A Bielefelder Thread !

[Chickielady]

I think somewhere I read that the Bielefeder was breed to do good with the weather in Estern Westphalia and, trust me, hot weather just does not exist in all of Westpahlia, ..normally. This year we had the hottest summer for over 50 years and it was an disaster for my garden b/c I have no connection to the water line on my allotment, never needed one. I have rain water barrels and til this year it was sufficent b/c normally we have rain every other day.

And I am sorry to hear about all those losses and problems with eggs and chicks. I wish I could help, but my Barbus breed themselfs (I solemnly proclaimed a one chick policy, but some of my hens just don't care and entrench themselves with more than one egg in the box) and I have more chicks than I want to have.... only thing that I do is to move hen and chicks indoor, feed herbal tea and use bird sand not straw or wood chips.

This would explain their 'laziness " in hot weather ?
actually, this would explain ALOT, why the birds lack interest in reproduction.

I have cross bred some of mine into my "layer pens" which are birds hardy & just meant to lay nice eggs for my table egg buyers....and the Marans Cock was ON THE JOB over the Biel hens....all the while the Biel cock kinda watched...
In the ned of that last year's marans cock to Biel hen mating, I have now, about 15 cross pullets just at pol...getting about 5 fart eggs a day.
These pullets are 10x more active in forgaing than the pur biels....

 

[DesertChic]

This would explain their 'laziness " in hot weather ?
actually, this would explain ALOT, why the birds lack interest in reproduction.

I have cross bred some of mine into my "layer pens" which are birds hardy & just meant to lay nice eggs for my table egg buyers....and the Marans Cock was ON THE JOB over the Biel hens....all the while the Biel cock kinda watched...
In the ned of that last year's marans cock to Biel hen mating, I have now, about 15 cross pullets just at pol...getting about 5 fart eggs a day.
These pullets are 10x more active in forgaing than the pur biels....

Oh my gosh! Not my cockerels! One of my Biel cockerels, my favorite breeder, mounts every female he gets near, even when temps are over 90. So far he's not only mounted the three Biel girls, but also my three White Rocks, four Australorps, two Barred Rocks and one Silkie...sometimes all in the same morning AND later that evening.

 

[Sylvester017]

I am aware of the different strains of cocci. I saw the symptoms immediately and treated with Corid. I am pretty sure now it was not cocci. It killed them to quickly, no one else in the pen with them got sick and I did not continue treatment after those two died. I've had birds for nearly 5yrs now. While I am no expert, I feel pretty well versed by now.

My Ameraucanas are my money makers. I keep any decent bantam Cochin I hatch (which are not many) and sell the culls at the local auction where I am lucky to get $2 each for. The Ams I get $7-15 for my culls - blue eggs layers sell well no matter the quality at the auction. The auction is my quick dump of any culls and extra boys. I haven't sold many eggs this year, but usually the hatching eggs sell well and I usually make enough off them to support my whole flock each year. My Ams are not the best layers, but I keep over a dozen girls at all times. With 14 girls, I rarely got less than 9 eggs a day this year. I keep new pullets each year and only keep the best hens for more than two years. I've had this flock/line since September 2011. I love how they are tolerate the heat and cold here in PA. They are the only breed I haven't lost combs and toes to frostbite during our frigid winters.
The bantam Cochins suck money from me and haven't made me one cent.

Cocci (and/or worms) sucks and the only time I've ever had them is from birds shipped to me. Don't breeders get their birds tested before shipping or is NPIP their only concern? Sorry - getting sidetracked!

So Amers are your money makers? - people do love the colored eggs - all EE chicks at our local feed store are always gone in a couple days. Can't understand why since ours and our friend's Amers and EEs suck at laying their 2nd year. I read somewhere that the muffed pea combed Russ Orloffs suck at laying in their 2nd year too. The one saving grace about keeping Amers/EEs is that the hens are non-combative - spooky kooky jittery jumpy wary girls but very kind to flockmates. Our girl is so gentle that she submits to the Silkies. After owning a gentle Amer and seeing our friend's gentle EEs I would never consider mixing them with aggressive or dual purpose types like RIR, BR, NHR, Wyans, Marans, Legs, etc. Our Amer is the perfect LF around our littles. She just doesn't handle molting or humidity very well in our SoCal climate.

