Bovan Brown Chicks

[Anonymous]

Hello All,

On Friday, I did my shining armour thing and saved 8 'Bovan Brown' chicks from the gas chamber.
They are supposed to be Bovan Brown hens and are the correct colouring for a hen chick, but their wing feathers have started coming through and they are white??
Surely a Brown hen should have brown feathers? White hens have white feathers? Green ones green and so on.
Does anyone know if they start off white? Or have I been mis-informed? They do have a wide variety of poultry there as the chicks are hatched to order.
It's not a nice business, I know. But I've saved these little ones from a 'lifetime' of caged egg laying and I'd just like to know if they are what they say they are so to speak.

 

[podstable]

If they were hens would they be going to kill them--a sad fate normally for the hybrid boys.I don't know what sort of cross they are BUT------most autosexing breeds in commercial hybrids are going to result in brown/gold girls and silver boys.I just wonder if you could have 8 cockerels???? Ros

 

[Anonymous]

The hatchery belongs to a friend of mines Father. I just happened to ask him what breeds his Dad hatched and in a subsequent phonecall to him, it emerged that there were more than a dozen chicks over on an order of 150 and the customer did not want them. They were just going to be gassed because they were surplus to requirements.
They are a golden yellow colour, but the wing feathers coming through seem white. I did ask at the time and was told they would not have made it out of the door in the first place if they were cockerels (in a rather condesending way).