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Orpingtons '101'
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- Chocolate Orpington colour Standard
- BREEDING SPLASH to carry the silver gene >
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About us
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- Breeding Cuckoo Orpingtons >
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- the Chocolate Orpington >
- Cuckoo Double Bar and Single Bar factor
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- Black Orpington large
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- Choc, Choc Cuckoo & Mauve Orpington large
- Choc Crele, Choc Partridge and Choc Birchen large size
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- Acquiring and caring for your Orpingtons
- Feeding - what we feed our birds
- Heat waves, hot days, Summer and Liquefaction
- Artificial UV lighting
- Chook Saddles
- Fertility and my secret recipe
- Posted chickens - how to make them
- Embryonic developmental stages of a chick
- Mareks Disease
- Hatching larger std size birds
- Size = breeding down
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- Growth patterns and assessing birds
- Microchipping your birds
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- MOUSE/RAT TRAP chook friendly
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- Showing - training your birds
- Coccidia Oocyst cycle and treating Coccidiosis with Baycox
- Lymphoid Leukosis – Avian (The Wasting Disease)
- Coryza Avibacterium Paragallinarum
- Crop problems in poultry
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- Maremma - training a pup
- Fox Traps
- Snake Bite

Chocolate Orpingtons in the backyard
I grew up with this colour in the backyard, also in various relatives’ yards, it was not considered anything unusual or spectacular as we had the birds for eggs and meat.
After acquiring my Father's and later my Uncle's flocks I had respectable numbers of this colour as well as the Black and Cuckoo.
I started to think seriously about the origins of the colour of the large Chocolate Orpingtons mainly resulting from good numbers of chicks hatching from one of my families’ original line large Black roosters and two elderly large Chocolate hens.
I quickly realised the Black carried the Chocolate gene.
I separated the Chocolates (and the Black rooster) out and started breeding them as a distinct colour.
I also started developing a large Cuckoo version.
The 2009 firestorms, and intense heat, took a number of birds, then appallingly more were lost to theft in 2014,
but I continued the work.
The 2011 and 2012 hatches were both encouraging, but the 2013 and 2014 hatches provided good numbers growing out
# December 2015 update =
as of December 2015 setting of eggs of the large size Chocolate Orpington fowl have been released to the public
# April 2016 update = a mating of a half Crele half Chocolate hen and a half Cuckoo half Chocolate rooster has produced
4 Chocolate Crele(ish) looking chicks
# August 2016 = the Choc Crele looking birds are growing out well = all are pullets and will be put back to their half Cuckoo
half Choc father
# November 2016 = settings of large Chocolate eggs were sent out
# February 2017 = a successful hatch of large Chocolate
a successful hatch of large F2 Chocolate Crele
# June 2017 = a trio of large Chocolate birds was rehoused
# 2018/2019 = only Chocolate pullets hatched, all cockerels were Black (test mated to pure Blacks = carry Choc)
#2020 = successful hatch of large Chocolate
# 2021 = successful hatch over 30 large Chocolates - both sexes
# protected under copyright laws of Australia
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