?
thank you,
Karen

 

[Faraday40]

Hi ,well it's hatch day here and we have 14 chicks out so far. 7 pure English strain Light Sussex (yellow) . 7 Light Sussex/Cuckoo Marans cross (black) which have been sold. can anybody tell me what the sex might be on the black ones? am I looking at five males and two females? what does the white dot on the head signify?
thank you,
Karen

Congrats on the hatch!

The white dot on head usually means the chick will have barring when it grows its feathers. It can be a sex-link trait if you specifically breed for it..

Overly simplified: purebred barred hen mated with a purebred solid rooster = male chicks with head spot (later barring on feathers) & female chicks that are solid (no head spots). It only makes sexlinks that 1st generation, because the hybrid offspring don't breed true. However, it's convenient when you can identify gender at hatch.

If reversed and it's the rooster that's barred x solid hen, then some or all the chicks will have barring, but it won't be a sexlink trait.

 

[3riverschick]

Oh nuts. that means I have 5 cockerels and two pullets. well the lady is not going to want five cockrels,I don't think. but maybe she'll take a trio. I still have three or four eggs left to hatch ,so hopefully I'll get another pullet.
can you remember about the temperature? is it the higher temperature that affects the the females or is that the lower temperature in the incubator than affects the females ?
thanks,
Karen

 

[Faraday40]

Oh nuts. that means I have 5 cockerels and two pullets. well the lady is not going to want five cockrels,I don't think. but maybe she'll take a trio. I still have three or four eggs left to hatch ,so hopefully I'll get another pullet.
can you remember about the temperature? is it the higher temperature that affects the the females or is that the lower temperature in the incubator than affects the females ?
thanks,
Karen

I think that's only when hatching reptiles. Chicks tend to need a pretty consistent temp. With chickens 1-2 degrees off can ruin your hatch. However, I did read something about egg storage a while back. I think it said that a higher % of females hatched when eggs were stored in less than optimal temps prior to incubation. (Perhaps it was storing at 50'F instead of 60'F) Most likely it just killed off some of the weaker males, so a higher % of females hatched. I never tried it, though.

The only theory we tried was the one about the eggs' shape. (You know, that pointy eggs are male & rounded ones are female.) Our daughter measured, calculated ratios, and observed egg shape. For every trial she saved up a week's worth of each hen's eggs to compare them to each other and look for subtle differences. In the end (after predicting, hatching, and growing out over 100 chicks) her predictions were only 45% accurate. She could have gotten better results if flipping a coin! We were both honestly hoping there was some merit to it, but the results proved otherwise. However, she worked on her project for over 8 months and made great effort to control the variables. She won several awards for her "Myth busters" type experiment.