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The Chocolate Orpington is a relatively new colour of Orpington and currently to my knowledge only exists in bantam size although I’m sure it won’t be long before they are crossed into large fowl. The choc gene responsible for the chocolate colour was discovered by the late Dr. Clive Carefoot around 1993-1994. It is a rare Sex-Linked Recessive gene that is basically a dilution of black pigment. This means that out of a pair of genes, the female will be chocolate with just one copy of the gene but the male requires two copies of the choc gene to look chocolate. This also means that black males can look black, but be carrying the chocolate gene.

Chocolate Orpingtons are slow to feather up. This is thought to be a direct result of the choc gene. Black Orpingtons are slow at feathering up but Chocolate Orps are even slower. They lay a slightly tinted egg.

Chocolate Orpingtons breed true – but there are some breeding combinations that are worth noting:

• Chocolate Male X Chocolate Female = 100% Chocolate

• Black Male X Chocolate Female = 50% Black Males carrying Chocolate, 50% Black Females

• Chocolate Male X Black Female = 50% Black Males carrying Chocolate, 50% Black Females

• Black Male carrying Chocolate X Chocolate Female = 25% Chocolate Males, 25% Black Males carrying Chocolate, 25% Chocolate Females, 25% Black Females

• Black Male carrying Chocolate X Black Female = 25% Black Males carrying Chocolate, 25% Black Males, 25% Chocolate Females, 25% Black Females.

Photo: Chocolate Orpington Cock (Bantam) courtesy of Matt Hanson.

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This year the All-Ireland Egg Championship will be held on the 3rd of May 2010 in Rockcorry, Co. Monaghan. The Monaghan Poultry Fanciers Club will be accommodating the event and will also be holding a poultry bring & buy sale on the day. The past Egg Championships have been very successful, well participated, and the prizes substantial. The club will also be holding sales during the year on the 28th of August and the 30th of October. Read the rest of this entry »

Based in the heart of rural north Essex, The Fancy Feed Company is family owned and run and dedicated to producing well balanced, nutritious animal and poultry feeds from natural ingredients. They produce meal that contains Non-GM ingredients and is medication free. I noticed that a lot of people are using the feed, but many were finding it hard to source so I contacted the owners and they supplied me with a full list of all their stockists in Ireland, courtesy of Judy Maxwell (Their manager for Ireland).
Update: Interested in Fancy Feeds? Check out their brochure for 2010 here!
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The ‘cheap’ Chicken or Duck house costs about €25 to build, yet they are the most sturdy, well insulated houses I have! Normally my advice to people looking to buy a chicken house is not to buy too cheap since they will end up either having the fox get in to it, or after a few years will be buying again but building this chicken or duck house, if you pardon the pun, goes against the grain. You must be thinking by now that this all seems too good to be true, but there is one key ingredient to this house that keeps the cost down, and that is, the frame underneath it which is a surplus wooden packing crate.

Step 1 – The Wooden Packing Crate.

To get one of these, you will need to drive around a few industrial estates where there are companies likely to be receiving international shipments and when you spot some crates, be prepared to knock on the door and politely ask whether you can have an old one! Transportation is your next problem but if you take a claw hammer with you and (ideally) a crow bar, you will find you can break the crate down into 4 sides, a lid and a floor. These will fit in the back of an estate car with the seats down or similar sized vehicle.

Once you have your crate(s), the rest is really quite easy.

Step 2 – Other Materials

• Tounge and Groove – you will need some pressure treated tongue and groove. This can be thin – 8mm, cheap stuff because you have support behind it. It is just to cover the crate and make it look good. It also provides some insulation around the outside which keeps the house warmer in winter and cooler in the summer.
• Nails – You will need some flat head nails, long enough to go through your T&G and into the crate, but not so long that they stick out into the house. I used 20mm nails.
• Roofing Material – I used Onduline as you can see on mine. It isn’t expensive and is light weight. Leave an overlap on the ends.
• Roof fixing nails – I bought a packet of special Onduline fixing nails with plastic washers and caps. Normal nail heads would just rip through.
• Various bits of wood – The pop hole on my chicken house was ply, on the duck house I used the cut out from the crate and added T&G to the outside of it. A perch was added across the inside of the chicken house.
  
