Thread: Getting back to living off the land.....

@Coote The old white hen only lays every 2 days and she's been sneaky and stopped laying in the nest box. Typical! I'm not sure whether him or her were fertile (she is old) as I had no fertile eggs from them. I have 5 roosters and 5 hens from bought in eggs from a Rare Breeds Assn member from last year. But typically for Rare Breeds (people who try to make as much as possible from their birds and are economical with the truth...) only 3 hens and 2 roosters have the correct coloured white legs. I wondered why they always fudged around answering my questions about leg colour....

I have one other hen from my strain; but am not sure whether she is an egg eater or not. I had 2 other hens; her and a second one. One only laid pullet sized eggs and one was potentially an egg eater... One died a week or so ago without me discovering which was which. I'll put that remaining hen and the other old girl in separate pens. That way I'll get eggs from the old girl and hopefully discover if the other is the egg eater.

It was so disheartening to not be able to breed for those years. As the numbers dwindled. I will put a rooster from those bought in eggs and try to hatch any eggs. And if she is still laying now they maybe fertile to my (now departed) rooster. It's not quite the same having someone else's strain in your birds; or losing your strain completely. Most breeders off any livestock would know the feeling. But looking after the folks was more important in those years. But I lost 6 years of breeding...
@Micky Duck I'm sweet for Dorkings. I have my old boy and his 2 sons. One of the sons is an absolute stunner... I've only got 3 hens but am going to put eggs in the incubator this week. It was the white Orpingtons that I'm in the shit with a bit. Good ones are like hen's teeth and I had developed a cracker strain over about 5 years of intensive breeding. Most whites have the awful grey legs, but I'd eliminated that and they were looking like Cook's original Orpingtons; not the powder puff show birds...

These are the Dorkings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1mUY4HotbI