These chickens are not true Barred rocks right? I bought them from Rural King as 3 day old chicks in February 2023. Supposedly from Mt. Healthy.

[Kathy Coan]

 

[JedJackson]

No, not barred rocks. They look like maybe some type of dual purpose meat strain like Rainbows.

 

[nuthatched]

Looks like the store ordered a BBQ special or whatever its called. They're designed mote for meat but they will live fine unlike Cornish X

 

[Kathy Coan]

I have had rainbows they didn't look like this either. But agree they are some sort of dual purpose bird. These birds are huge at 8 weeks old.

 

[ShrekDawg]

They could be Golden Cuckoo Marans maybe? Or Black Sex Link males. The hatchery doesn’t appear to carry any barred meat birds.

 

[Kathy Coan]

I have found out what breed this is from Mt. Healthy

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Unless they're really poorly bred, those birds don't look like Bielefelders at all. Bielies should have a gold crele pattern, not just barred with gold and silver leakage as these birds have, and none of the males in your pictures appear to have the right number of barring genes for pure Biele roosters.

But to be fair, that rooster they show in their Bielefelder listing is also not a pure Bielefelder, so who knows?

If I had to guess, I would also say they're likely meat hybrids, but Mt. Healthy doesn't have anything like them in their catalog. Maybe they were mistaken and got them from another hatchery?

 

[Kathy Coan]

I don't know. The kid that was helping couldn't tell me much. They weren't marked on a sign. I asked to make sure if they were barred rock straight run and the kid said yes. I used the feather I'd tactic and was able to pick out 8 pellets out of 10. Not bad for my first time. Lol. However I have had barred rocks in the past and they were never this huge at 8 weeks.

 

[FunClucks]

I don't know. The kid that was helping couldn't tell me much. They weren't marked on a sign. I asked to make sure if they were barred rock straight run and the kid said yes. I used the feather I'd tactic and was able to pick out 8 pellets out of 10. Not bad for my first time. Lol. However I have had barred rocks in the past and they were never this huge at 8 weeks.

I went to TSC once. I knew more about chickens than the salesperson did and I'd only started learning about chickens a few weeks previously. I took that as a sign not to believe anything he said.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I don't know. The kid that was helping couldn't tell me much. They weren't marked on a sign. I asked to make sure if they were barred rock straight run and the kid said yes. I used the feather I'd tactic and was able to pick out 8 pellets out of 10. Not bad for my first time. Lol. However I have had barred rocks in the past and they were never this huge at 8 weeks.

Yeah, they're definitely not Barred Rocks with all those different colors and the males not being pure for barring. Marans can similarly be ruled out, and because Marans have white skin, not yellow skin.

Feather sexing by the wing feather pins doesn't work for all chicks, for the record; it requires that the parents have the correct genetics to make a sexlinked cross for feathering speed in their offspring, and otherwise works about as well as flipping a coin. Sometimes you do get lucky and get tails 8 times out of 10 flips.