sexlinks

[WLLady]

heritage barred rocks make a lovely roasting chicken. i've never put one on the scale, but the boys are heavy. they're nice and tall, and at least the lines i got are very friendly. the girls are a bit smaller, but the older girls can dress out to 4 pounds! too big for my crockpot. not the best broodies though.

from the sexlinked matings that skinny rooster did, the boys would all be striped (barred)-and size between RIR and BR adult males. i've done this cross-it's the first step into my rhodebar project, and i still have the sexlinked girls from it. they lay amazing, and the colour sheen on that black is gorgeous. plus some gold hackle leakage...love them. they forage awesome and lay really well. all you need is a nice RIR boy, and a few BR girls. that's only 3-4 birds LOL (yes, i'm enabling). you can't develop a sexlinked line...you always have to work from the parent breeds....
i needed the boys from that cross to start the rhodebars, and all those were barred black/white and some had a little bit of mahogany leakage here and there from the RIR in them. all were exceedingly big nice birds, i did freezer camp them....nice and heavy by 20 weeks, even at 16 weeks they had enough breast meat to make it worthwhile. much heavier at 24 weeks though.

[thegawd]

Sent ya a PM Kathy

[Skinny rooster]

I hope lying in bed thinking about breeding results is not weird because I do it all the time. If the chicks were black with a yellow spot on the head, they turned into the dark barred roosters, if the chicks were dark brownish with a yellow spot on the head, they became a white barred rooster. They grew pretty good, a little faster than their pure barred rock half brothers.

[WLLady]

lying in bed thinking about chickens is normal isn't it? i thought those that didn't were the not normal ones.......?

[thegawd]

:rofl1: PHEW! well im glad to be normal then!

[heyden]

Roosters should be barred like the hens

[Skinny rooster]

Many times people who have the red or black sex links, become attached to them and want chicks off their favorite pets. The books however always say not to breed these chickens because the offspring will not be predictable in their production, growth etc. This is true.....but only if you breed them to the roosters that hatch with them because they will be sex link also. If you have black sex link hens that are your favourite pets and want grand-chicks (lol), breed them back to the foundation breed, use a barred rock rooster, the hens will come out looking like barred rocks and will be good layers, (been there done that) and if you have red sex link hens, use a Rhode island red rooster, the daughters will look like a Rhode island red hen or like a darker red sex link. They will be good layers as well. Been there done that also and worked well.

[WLLady]

ha ha, yes, skinny rooster i have been there too! LOL. my layer coop is made up of a pile of birds generated just this way.

[heyden]

I have no extra black australorp rooster at this time will I splash orpington rooster used on barred rock hens give me blue sexlinks?

[Robbie]

If you cross the RIR rooster to the barred hens, you'll get sex links- the cockerels will be barred, the hens will be black. You'll have red leakage in both. If you do it the other way around, and cross the barred rock rooster to a RIR hen, you'll have all barred chicks (with red leakage too).