If
you want lots of huge, brown eggs and are willing to buy chicks every
few years to renovate your flock, the Golden Comet should be your top
choice. This variety is a hybrid between a White Rock female and
a New Hampshire male and is one of the hybrid varieties in which the
males are very easy to tell from the females as soon as they
hatch. As a result, if you order all female Golden Comet chicks,
you're nearly guaranteed to receive all females (as opposed to many
other chicken varieties where sexing is a chancy business and you'll
often end up with a rooster amid your hens.)
Scientists use the
term "hybrid vigor" to explain the way an offspring
of two different varieties (or even species) may be bigger or stronger
than either parent. For example, mules are often stronger and
larger than both their horse or donkey parents. Similarly, Golden
Comets seem to show true hybrid vigor in the egg-laying
department. The internet notes that Golden Comet hens lay around
300 eggs per year, and I would add that while most chicken varieties
slack off or stop laying completely in the winter, our girls lay
straight through. We even have some hens who are starting their
fifth year of life and who are still laying (though at a lower rate
than their younger friends.)
On the other hand, the
one major disadvantage of Golden Comets also
stems from their hybrid nature. Gardeners among you are probably
aware that there's no point in saving seeds from hybrid vegetables
since the seeds will sprout into dozens of different kinds of
plants. Golden Comets are the same way --- you're not going to
get Golden Comet chicks if you breed a Golden Comet hen with a Golden
Comet rooster. Instead, you just have to buy new chicks every
time you want to expand your flock.
We've found our Golden
Comets to be good foragers, adept at scratching
in the dirt and very alert to the grubs I toss their way while weeding
the garden. They're friendly too, and lie down in a submissive
crouch
when I get too close, making them easy to catch if they end up
somewhere they shouldn't be. They enjoy scraps and quickly wolf
down any compost we drop into their tractors. All in all, unless
you want to be completely self sufficient, Golden Comets are hard to
beat as a backyard egg-layer. Small surprise that they're the
most commonly pictured breed in chicken-related articles and blogs.
When you put in your
chick order this spring, don't forget to order our automatic chicken waterers to get your birds off to a
healthy start.
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Sometimes roosters do show up among chicks that were supposed to be all girls. At 3.5 months, I'd expect your rooster to be starting to crow (at least in a garbled way). If you don't hear any crowing, I'd suspect instead that your mean chicken is just top of the totem pole --- one rooster in a flock of hens is actually often the nicest because he has to woo the ladies.
Other signs of a cockerel at that age include --- larger size, a larger comb on top of the head, pointed feathers on the neck, and the beginning of the cock's tail rather than a perky hen tail.
I am new to raising chickens and I chose Golden Coments. I wanted easygoing hens. We picked out two lighter yellow chicks and two reddish chicks. The lighter yellow chicks were a bit larger than the reddish ones. As they grew, the red ones over took the light yellows in size. The light yellows turned into very hen shaped, smaller birds (small combs and wattles). The reddish chicks turned into what looks like photos of Rhode Island Reds. They have no spurs, but have large combs and wattles. THEY BOTH CROW to beat the band... and they are frisky with the hens. HELP! These look roosterish compared to the two smaller birds. Do all roosters have spurs? If I was not told that they are females when I bought, I would be sure that they are not.
I am in a neighborhood and these hen/roosters start crowing early early.
Any comments regarding Golden Comet roosters? I have read that they are white.....?
If nothing else, hope this gives some folks a laugh for the day.
I still like the birds, but I would prefer laying hens only.
My best guess is that your roosters (definitely roosters if they crow, even if they haven't grown into their big comb and spurs) aren't Golden Comets. Golden Comets are popular with hatcheries because the chicks can be sexed by color right after hatching --- females are red and cream while males are cream. The males do grow up to be a whitish rooster.
On the other hand, breeds like Rhode Island Reds are tougher to sex, and males will sometimes creep through into batches of "females." I hear that you can expect anywhere from 1 to 5% sexing mistakes. It sounds like you just got unlucky!
Now is a good time to take care of your roosters. If you're not squeamish, at the age they begin to crow, laying breeds like Rhode Island Reds make delicious, tender chicken dinners. They'll have bigger legs and less breast than you're used to, but cook up great. But don't wait long --- by the time they're five months old, that tenderness window is long past.
Could you please tell me what these are. (go den rocks). Are these what you call Comets? I have e few reds,silkies and a few ducks.
Steph --- I know what you mean. Our Golden Comets' eggs were definitely extra large, if not jumbo!
That said, I've noticed that smaller eggs have just as much yolk, just less white. Since we believe in the nutritional properties of pastured egg yolks, smaller eggs give you more yolk per ounce. If I really wanted to go in that direction, I guess I'd get bantams.