Chicks: $6 each chick, $40 shipping (avg cost), $5 heat pad if ordering less than 25 (min 5)
Eggs: $40, plus $15 shipping
Breed notes: An ancient breed having been described by Julius Caesar. Slow growing, but constant and thrifty foragers. All Dorkings make wonderful dual purpose birds for eggs and meat. The egg color is a tinted white. Skin and leg color are white. They all possess a fifth toe. They like to go broody which makes chicks scarce at times. Please be patient. They are notorious for laying during the shorter day-length time of the year so egg production from these can be quite good during the cold Winter days. They lay quite well in -25 to 100 deg.F weather. Once the warmer Spring weather arrives all the members of a particular pen can turn broody within a day or two. They are stubborn and persistent and many times, during the prime Spring hatching season, we are left with few eggs. When ordering this breed, you must understand this trait and not expect your chicks at a specific time.
The Dorking is one of the friendliest, tastiest and oldest of all the breeds of chickens. They make great backyard pets as well as hardworking additions to the small farm. They are good layers (about 5 medium size eggs per week) and great producers of meat.
Dorkings are a very very rare bird and a very very old breed. Dorkings were mentioned in writings as ancient as the time of Julius Caesar. The Romans brought them to England when they took that country over and the Dorking really caught on there, especially in the town of-did you guess?-Dorking. Hence the name.
But Dorkings aren’t just a special breed because they’re ancient and as rare as they are old. They’re special because they’re also a fabulously tasty breed. In a taste test, the Dorking won first place over many other breeds including the Rhode Island Red and Cornish X who tied for second. Dorkings are famous for their moist breast meat and the texture of the breast and thigh meat. One blogger who attended the Chicken Choosing taste test stated “This bird is known for its fine-textured, very white meat. It is also known to be docile, calm and adaptable. They are good foragers and would make a fine addition to most backyard or farmstead flocks.”
The Dorkings also lay white eggs that won top marks in a small taste test and were described as having whites that were “airy, fluffy, and full of texture.”
We have salmon, tawny, brown, grey, silver and more colors