When I was choosing a bantam breed the Cochin and Silkies were my two choices and I'm really glad I picked the Silkies. Both breeds are used by owners as foster mothers but we wanted the bantam that layed the larger egg and Silkies were it. No bantam really produces a lot of eggs because broodiness cuts into their production but when our Silkies are laying they have the largest size egg of the bantam breeds - 1.25 oz consistently from each of our girls. Our 4-yr-old has pretty much ceased laying except for a few weeks in Spring but she's the alpha hen and the little fluffball keeps the flock in order.

 

[Candy442]

Oh my gosh! Not my cockerels! One of my Biel cockerels, my favorite breeder, mounts every female he gets near, even when temps are over 90. So far he's not only mounted the three Biel girls, but also my three White Rocks, four Australorps, two Barred Rocks and one Silkie...sometimes all in the same morning AND later that evening.

My boys are very active too! My older Biele cockerel Franz loves my two Cream Legbar hens and also some of the chantecler girls. But he is not trying with the Biele girls because they aren't ready. I have a younger boy in with them (six Biele pullets and 2 Cream legbar hens) who seems to have the Biele girls on his side. He has a prettier comb and form anyway

But they both are doing the rooster thing with all my other hens, that is if not chased away by the cockerel in those breeds They all seem to be minding boundaries unless the other boy is not looking and Franz will make his move

 

[Cody A]

There are few ways to breed LF Cochins (((and quite a few other breeds))), unless you DO trim cushion fluff.
In the case of Cochins (which have been here on the planet for tens of thousands of years)
Not trimming is NOT going to do anything as far as 'evolution' is concerned.
Either you trim, or artificially inseminate.
Take your pick !

Other than those 2 things, you get no fertility, and no offspring.
Please note: these {Bielefelders} are nowhere near a heritage breed, what they are is a "designer breed' which is """something 'pretty, and lays big giant eggs'""..........................................................................................................................PERIOD, repeat: this is NOT a heritage breed. Just like the broad breasted white turkey...they have been engineered.
So you may well have to help them out a bit.
That said, mine, regardless of bloodline.........................just don't have too much interest in sex at all. I have 4 bloodlines now, what I have collected from 4 parts of the United States.
Cockerel after cockerel....they are nice, SWEET mannered birds.................and each one seldoms mounts....
Sometimes one will do the dance for a hen..****************.hens seldom act impressed****************....Engineering is engineering !

So your saying people have been trimming cochin fluff and artificially inseminating for tens of thousands of years and that's the only way they can reproduce? Point me to the time period as to when the cochin was originally bred. Can you supply a link?

I suspect the Cochin fluff trimming issue is due to breeding and is what got the breed where it is today. If the bird has been around as long as you say natural selection would have taken care of the excess fluff.

How is a Bielefelder anymore "engineered" as you say, than a Cochin? What does it matter that the Biele is not a heritage breed?


I've whittled my Biele flock down to 4 cockerels and 10 pullets. All the cockerels are actively trying to breed the girls and the temp has been in the 100's here.
I don't know about fertility because I haven't tried to hatch any yet.

 

[jbkirk]

So your saying people have been trimming cochin fluff and artificially inseminating for tens of thousands of years and that's the only way they can reproduce? Point me to the time period as to when the cochin was originally bred. Can you supply a link?

I suspect the Cochin fluff trimming issue is due to breeding and is what got the breed where it is today. If the bird has been around as long as you say natural selection would have taken care of the excess fluff.

How is a Bielefelder anymore "engineered" as you say, than a Cochin? What does it matter that the Biele is not a heritage breed?


I've whittled my Biele flock down to 4 cockerels and 10 pullets. All the cockerels are actively trying to breed the girls and the temp has been in the 100's here.
I don't know about fertility because I haven't tried to hatch any yet.

you can check fertility without hatching.

