First of all, I don't know as much about breeding as for example Casey76 and some others. They know far more than me, but if you cross breed 2 chickens yourself, they are cross breeds. Hybrids are not a straight cross between 2 different breeds, but one of other of the breeds will have genes from different breeds bred into them.
It is very interesting. I could spend hours on the internet learning about different things.
For instance the only true blue egg layer is the Aruacana. But now you get Cream legbars and hybrids like the Skylines who can lay a bluey or greeney egg. The legbars were a hybrid, but they are now recognised as a pure breed.
I don't know how people get these breeds recognised, you'd have to ask something like the Poultry Club of Great Britain.
My partner, Brian and myself very much like the Black Rock hybrids. This particular breed is only bred in one place in Scotland and the name is copyrighted. Peter Sissons started the breed about 50 years ago, but a couple of years ago the true black rocks wer very hard to come by.
There are a lot of black hybrids on the market and unscrupulous people sell them as black rocks when they aren't. Basically the black rock is a cross between a Rhode Island Red cockerel and a Barred Plymouth rock hen. They produce a black chick which is sex linked. All the young chicks are black, but the cockerels have a white patch on their head, so easy to tell apart usually.
So early last year, Brian and myself bought a small breeding flock off one of the men who breeds them. This lot are called Shaver blacks. They are the same cross as the black rocks, look the same, are wonderful layers, but they don't have the copyright to say they are black rocks.
You will never find a black rock cockerel on the market as the man who took over breeding the black rocks a couple of years ago when Peter retired, only sells day old female chicks. He never sells hatching eggs. So if you see anyone trying to sell black rock cockerels, they are lying!
We also agreed when we bought the Shaver breeders that we would not keep any of the cockerels either. So I had to cull them. This helps keep the strains pure.
If this sort of thing interests you, Hendrix Genetics in Holland now own the breeding stocks of most of the hybrids there are. Their websites are very interesting.
Look under
http://www.isapoultry.com/ and the breeds come under the Products tab!
Sorry if I've bored you!
![happy :)](https://chat.allotment-garden.org/Smileys/green/smile.gif)