orpington chickens

Orpingtons are a great breed. They are calm, friendly birds that are hardy and often go broody. They are also dual purpose being a great layer of medium-sized brown eggs, laying often year round, as well as a great meat bird with a butcher weight of 7-9 lbs/hens and 8-10 lbs/roosters at 5 months As a bonus, they are simply gogeous! Orpingtons come in a variety of colors: buff, black, blue, white, chocolate, lavender, and new on the scene, mauve. In addition to the color variations, there are a number of patterns such as mottled, cuckoo, splash, and laced. We have two separate breeding groups that produce orpingtons in a variety of colors and patterns. Originally, my breeding plans with the Orpingtons was to just keep it simple, breeding lavenders and chocolates. I saw some silver laced and loved how striking they were. I was not a fan of the mottled until I saw a mottled lavender and went ooo. Then it was game on!
My Buffs are currently just my egg layers. I do not have a rooster with them, yet! (Well the irony is literally the week after I wrote this, one of my shes turned out to be a he lol. Our buffs are still primarily layers for our families eggs for consumption, but we do incubate them periodically.
When it comes to chickens, there is a vast amount of breeds to choose from. This website contains some information about the Orpingtons that we have, but I encourage you to do more research as well. Our chickes are not exposed to any pesticides or fertilizers. They are fed non-GMO feed, mealworms raised by us, and fresh vegetables, as well as free ranging. Our chicks mostly hatch by incubation, but at times will allow a broody momma the opportunity raise some babies. As a precaution, our chicks receive Marek's vaccine when they are a day old. Marek's is a potentially devastating virus that has no cure, can wipe out your most of your flock, and leave survivors as carriers.

Lavenders

We have two mottled lavender roosters with 5 lavender hens and 5 mottled lavender hens. This group produces mottled lavender and lavender split to mottled lavender, which means they carry the mottled gene but do not look mottled. Mottled is recessive and a chicken must inherit the mottle gene from both parents in order to present mottled.
These pictures are of a rooster and hen from the flock I got my rooster from. It was their pics that hooked me on mottled.

chocolates

So we basically did the same thing with the chocolates as we did with the lavedners. We have five chocolate hens with five chocolate laced hens being covered by a chocolate laced rooster. This group produces chocolate laced and chocolate split to chocolate laced.
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Blue, Black, Splash, Plus

I love variety and I wanted to maximize the potential in our last breeding group. Blue, black, splash (BBS) provides a unique opportunity for that. When breeding a blue roo with a blue hen, depending on how the genes pair up, you can get blue, black or splash. For extra variety, I have a few chocolate hens in with our blue rooster. Blue and chocolate produces mauve.
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