 

[Bine]

Maybe it helps when we define what we mean when we say heritage or hybrid or design or engineered or traditional breeding when it comes to our chickens and other livestock/pets.
I am from Europe and I discoverd that Americans often think that a tradition is something my grandpa invented when I talk about something that is done since the late 1500.
So it always makes a discussion easier when we define what it means.
First I think, we should always have in mind that breeding as we do it today with show clubs on the one hand and chicken laboratories on the other hand is a very new sport.
For most of the time people had no clue how and why certain traits and qualities multiplied in a flock/herd.
Look up the story of Jacob and Laban in the bible and stand in awe before Jacob's solution to put pilled rods into the water and in even greater awe that it really worked.
Or look to the middle ages: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) - one of the first people in Norther Europe to write about human sexuality and reproduction - firmly believed that the health and sex of a child is depending on the emotions of the mother so that unhappy wifes have misfigured girls and happy wifes have strong, healthy baby boys.... a theory that didn't sound right to the ( male) scientists of that time, most of them thought that only the poition of the pregnant woman while sleeping determinated the sex of the baby. ... funny, isn't it?
But til Karl Ernst von Bear discoverd the ovum in 1827, most people believed that females are only a kind of breeding box for the offspring. O/c ordanary people and farmers always knew that somehow the female transfert her trait to the offspring but couldn't tell how it worked. People like Mendel and Camerarius were laughed at for even trying to figure out how the transmission works.
And even after Louis Pasteur wrote his famous "Omne vivum e vivo" in 1864 still most people believed in Archigenesis and the transfer of traits and qualities by looking at or thinking of something.

So traditional breeding often looked like that: A farmers wife likes a black hen in her mixed flock b/c that hen lays more eggs than all others, her rooster is black too, but most chicks are white or brown, But she really likes the black hen and everytime she has to catch a hen for dinner she picks a white or a brown one. So her black hen can breed longer, has more offsprings and
even if the color isn't dominant, slowly, slowly the farmer has more eggs and more black hens....and maybe she thinks that is so b/c she painted the breeding box black.....

Most of the so called heritage breeds were created by the members of the first breeders clubs that were formed in the late 1800's or early 1900's here under the influence of the Prussian civil laws.
They took for the region typical chickens, compared them with chickens from other origins, looked for qualities that in there minds were good and wrote down standards.
and they improved many breeds by mixing all kinds of exotic breed into our land races.
Than, after WWII, the breeders clubs lost importants for the chicken production; the new factroy farms needed more than some nice birds and agrar corporations like avia gene began the mass production of hybrids. They mix and matchen not 10 or 20 birds like the old school breeder they have thousends of birds to breed with an every year they bring a new "product line" on the marked. You can't buy a Cochin there but you can order 15 000 Nqb232 summer edition that lay 320 eggs each a year .... only a year....
So the breeders clubs worked on other goals like really fluffy or long feathers, social skills, combs.... a nice voice....So a breed that layed 150 eggs per year and hat some fluffy feathers on the butt in 1920, still lays 150 eggs today but has a big fluffy butt and looks from afar more like a fluff ball than a chicken.
Breeders like Mr. Roth tried to find a new way. He wanted a chicken that does well in our wet backyards, is easy to handle and produces good eggs and meat... to do that while everyone else tells you that the time for backyard chickens is over and noone needs dual purpose chickens anymore is really big, I think, and I hope that breeds like the Bielefelder have a future and maybe you mark the begin of the end for factory farming with your birds.
And I think the best you can do as a breeder to honour the farmers wife, the prussian club member and people like Mr. Roth is to take the birds they have given to you and be creative. You like the champion birds from here, well, try to breed to this standard.... you don't like the fluffy stuff, than create a Bielefelder with less fluff or create a Bielefelder that does better in the hot weather.
Austrailia gave us the Australorps maybe you can bring the Amerfelder or Bielarizonas.

 

[otakalhasas]

Bine,

Wonderful treatise and I do agree. After 40 years in dogs and companion birds, if there is one thing I've learned is that form normally follows function!

