Rarest of the Rare Chickens: The Sussex

I started my Light Sussex flock almost two years ago and have enjoyed them immensly. I was fortunate to obtain Lights from several sources including Pennsylvania, New York and Colorado Springs. Most of my Lights are recessive for Coronation ( Lavender ) so I was able to produce the visually stunning Coronations I now breed from. I also recently obtained two more Coronation pullets so have a nice diversified gene pool to pull my breeding stock from. Of course most if not all of these birds can be traced back to Greenfire Farms bloodline with a little Canadian blood thrown in for good measure!

For those new to chickens the Coronation/Lavender is a recessive gene so both parents must carry gene to produce a Coronation offspring. For instance two parents may look like Lights but if they both have the recessive gene 25% of the offspring would be visually Coronation. The nice thing about these two colors is that you can breed them together since Coronation is just a dilution of black so the black color is replaced with the lavender/Coronation.

My next project with Sussex are my Silvers. Visually stunning these guys are huge gentle giants. I have a very small flock in the works this year and am working on obtaining more breeding quality stock. I have read that periodically crossing a Coronation to a Silver helps to brighten the silver color.

Last year my Sussex produced eggs all winter long. They are very fluffy and cold tolerant. Because they are so calm around people I highly recommend this breed for families with kids. We took my Sussex hens to a birthday petting zoo last summer and they sat quietly on the kids laps as if they had been doing that for years!

I will be planning test hatches late winter and have chicks available in early spring.

Silver Sussex Pullet