DOMINANT RED BARRED D 159 is an attractive coloured program reminiscent of the Barred Plymouth Rock breed, but in a reddish-brown feather colour with prominent barring. It is very popular as a final hybrid for self-sufficient farms in Europe and also all over the world. Owing to its attractive colouring, it is also used for the export of parent breeding pairs with the objective of producing eggs in self-sufficient family farms.
The asset is the high productivity, namely laying about 300 eggs. The capons of this program are very suitable for the production of traditional highly delicious poultry meat due to their higher body weight.
This program is the result of cross breeding fast feathering red barred RIR paternal population with the allele of "k" recessive gene for K/k feathering rate and the slow feathering brown RIR maternal population with the dominant K allele. When hatching one-day-old chickens, feather sexing is applied using K/k alleles, where one-day-old cockerel acquires the dominant allele of this "K" gene from the mother and is slow feathering and one-day-old hen acquires the recessive "k" allele from the father and is fast feathering, which is evident on one- day-old chickens’ flight feathers.
