Ohhhh, they’re so fluffy and cute! 
Here they are currently. You can see crests, beards, muffs, feet feathered to varying degrees, and awesome adult coloring. I cannot wait to see the egg colors.
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We have totally mixed chickens, like 30 commercial breeds and now adding mixed rare breeds. They will be strong through the season’s and lay colored eggs. So much fun.
How do we add photos to these posts?
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Nice flock!!
I’m on a phone. You add photos by pushing the symbol with the up arrow on the right side of the line with the reply button.
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The Mottled Java’s both died. One went broody and stayed broody, died on the nest.
I currently have two chicks that are Biel x Black Australorp. I gave her 4 eggs and she hatched 4, but two were apparently crushed or trampled by the other chickens. They’re both black, with traces of mottling like their father, and currently 4 weeks old.
I gave the Jersey Giant roo to my sister and he was taken by a predator. We’re currently trying to hatch out his babies, which will give me two unrelated lines–JG x RIR, and Biel x BA.
A month or so ago I got 5 16 week cockerels, a Bielefelder x Dominique cross. I am now down to 3.
Yesterday I let them out to free range, primarily to see how they interact. All three are apparently very laid back. They’re interested in the girls, but when the pullets run they don’t chase them down. They had one brief tussle with the primary roo, and since then no problems.
I’ve seen them tit-bitting, wing dancing, but when the girls ignore them they don’t push it.
They’re smaller than I would like, about 5 pounds fully feathered. They look larger because of the density of their feathers. They’re tall and thin rather than chunky like the Biel, who probably tops out at 9-10 pounds.
So at this point I have 3 mixes. A Biel x Black Australorp (2 chicks), a Jersey Giant x RIR (2 chicks), and a Biel x Dominique. I want the rose comb, since it gets so cold here, but I also want a dual purpose bird, which the Dominique does not appear to be.
I need to decide whether introducing the smaller size is worth getting the rose comb into the mix.
What are the roosters like around each other? Will they tolerate other roosters around? If so, that will help a lot with maintaining genetic diversity in your flock.
My Biel rooster seems to be tolerating them, but he’s on edge and trying to keep his girls away.
After a little flurry when I first let them out, they seem to be tolerating him as well. The girls are standoffish so far, and don’t seem interested.
They’re pretty much keeping to themselves at the moment. We’ll see how it works out.
Great to hear. I would love this trait if I ever have chickens again! Did you read Temple Grandin’s chapter on rapist chickens evolving in modern breeds because of selection towards more eggs? I forget the term, like a co-gene.
Not surprised. The oldest breeds don’t seem to have this trait, even if they lay a lot of eggs.
Another thing I think has been inadvertently selected for is a dislike of chicks. Not just chickens that don’t go broody, but chickens that will try to kill any chicks in their vicinity, even their own.
Oy! That sounds like an unfavorable trait.
When I was a kid, we had a rooster that was really bad about that. He was like Herod the Great or one of those other rulers who went nuts and started killing off their own heirs out of fear of betrayal or something…
He was also really aggressive, and for a long time when I was older made me think I didn’t want to get chickens of my own because of those childhood memories.
Now, I simply wouldn’t keep a rooster like that, but I don’t think my parents knew enough at the time to understand or expect it could/should be different. It was their first attempt to raise chickens, I think.
But of you’re not breeding for sustainability, it doesn’t matter. Chickens with those traits are unlikely ever to see a chick.
Yeah, makes sense. In the same way that in plants, dependence on plastic doesn’t matter if you plan to grow things surrounded by plastic no matter what.
One more JGxRIR chick hatched this morning. That’s the last, as the Jersey Giant roo was taken by a predator. So a total of 3 from 16 pullet eggs–the eggs were tiny, so we didn’t expect a high hatch rate.
One of the BxBA chicks was taken by a hawk, so down to 1 there. Or I assume it was a hawk. Four weeks before the JGxRIR group can go outside.
I am replacing the Bielefelder roo with two Biel x Dominique cockerels at 22 weeks. No sign of human aggression, no sign of hen aggression, they don’t chase the girls down or forcibly mate them. I put the Biel roo in the bachelor pad tonight and put the others in the coop.
So next spring we should get our first 3 way crosses. If I can get the 2nd coop built, the JG x RIR will go there. If one of them turns out to be a cockerell, I’ll cross him with another breed for the 2nd population group, then rotate cockerells every generation.
If that happens, I’m seriously considering getting another breed to replace the JG pullets in the Biel group. Orpingtons, maybe, or Buckeyes for their supposed foraging ability. Otherwise the population will be weighted heavily toward JG’s. Marans?
Currently group 1 is Biel x Dominique cockerels, pullets are Jersey Giant (2), Black Australorp (3), Bielefelder (1, but I won’t set any of her eggs), RIR (1) and a single Biel x BA chick pullet at 7 weeks.
Hi! It’s interesting to hear what all of you have been doing with chickens. We have also been working towards a landrace for several years. We’re selecting the best hens mostly for how well they keep laying during winter, without extra lighting. (We keep them in a place where we have no electricity.) We always have several that keep laying even through the shortest days of the year. This tells me that more of them should be able to do it as well.
We have around two hundred hens which we keep in two groups of 100. We started with White Chantecler, Blue Australorp and Dominique. We let them decide how to mix it up. Since that beginning, we also added Plymouth rock, Sasso, Bresse, Rhode Island Red and Black Australorp. Every year we try to find roosters from other small flocks that have good hardiness and winter egg laying traits which we will add to the mix.
I’m curious how other small farmers select for hens that lay well all winter. With a couple hundred hens you can’t tell them all apart so we band them with numbered plastic leg bands. We have been using trap nests which catch the hens when they go into the nest to lay an egg. While we’re doing a trapping cycle (usually about 7 to 10 days) we have to go and gather the eggs and let the trapped hens out of the nests. We always check that they did actually lay an egg so we know that the ones we caught are laying. However, sometimes they escape after laying so maybe we have to work a little more on trap design.
This method is imperfect and takes a lot of time. Does anybody have a better way to sort hens for the better layers?
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My brain runs to paint or some other kind of marker when they go in the nesting box. At the end of two weeks (?) anybody without body paint is separated out because they’re not laying.
If egg laying is your primary criteria, anybody not actively molting in the second group goes away unless there’s a very specific reason to keep her.
I hadn’t thought of paint. I know sheep breeders use paint on the ram to know when the ewes are in heat. However, the hens do sometimes go into the nest but don’t lay an egg. Or they sometimes even eat their egg, we have discovered. We are definitely also selecting for various other criteria but egg laying and egg eating are some of the harder ones to determine.