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Amrox is a breed of chickens of American origin. Her progenitors were almost the same breeds from which they descended plymouth rooks: black Dominican chickens, black Javanese and Cochinchins... Amroxes were bred at the end of the 19th century. In Europe, amroxes appeared in 1945 as humanitarian aid to Germany. At that time, the German chicken stock was practically destroyed. The Amroks provided the German population with meat and eggs. The result was somewhat paradoxical: these days amroxes are very popular in Europe and little known from the United States.
On the right in the photo is amrox, on the left is a plymouth rock. For clarity, hens were taken.
Description of the breed
Amroks chickens belong to the meat and egg direction. Chickens are of medium weight type. The weight of an adult chicken is 2.5-3 kg, a rooster is 3-4 kg. The breed is versatile, with signs of a good laying hen. Chickens of this breed have a very lively temperament, but at the same time they calmly get along with other chickens.
Rooster standard
The head is medium in size with a large crest. The beak is yellow, short, the tip is slightly bent. The comb is red, erect, simple in shape. There should be 5-6 teeth on the ridge. Mediums are about equal in size, the outer ones are lower.
Behind, the lower part of the ridge follows the line of the occiput, but does not lie close to the head.
Earrings and lobes are red. Earrings of medium length, oval. Lobes are smooth, oblong. The eyes are red-brown in color, large.
The neck is of medium length, well feathered. The body is oblong, wide, slightly raised. The chest is deep, well muscled. The back and loin are wide. Neck, body and tail form a smoothly curved topline. The back is straight along the entire length of the line, in the region of the loin the topline passes into a vertically set tail. The belly is wide, well filled.
The wings are tightly attached to the body, of medium length, well-feathered, with wide flight feathers.
The tibiae are of medium length and covered with thick feathers. Metatarsus are yellow. May be with a pink stripe. Fingers are yellow with light claws. The fingers are evenly spaced.
The tail is set at a 45 ° angle. Moderately wide. Average length. The tail feathers are covered with decorative braids.
Chicken standard
The difference between chicken articles and cockerels is due only to gender. The chicken has a wider and deeper body and a thinner neck. The tail feathers barely protrude above the body plumage. The bill is yellow with thin black stripes. Metatarsus are yellow. May be grayish.
Color features
Chickens of the Amrox breed can only have a cuckoo color. White and black stripes alternate on the alternate. And even feather pillows are striped too.
The color saturation is determined by the sex of the bird. The rooster has black and white stripes on the feather of the same width, while the hen has black stripes twice as wide. This makes the chicken appear darker.
Photo of a rooster.
Photo of a chicken.
The size of the stripes varies logically depending on the size of the pen. On small feathers the stripes are narrower, on large ones wider.
Productive characteristics of Amrox chickens
Amrox has a very good egg production for a non-specialized breed of chickens: 220 eggs per year. The minimum egg weight is 60g. An Amrox laying hen produces 220 eggs in the first year. In the second year, egg production in Amroxes decreases to 200 pieces. The eggshell is brown.
The Amrox chicken breed is early maturing, which makes it beneficial for breeding for meat. In this, amroxes differ from other meat breeds of chickens, which mature rather late.
Exterior defects
Exterior defects in Amrox include:
- graceful skeleton;
- narrow / short body;
- narrow back;
- "Skinny" belly of a chicken;
- thin long beak;
- small, deep-set eyes;
- any other eye color other than reddish brown;
- too short / long legs;
- too long claws;
- rough scales on the metatarsus;
- feathers without a black stripe at the end;
- entirely black flight feathers and plaits;
- fluff without stripes;
- too thin stripes on the feathers;
- the presence of any other color on the feathers other than black and white;
- poor egg production;
- low vitality.
Chickens with conformational defects are not allowed for breeding.
Sex determination of chicks
The Amrox breed is autosex, that is, the sex of the chick can be determined immediately after hatching from the egg. All chicks hatch with black down on the back and light spots on the belly. But chickens have a white spot on their heads, which cockerels do not. In addition, the chickens are a little darker. Determination of sex in amrokos occurs in the literal sense of the word on the head and is not difficult.
Dwarf amrox
Bred in Germany, the dwarf form of the amrox retained the main characteristics of the large form. These chickens, although they are listed in the ranks of the bantams, also have a meat and egg direction. The weight of a dwarf chicken amrox is 900-1000 g, a rooster weighs 1-1.2 kg. The productivity of the dwarf form is 140 eggs per year. Egg weight 40 g. Externally it is a miniature copy of a large amrox. The color is also only cuckoo.
Advantages of the breed
Chickens of this breed are considered suitable for novice poultry breeders because of their good adaptability, unpretentiousness and undemanding feed. Even Amrox chickens are in good health. Another advantage of the breed is the fast feathering of young animals. Feathered chicks no longer require additional brooder heat and the owner can save on energy costs. With a small number of chickens, the savings may not be noticeable, but on an industrial scale, they are significant.
Chickens become sexually mature by 6 months. The hens are very good mothers. The chickens themselves have a high survival rate.
Maintenance and feeding
As a versatile breed, the Amrox is much better suited to being kept on the floor than in cages. For all the undemandingness of the breed to the conditions of detention, it is still necessary to maintain cleanliness in the chicken coop in order to avoid infectious and invasive diseases.
When chickens are kept on the floor, they are usually kept on deep bedding... Here you need to remember that chickens love to dig holes in the ground. They will dig the litter too. It is very expensive to change deep bedding often.
There are two options for keeping chickens on the floor:
- Agitate the bedding daily so that droppings do not accumulate at the top, and periodically add insecticidal preparations to it to destroy cutaneous parasites in chickens;
- Leave the floor without bedding, but roost the chickens.
The second option is more in line with the natural needs of the bird.
To make the chickens feel comfortable, it is enough to make them perches with a height of 40-50 cm. In this case, the chickens will “save themselves from predators” at night and will not harm themselves when they jump off the pole in the morning.
Amrox diet
It cannot be said about the Amroxes that they are very whimsical in food.But this breed requires a variety of feed. The Amrox diet must include cereals, vegetables, grass, and animal protein. In the presence of good quality compound feed, cereals and animal protein can be replaced with combined feed.
The rest of the diet comes from succulent feed. Chickens of this breed can and should be given potatoes, other root crops, various greens, wheat bran. From 2 months, corn is introduced into the diet of chickens. With a well-designed diet, delicious tender meat is obtained from Amrox.
Amrox owners reviews
Conclusion
Amroksa chickens are well suited for private households. For industrial enterprises, they have too low egg production and too long growth period. Therefore, today only private owners breed chickens of this breed and part of the livestock is kept in nurseries as a gene pool for breeding new breeds. But if a novice owner of a private backyard needs a chicken “for experiments,” then his choice is amrox. On chickens of this breed, you can learn to keep already adults and incubate eggs.
