Hi Laura, The Barred and the Whites are the most common of the Plymouth Rocks. One person stated that the Barreds were also called Grizzlies. Actually grizzlies or grizzled is a fly tier term which I doubt would have been used by common chicken keepers or poultry exhibitors.
The first Barred Plymouth Rocks were created by a cross between single combed Dominiques and Black Javas. From the very beginning any barred chicken with either a single or Rose comb was referred to as a Dominicker by the average farmer. It took over one hundred years to get the two types separated when the American Poultry Association finally set up the breed parameters for both types.
The White Rocks arrived on the scene as white sports out of the original Barred variety. Later the White Javas were used as crosses to invigorate the White Rocks which mostly absorbed all of the White Java sports into the Plymouth Rock gene pool.
Over the years there have been many attempts to create new color varieties within the Plymouth Rock breed. Some of these such as the solid Black, solid Blue, and Red Barred were hatchery sports that cropped up from time to time. Later a few breeders created the Yellow Barred Rock which bred consistent but didn't breed true and soon disappeared from the show room and went extinct.
Still to this day the hatcheries produce a few odd colored Plymouth Rocks out of every large hatch. The White Rock carries the genes for Barred and often throw a barred colored chick. Some white strains throw an occasional Blue chick which is where the original Blue Rocks came from. I am fairly sure if someone could find a true Black Rock sport cockerel out of Black or Barred parents that in time they could again produce good type Blues by crossing back to White Rock pullets.
A few years ago one of the locals accidentally discovered that Schlect hatchery was producing an occasional red Barred out of their regular Black Barred line. This led to a rush by several breeders to buy up all of these Reds and try to revive the Buff and Red Barred Plymouth Rocks.
Schlect hatchery did everything they could to help these people with their project.
They ended up with about a dozen Red Barred chicks to start their breeding experiment. [This was good for Schlecht because she now had a market for her mutations as well as selling enough extras to round out the 25 chick order every time a few of these cropped up.]
For some reason these chicks must have only been carrying one gene for Red Barring. The ones I saw , which were mostly all of them, were red barred cockerels and pullets with many different expressions of brown and black. The pullets somewhat resembled Partridge which made me wonder if this might have been the motivator that caused someone to create the Partridge variety in the first place.
Just for fun if you live close to a hatchery that hatches hundreds of White or Barred Plymouth Rocks per week you might ask them to save their off color mutations for you to experiment with. These will make just as good of laying hens as the pures but would be a lot more interesting to see how they develop and feather as they grow. Dean
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Laura Roberts wrote:
Barred Rocks ARE Plymouth Rocks in the Barring pattern (color)
Plymouth Rocks come in several colors. I think the Barred and Whites are most common. I love them--great dual purpose birds with pleasant demeanor.
Laura
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