 

[TNBielefelder]

Maybe it helps when we define what we mean when we say heritage or hybrid or design or engineered or traditional breeding when it comes to our chickens and other livestock/pets.
I am from Europe and I discoverd that Americans often think that a tradition is something my grandpa invented when I talk about something that is done since the late 1500.
So it always makes a discussion easier when we define what it means.
First I think, we should always have in mind that breeding as we do it today with show clubs on the one hand and chicken laboratories on the other hand is a very new sport.
For most of the time people had no clue how and why certain traits and qualities multiplied in a flock/herd.
Look up the story of Jacob and Laban in the bible and stand in awe before Jacob's solution to put pilled rods into the water and in even greater awe that it really worked.
Or look to the middle ages: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) - one of the first people in Norther Europe to write about human sexuality and reproduction - firmly believed that the health and sex of a child is depending on the emotions of the mother so that unhappy wifes have misfigured girls and happy wifes have strong, healthy baby boys.... a theory that didn't sound right to the ( male) scientists of that time, most of them thought that only the poition of the pregnant woman while sleeping determinated the sex of the baby. ... funny, isn't it?
But til Karl Ernst von Bear discoverd the ovum in 1827, most people believed that females are only a kind of breeding box for the offspring. O/c ordanary people and farmers always knew that somehow the female transfert her trait to the offspring but couldn't tell how it worked. People like Mendel and Camerarius were laughed at for even trying to figure out how the transmission works.
And even after Louis Pasteur wrote his famous "Omne vivum e vivo" in 1864 still most people believed in Archigenesis and the transfer of traits and qualities by looking at or thinking of something.

So traditional breeding often looked like that: A farmers wife likes a black hen in her mixed flock b/c that hen lays more eggs than all others, her rooster is black too, but most chicks are white or brown, But she really likes the black hen and everytime she has to catch a hen for dinner she picks a white or a brown one. So her black hen can breed longer, has more offsprings and
even if the color isn't dominant, slowly, slowly the farmer has more eggs and more black hens....and maybe she thinks that is so b/c she painted the breeding box black.....

Most of the so called heritage breeds were created by the members of the first breeders clubs that were formed in the late 1800's or early 1900's here under the influence of the Prussian civil laws.
They took for the region typical chickens, compared them with chickens from other origins, looked for qualities that in there minds were good and wrote down standards.
and they improved many breeds by mixing all kinds of exotic breed into our land races.
Than, after WWII, the breeders clubs lost importants for the chicken production; the new factroy farms needed more than some nice birds and agrar corporations like avia gene began the mass production of hybrids. They mix and matchen not 10 or 20 birds like the old school breeder they have thousends of birds to breed with an every year they bring a new "product line" on the marked. You can't buy a Cochin there but you can order 15 000 Nqb232 summer edition that lay 320 eggs each a year .... only a year....
So the breeders clubs worked on other goals like really fluffy or long feathers, social skills, combs.... a nice voice....So a breed that layed 150 eggs per year and hat some fluffy feathers on the butt in 1920, still lays 150 eggs today but has a big fluffy butt and looks from afar more like a fluff ball than a chicken.
Breeders like Mr. Roth tried to find a new way. He wanted a chicken that does well in our wet backyards, is easy to handle and produces good eggs and meat... to do that while everyone else tells you that the time for backyard chickens is over and noone needs dual purpose chickens anymore is really big, I think, and I hope that breeds like the Bielefelder have a future and maybe you mark the begin of the end for factory farming with your birds.
And I think the best you can do as a breeder to honour the farmers wife, the prussian club member and people like Mr. Roth is to take the birds they have given to you and be creative. You like the champion birds from here, well, try to breed to this standard.... you don't like the fluffy stuff, than create a Bielefelder with less fluff or create a Bielefelder that does better in the hot weather.
Austrailia gave us the Australorps maybe you can bring the Amerfelder or Bielarizonas.

Love the post!!

 

[TNBielefelder]

To all Bielefelder breeders I will be looking to purchase a nice Rooster very soon. I would buy the right adult but will be picky. If I can't find the right adult I would also buy 5-10 male chicks from nice stock. No comb sprigs, no triangle shaped bodies, and needs to have the German standard tri color pattern. My old rooster had everything I wanted except the correct color pattern. Private message me if you have what I'm looking for. Thanks