The Dekalb Amberlink is a very popular
chicken
The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adu ...
for
free range
Free range denotes a method of farming husbandry where the animals, for at least part of the day, can roam freely outdoors, rather than being confined in an enclosure for 24 hours each day.
On many farms, the outdoors ranging area is fenced, ...
, cruelty free, alternative
production methods
Production methods fall into three main categories: job (one-off production), batch (multiple items, one step at a time for all items), and flow
Job production
Job production is used when a product is produced with the labor of one or few work ...
. They are very adaptive to non-cage operation,
forages
Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavi ...
well, and have exceptional feather retention, being one of their best features for free range farms and other operations. Most popular in the United States in the 1970s, the Amberlink has become a relatively common chicken species to be used on small house poultry farms.
Mainly white with some amber brown feathers, the Amberlink is not currently recognized as a standard breed. It is often listed as either a
hybrid
Hybrid may refer to:
Science
* Hybrid (biology), an offspring resulting from cross-breeding
** Hybrid grape, grape varieties produced by cross-breeding two ''Vitis'' species
** Hybridity, the property of a hybrid plant which is a union of two dif ...
resulting from reverse-crossing of the parent line. Amberlinks lay light to medium rich brown eggs, laying about 270 eggs a year. The temperament of the Amberlink is conducive to small backyard flocks as it is both docile and social as long as they have had the opportunity to socialise from a young age with both other chickens and humans.
References
External links
BFREPA on Dekalb Amberlink
Chicken crossbreeds
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