Show off your beautiful Crevecoeur

cluck-cluck said:

Hi you two! We do have a Crevecoeur thread that gets quite lonely

. Crevecoeurs are not rare as individuals, as many hatcheries carry them, however, finding them somewhat close to the SOP is very difficult, if not impossible and finding serious breeders is just as hard! The only person I know of who is actually trying to work with them is exop, a member here. She and Duane Urch are the only "breeders" of the bird who are trying to bring them closer to the SOP.

Unfortunately, Mr. Urch is getting on in years, and is more of a small scale hatchery. But as I understand it, he has kept many breeds going over the last 50 or so years that would have been lost forever if he hadn't kept them going, and as I understand it, many hatcheries got their start from him.

I got some last year from Ideal because they were so cool looking, then fell in love with them. I just got more from Murray McMurray last week because exop isn't ready to sell eggs this year as she is trying some new matings. I sincerely hope to get some birds from her when she is ready. Hers are from Urch and Sandhill.

In the mean time, I plan on experimenting with the hatchery stock I bought. They are so extremely different! My ideal chicks really didn't show much of a vaulted head, and were "penguin" colored as chicks, whereas my McMurray chicks have very distinctive vaulted heads and are almost pure black in their down, wtith much darker shanks and beaks. I took pictures of them, but unfortunately, I came down with really bad tendinitis earlier this week, and can barely make it to the bathroom, LOL, let alone sit at the computer (or get to it! Lol). But I will show a comparison on the Crevecoeur thread when I'm better

Anyway, here is a link to the Crevecoeur thread:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/371947/crevecoeur-thread/610

And I did a comparison chart between a Crevecoeur and a Polish which you can download the PDF of here:
http://www.sweet-obsessions.com/Chickens/CreveVSPolis.pdf

If I may interject, the American Poultry Association recognizes breeds by type, not by "purity of genetics". There really is no "pure blooded" chicken breed. So, a Crevecoeur chicken that has been arbitrarily breed over many years, with no thought given to the pairings will soon be unrecognizable as a Crevecoeur. Many people make comments' that hatchery birds are impure or have a lot of Polish blood in them, and this could be true, or not. They could look polish, but be from a long line of "pure" crevecoeurs, just badly paired up! So I suggest, if you should ever get one of those "attacks" whatever your breed of choice, that you take it with a grain of salt. I don't like it when people say this because it's usually said to imply your chicken isn't useful and should never be bred, but it may very well have qualities needed in your breeding program! Useful criticism would be comparison to the SOP, and since we become blinded to our own flock sometimes, an outsider's critique is invaluable. However, I find generalized comments such as "you bird looks like it has a lot of polish in it" to be thoroughly unhelpful and irrelevant..

Anyway, please come join us on the Crevecoeur thread!

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