Carlos, our rooster, is a Plymouth Rock. Carlos has his share of good and bad traits. He has left me with large bruises down my legs, has knocked Oliver down on several occasions and drives the hens crazy (at least I think) with his high drive. See the photo below. He is mating with his most willing participant, Llewelyn, another Plymouth Rock. On the other hand, Carlos takes good care of the hens. We once found him across the street at the Fire Station after a fox broke into the hen house. We lost Rusty (our sweet rooster) to the fox, but all of the hens were safe. We believe Carlos and Rusty went out to lure the fox away from the hens.
This is one of our hens, Goldilocks. Goldilocks is an Ameraucana, a breed that lays blue/green eggs.
We decided to let one of our hens, Etta have a few chicks because she was so broody. Etta sat on Goldilocks's eggs to see what a half Plymouth Rock, half Ameraucana offspring would look like. Here is a picture of Carlos, Goldilocks, and Etta's child. We are looking forward to seeing what color eggs come from this chicken (brownish green?). Glenn will be back tomorrow to blog about his hive inspection. ~Jess
Jess, what a lovely chicken! Interesting cross with the Plymouth Rock and Ameraucana. We are going to breed our Ameraucana rooster, Jesse, to some of our Columbian Wyandotte hens. I am very curious to see what color eggs you get from this chicken, with crossing brown & blue egg layers, since we doing the same. I love Plymouth/Barred rocks. Three of our first batch of hens years ago were all barred rocks -we still have one barred rock hen left - she's nearly 8! Those hens were so gentle with our son. Julia
ReplyDeleteWow, that is so interesting. The feathers close up is a good photo to show off all the different colors. It's nice to get a glimpse into the life of a chicken...thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteGlenn & Jess. I hope you have increased security on the hen house to keep those foxes out. My parents' hens were all killed in one night by a fox last year. I think there were about 10. The main problem was that they didn't have a coop and the hens would just roost in a large fallen tree at the bottom of the garden. That was fine for many months but they had no protection when the fox turned up. When we were home at Christmas Jen and I had big plans to build a coop. We had it all sketched out but unfortunately we ran out of time to finish the project.
ReplyDeleteWait a minute! Why does Carlos have a rose comb??? Barred Rocks have straight combs right?
ReplyDeleteI know this is an old post, but that is a dominique, an old american breed, not a barred rock. Barred Rocks have straight combs, Dominiques are rose combed
ReplyDelete