• For the duck house – Various hinges and a bolt. Buy galvanised as these will last for a very long time.

Step 3 – The Build

Cut the hole out for the door / pop hole (make a wide door for a duck house, as shown in the photo left) but ensure you leave an edge / lip at the bottom. This is to keep your bedding material inside the house, stopping it being trampled outside. The easiest way I found to cut out the hole was to drill 4 large holes for the corners and use a jigsaw to cut around. A small pointed hand saw that is used to cut holes in ceilings would also work but take a little longer.Rough plain or sand the edges so there are no sharp corners or splinters. You can line this doorway if it looks too rough when the tounge and groove has been fixed.

The next step is to put the tounge and groove wood onto the sides. Move the house close to its final position first though because it will be really heavy once completed. Start at the bottom and work upwards, interlocking the boards and nailing as you go. When you get to the top, if there is a little overlap, don’t worry, this can be used to ‘drop’ the lid / roof in to hold it in place. I made one side flush so I could slide the lid into position (it’s quite heavy). Once the tongue and groove is finished, you can nail the Onduline or similar onto the roof. The roof should be able to lift off or be hinged to allow cleaning. The door / pop hole should be made and fitted, don’t forget to make sure this is securely held shut at night to stop foxes.

Step 4 – A Coat of Paint.

The final step to your chicken / duck house is to give it a good coat of paint. This can be as colourful as you like, providing you use outdoor paint suitable for sheds and fences. Make sure the house has a good week or more to dry and air so there is no smell of paint when your birds go in.

Final Comments

The biggest disadvantage I have found with these houses is that the should red mite get in between the crate and tongue and groove, they are impossible to get out. It is for this reason that I have found them to be very suitable as duck houses. When I added up my bill, I found this house cost me around £25 to build. This was partly because the wood came as ‘weathered’ offcuts from a wood yard that made garden sheds and were cheaper than normal. I guess it would cost you a few pound more if the wood was top grade. If you can’t get pressure treated for a sensible price then just make sure you paint the house well and keep it painted every year to stop the wet weather from rotting the wood. I found this house to be very easy to build because you have the frame work in place and cutting the wood to length can be done once it is nailed in place.

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Chick Box is a new plastic nesting box that looks promising in the fight against Red Mite. BEC, the makers of Chick Box have sent us this information about it:

A new all plastic poultry nesting box called the Chick Box is set to dramatically improve the way thousands of keepers can care for their birds. The Chick Box, from BEC, takes just seconds to clean, ending hours of work for poultry keepers struggling to keep boxes free from harmful red mite and other pests and bacteria.

Manufactured in the UK, the Chick Box is available now and is the only plastic injection moulded nest box system on the market.
The Chick Box eclipses wooden boxes which crack, are tough to clean and harbour red mite and other bacteria and galvanised metal which rots easily.
Managing Director Jeff Smith said: “The Chick Box is extremely easy and quick to clean out, has no corners to harbour mites and can be jet washed in seconds, ending the hours of drudgery cleaning and disinfecting wooden or metal boxes to ensure they have no red mite or bacteria in them. Unlike wood and metal the Chick Box does not corrode or rot, it is cheaper and at the end of its life it can be recycled. We think the Chick Box is the answer to many poultry keepers’ prayers and are delighted to have it in stock and ready to send out to customers straight away.”

The Chick Box can be retro fit, double stacked or placed in line and also has an optional egg tray for ease of collection. The Chick Box is a new addition to the world-class range of plastic poultry products, including feeders and drinkers, from BEC UK, a company with 50 years’ experience in the industry. The Chick Box is manufactured in our Scarborough and Church Stretton factories with internationally recognised ISO 2002 systems. It has been designed to be smooth with no corners to harbour red mite or bacteria. The perch assembly slides out easily for cleaning. It will retro fit into any shed by attaching to a length of wood 3″ x 2″ – 75-50mm, approximately 600-800mm from the shed floor. Chick Box can be double stacked or added to each other inline as your flock grows. Four laying hens to each Chick Box is a good ratio.

The Chick Box is draught free, but is ventilated and keeps hens warm in winter and cool in summer. The perch bracket is at the perfect height with additional grip to easily allow the hen to lift herself out of the Chick Box. Rollout nesting bottoms can be supplied with the Chick Box or added later, allowing eggs to automatically roll out into a collection tray on the outside.

The Chickbox Poultry Nestbox website has more information.

RRP £20

About The Author:

Poultrykeeper.com is made up of a small group of enthusiasts that enjoy keeping and writing about poultry. There are over 350 articles on the site, including product and book reviews, show reports, breed photos and technical articles from poultry vets.
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How long have you been keeping birds?

I have been keeping birds for about 60 years – virtually all my life, I will be 70 this year so since I was about 10 I suppose. I was brought up on a farm and we always had poultry and ducks. The breeds we had were the norm in those days, like Sussex, RIR, but it would be around 33 years ago that I first started with the Pekins.

The first ones I bought were a pair of Blue Pekins from Dewsbury Auction for my 9 year old daughter, Judith, who showed them at a pet show; she got a second and a special, so it all started from there really with Pekins.

When do you start your breeding programme?

I like to start early, if I can get a few eggs in January or February, and go on till the end of May. I used to breed nine colours, but have cut down to 5 now. I have about 11 breeding pens on the go, and tend to use incubators. Pekins are not fantastic brooders, although having said that, the buff and the partridge seem to be more prone to go broody than the other colours. Some people swear by broodies, but I find when you have got the eggs, you don’t have the broodies and when you have a broody hen, you don’t have the eggs, so thats why I tend to just use incubators. I usually try to hatch over about 300, but last year I only did 250, mind you, now I’m only breeding 5 colours I intend to cut that down to about 120 or so. Out of those 120, I would keep a few of each colour, about 4 females and a couple of  cockerels.

At what age do you start to sort out your show and breeding stock?
You can spot the good’ns more or less straight away, when they hatch, because you are looking for a short wide one, they then go through that scraggy stage, but when they start to feather up, you can be sure of the good ones then. You will most probably find that the ones you thought were going to be good at hatch, are the ones that come back looking good. You will find that with Pekins they tend to get better with age.

What makes a good show Pekin?
I use 3 words to describe a good bird, ‘Short, Wide and Deep’ Short back (meaning short in length), wide back (meaning broad width ways) and deep body, (meaning the front tilts forward) and a good specimen should tilt from back to front. When you’ve got that it means you will have the ‘type’ that’s important for this breed.

What do you feed your birds?
Well I don’t have any secret feeding regime, I feed them on ordinary growers pellets, they go on that when they are about 8 or 9 weeks old. I am a big believer in cod liver oil that I mix in with the pellets, it gives them a nice sheen on the feathers. I don’t use any grain at all, just the growers and I pay about £5.95 for 25 kilos, so that’s not too bad.

What do you see for the future of the breed?
I see a good future, I think there are a lot of new people coming in and starting to keep the breed. A lot of youngsters are coming in and showing interest in Pekins, especially down in the south, which is really good to see. I think the Pekin Club is in really good shape at the moment. The Pekin is a popular breed and we get over 300 entries at our club show in Stafford, the record is 366 in 2002. I think the future for the breed is very good.

Images and Text copyright Fancy Fowl 2010. All rights reserved.

About The Author:

Poultrykeeper.com is made up of a small group of enthusiasts that enjoy keeping and writing about poultry. There are over 350 articles on the site, including product and book reviews, show reports, breed photos and technical articles from poultry vets.
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