[Barrett]

Hello, I have a few chickens about 25 in all some bought and some hatched myself, My cockerel is a Light Sussex I find them very good natured cockerels and gentle with the girls I have a mixture of light sussex, sussex rangers, marans and my favourite Specklady they have to be the funniest hens ever they each have there own personnality's, the lastest cross Light Sussex with the Specklady is superb the girls will give you lovely large brown eggs super yolks and amongst the hatching's we had a cockerel who is a fab size will be a lovely table bird.  I would love some knowledge of vaccinations for chickens please there are so many vaccinations which is the best one to give to your birds.

[Mays]

thank you for all the advice, I decided to stick with the cream legbars, as I know they can cross with the RIR well, plus I get funky eggs that i like. I am also going to try the Orpington Bantams which I am going to keep purebred for now

[Hatty]

My brain is fried and I only read the thread not the book!!!

So has anyone suggestions to help me decide what hens to get I have a Light Sussex Cockerel with some ex-bat hens but have room for about 6 more hens and would like to add 2 or 3 more breeds to the flock, 1 will probably be a couple of LS hens  which other breeds would give me interesting colours of either eggs or hens?

[Mays]

Welll! Here is an update 

Shortly after I posted this, I was given some hens -  Silver Laced Wynadotte,White Light Sussex and a Speckeldy (as it turns out!)

My RIR cockeral got right down to business, so it wasnt long before I could collect eggs to hatch

Of the 14 eggs I incubated, 3 were not fertile, 3 didnt hatch, of the 8 that did hatch four were clearly male (the Light Sussex & the SLW chicks all yellow)

Which left me with four chicks, from the speckeldy a black chick & yellow chick, and the CLB gave me a male & female, so I am keeping them four to see how they turn out!

So a rather mixed outcome! but its been a huge learning curve  I think I need a seperate hatcher, as I think the 3 that didnt hatch got moved around a lot by the earlier hatched chicks.

[Mays]

My brain is fried and I only read the thread not the book!!!

So has anyone suggestions to help me decide what hens to get I have a Light Sussex Cockerel with some ex-bat hens but have room for about 6 more hens and would like to add 2 or 3 more breeds to the flock, 1 will probably be a couple of LS hens  which other breeds would give me interesting colours of either eggs or hens?

If he is a good bird, try a couple of Light Sussex to give you some pure breds, then try RIR for sex-linked offspring x

[Rich/Jan]

RIR cock x LS hen gives you the sex linkage - this doesn't work if you use a LS cock and a RIR hen.  (you need red on white (gold on silver).  By the way auto-sexing is completely a different animal to a sex-linked bird.  When in the UK we kept quite a few auto-sexing breeds and particularly liked the cream crested legbar.  Here in France there are only a few decent examples left - they have all been crossed and messed about with.  It only costs the same to breed and feed a pure bred to a hybrid so why muddle things about.  Only my opinion.  Someone else mentioned white light sussex - not sure if the lack of a comma confused things but Light Sussex are Light sussex and White sussex are White sussex - two different colours within the breed.  Other colours exist..  Jan 

[CameronS]

If i'm honest, i wouldn't bother about what gives you what, i chose to go for a mixture of large breed birds running with a Large breed cockeral and just seeing what happens, i have never had any bother selling hens despite them being crossbreeds

i have a really nice magpie colored bird (reversed light susex) with a beard due to a Lightsussex x Dumpy cockeral mated with a Mille Fleur hen

[Hatty]

Well have hatch some exbat x LS Cockerel and they are cute so that will do for now lol

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150365906593422.365574.790033421&type=1&l=af78eacb99

Struggle putting photos on here

[Mays]

nice chicks 'Hatty 

[Hatty]

Thanks Mays 

I'm assuming I have 1male & 1Female with the colour difference???