We have now totally shelved our plans to breed pure Indian Game chickens. This is for lots of reasons, 1) is that we have not easily been able to sell the IG birds we have raised this year, 2) is that it has been really hard to source a cockerel and the ones we have, have been condemned for ‘soup’ (via the IG Facebook page) and 3) is because we have ended up with two Orpington cockerels (a Silver laced, left and a Buff, on the right) and one Leghorn cockerel from our breeding this year and we (Jack) cannot bear to part with them. This means that we now have FIVE cockerels and 28 hens – in theory not a bad ratio but time will tell! The Orpington cockerels have only really come to light recently as until a couple of weeks ago, we thought we had all hens!! It’s a tad embarrassing to admit this as the birds are 6 months old but Orpingtons are ‘slow’ developers and they have not yet crowed and as we identified them as hens a long time ago, we weren’t looking for any changes. It was also only this week we saw the Buff Orpington tread one of the girls. Both of our Indian Game cockerels have been doing so for weeks, albeit they are a month older.
So why should our IGs go for soup? Well, they are NOT good examples of their breed in that they are too long legged and don’t have deep enough chests! We take some issue with this especially when the description of the first IGs bred back in the nineteenth century was described as far ‘longer legged’ than the versions we see today!
Anyway, we will carry on breeding our usual crosses, the cockerels of which will make great meat birds (both Indian Game and Orpingtons being good for meat) and the hens will as usual be exciting surprises of colours and shapes. We do have some of this year’s youngsters still to sell but we will do this in the spring now when they are all definitely laying!
And talking of laying – we had SIX eggs today: five chicken and one duck! And to think a couple of weeks ago, getting six in a week was the norm!! Hooray for the ever-giving chicken!!