I have this Lemon Orpington (she's actually a 2nd gen lemon cuckoo orpington, and how I got her is kind of a long and not very interesting story...) who was one of the first chickens I got. Because she is very unique (and valuable, for a chicken...) I've been very protective of her. But I'm starting to wonder if she may be a bit of a dud. Here are my concerns:
-Even though she is much larger than all the other hens and 2 weeks older, her comb hasn't grown and gotten red like everyone else.
-I've never seen the roosters pay any attention to her at all (if you know what I mean...).
-So far as I know, she lays really erratically. She laid the first egg, although I didn't know it at the time because it was a shell-less egg and all I found was a pile of goo (no yolk, either, that I could see...) that I thought was a really weird poo. Then from what I could tell her next eggs were as follows: soft shelled egg, porous egg, bumpy egg, possibly a few regular eggs, then one really odd one that was thin shelled MOSTLY but the top (the narrow part) was soft shelled. I know that the common advice for this problem is more calcium, but they have free choice oyster shell AND I sprinkle ground roasted egg shells on their food, and all the rest of the hens eggs have fine (possibly even super hard- I know they're much harder than grocery eggs) shells.
-To me she just looks funny, but I don't know much about the breed standards and what they're supposed to look like. Like is she supposed to be so large bodied with that skirt of feathers around the bottom?
Behaviorally she acts just like all the other chickens- there are no problems that I've noticed.
If anyone has any input/perspective on this I would love to hear it. As she is the largest hen and my goal is to breed for a meatier bird, I would love to keep her for breeding (and I have thought more than once about starting a lemon cukoo orp breeding group, but I go back and forth on it...), but with these kinds of problems should I cull her, or rehome her?
Here's a picture:
-Even though she is much larger than all the other hens and 2 weeks older, her comb hasn't grown and gotten red like everyone else.
-I've never seen the roosters pay any attention to her at all (if you know what I mean...).
-So far as I know, she lays really erratically. She laid the first egg, although I didn't know it at the time because it was a shell-less egg and all I found was a pile of goo (no yolk, either, that I could see...) that I thought was a really weird poo. Then from what I could tell her next eggs were as follows: soft shelled egg, porous egg, bumpy egg, possibly a few regular eggs, then one really odd one that was thin shelled MOSTLY but the top (the narrow part) was soft shelled. I know that the common advice for this problem is more calcium, but they have free choice oyster shell AND I sprinkle ground roasted egg shells on their food, and all the rest of the hens eggs have fine (possibly even super hard- I know they're much harder than grocery eggs) shells.
-To me she just looks funny, but I don't know much about the breed standards and what they're supposed to look like. Like is she supposed to be so large bodied with that skirt of feathers around the bottom?
Behaviorally she acts just like all the other chickens- there are no problems that I've noticed.
If anyone has any input/perspective on this I would love to hear it. As she is the largest hen and my goal is to breed for a meatier bird, I would love to keep her for breeding (and I have thought more than once about starting a lemon cukoo orp breeding group, but I go back and forth on it...), but with these kinds of problems should I cull her, or rehome her?
Here's a picture:
