Update -- sexing "production reds"?

[FunClucks]

I had a Production Red rooster for a year, and had to do a lot research to figure out what he was. They are generally known to be docile and tolerant of close confinement, which is very different from RIR, which have a reputation for being mean, especially the roosters. The males are obvious by three weeks (all his mixed breed male chicks, 12/20 had huge pink combs by 3 weeks. Half the pullets' combs were pink and stayed pink from 3 weeks onwards, but comb never grew in size - I kept waiting for them to turn into roosters, but they didn't).

Producers are not too picky about off -traits as long as the egg production is high. My particular PR had black toenails, a black beak and breast feathers, and had blue skin and a blue beak as a chick, all of which was non-standard for RIR but accepted for PR. He looked kind of like a silkie mix for a while, then feathered out like a speckled sussex before turning a deep mahogany red with black tail having green sheen. Several of his chicks also inherited the dark skin coloration, that they've grown out of as they mature.

 

[FunClucks]

Out of left field- but are these maybe mislabeled Red Rangers instead of Production Reds? They seem like pretty hefty boys for their age. Just a Saturday night thought after two glasses of wine!

Yea, they look like some type of meat bird actually. Red Ranger or Rudd Ranger (depending on the hatchery) is a good possibility. Production Reds or RIR - neither of them have that ring of black feathers around their neck where their neck meets their body. If they're not from a hatchery, I'd say they were some type of RIR/Delaware mixes.

Also, chickens 2-5 are totally cockerels.

 

[BastyPutt]

But it goes the other way too. 10% of the pullets may get disposed of as cockerels. So they may be disposing of the same total number of chicks in either case.



Autosexing and sexlink are not the same thing.

Autosexing are the ones that breed true, and you can sex them by color in every generation (examples: Cream Legbar, Bielefelder.) But if you do not specifically select for ones that can be sexed accurately, you end up with some chicks with in-between colorations. Some hatcheries have been sending out "autosexing" chicks that cannot be reliably sexed by color, so I think they must be vent-sexing them. I assume they do whatever is cost-effective, so if they are not using the auto-sexing traits to actually sex the chicks, they presumably have a good reason (maybe the autosexing isn't working well enough, so they don't use it, so they don't select for it, so it doesn't work well, which is a hopeless circle.)

Sexlinks are when you cross one breed or color with a different breed or color, and get chicks that can be sexed in that generation only. You have to keep a breeding flock of each kind, to produce the same cross in later years. So sexlinks require someone to maintain three breeder flocks: one for the father breed, one for the mother breed, and one to produce the actual chicks.

Sexing on the sexlinks is not 100% accurate either. There are some red/yellow chicks that are in the middle (either light females or dark males). There are some black chicks that might have a yellow dot on the head (male) but it's so small it's easy to miss and they get put in the female bin. The yellow dot is harder to see on lighter chick down, so blue sexlinks are harder to sex than black ones.

As usual, great info and insight

 

[Rose_adamaj]

@obdormition Now that your chickens are older, do you know what breed, breeds you have. I am asking because I have some eight week olds who look exactly like a couple of yours.