A Bielefelder Thread !

[Fosmorefarm]

Disappointed in GFF Bielefelders.

7 out of the 11 surviving ( lost one hen to an unidenfied ailment) I received from GFF have stark white earlobes, 2 more have mostly white earlobes with a fleck of red. I have raised these to laying age, only to find they are culls (for breeding purposes). The eggs are a very light shade of brown, and smaller then the dark brown eggs I am getting from the red eared hens. I purchased three pullets from a breeder who had GFF stock from an earlier breeder flock; they are laying dark brown eggs, and have descent conformation to the standard. It is disappointing that GFF ha let their breeding stock degrade to this point; I would not recommend buying any Biels from them until they have fixed the problem. By necessity, I will now breed my roo with the few decent hens, hatch those eggs and see what the chicks turn into. I do not, in good conscience, plan to sell or give away chicks that have a high probability of being culls in terms of the standard.

Having said that, all the hens are delightful and personable birds and have adapted well to free-ranging. I will keep them as layers only. I am getting a new set of chicks from another breeder, and hope to make a contribution to keeping this breed from fading into the sunset.

I spoke with someone at Greenfire Farm to try to find out why my pullets have white ear lobes, she said oh my we have only heard of a few people with them. BULL. After looking on ebay and several groups on Facebook selling eggs I believe at least half of the BF breeding birds out there are not good birds. White ear lobes, black breast barring, poor type and multiple white tail feathers to name a few things wrong with them. Some of those things are faults and some are DQs. It looks like I will be going to a closed flock on my BF to protect myself from what is out there. I am selling of all my second flock I bought as egg layers only because of the white ear lobes. Even the two with red lobes may be carriers and I won't take a chance on selling chicks or eggs and perpetuating the problem so I am getting rid of those too.

 

[otakalhasas]

Just wanted to share a few pics of my 11 week old babies. I'm new to this breed, but loving how beautiful they already are and how sweet their personalities are. I have 4 pullets and 2 cockeral.

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VERY pretty! Congratulations!!

 

[AtaraxyAcres]

Seems there are a lot of people out there that are either maliciously pawning culls, or are ignorant about genetics and the breed standard. I relied on the GFF marketing material about saving these 'rare' breeds from extinction, and thought this might be a good endeavor on my part. Never thought I start out on a dead-end. But, I will get a 5:2 set from someone who has also voiced a strong warning about the deterioration of the standard in April. I plan to do more research into the genetics of the issues we are experiencing ... mostly to see if my Roo, who looks good, may be a cull as well.

 

[DesertChic]

Seems there are a lot of people out there that are either maliciously pawning culls, or are ignorant about genetics and the breed standard. I relied on the GFF marketing material about saving these 'rare' breeds from extinction, and thought this might be a good endeavor on my part. Never thought I start out on a dead-end. But, I will get a 5:2 set from someone who has also voiced a strong warning about the deterioration of the standard in April. I plan to do more research into the genetics of the issues we are experiencing ... mostly to see if my Roo, who looks good, may be a cull as well.

I'm sorry you've had such a negative experience with this beautiful breed. I suspect that not only are many "breeders" ignorant of the genetics and standards, but many probably don't care. They enjoy the birds and making money off of selling eggs and offspring. I also know for a fact that some "breeders" simply will not cull birds because they can't stand the thought of killing any of the culls. I get it. Killing the birds I've raised from egg is the hardest part of breeding for me, and I often find myself making every possible excuse not to butcher a bird I've become fond of. And if they sell the culls to someone else, then THAT person may breed from them. It's a vicious cycle, and unfortunately one that's far too easy to fall victim to.

Also, please remember that the more sagacious breeders will always tell you that you need to hatch hundreds of chicks to find those two or three that are of true breeder quality. That's a lot of birds being invited to dinner for the sake of a few to breed. Just food for thought...no pun intended. When I first hatched my Biels they were are just about perfect in my eyes. Once I began to really examine them I finally started noticing the flaws that kept them from being good breeders, and yet I had these birds with amazing personalities that just seemed too sweet and friendly to cull. Being objective and acting on that objectivity is the hardest part of the job. My best hen, the one that was actually worthy of breeding, died of heat stroke. My best rooster that comes closest to standard still has the flaw of an extra sprig on his comb...still not perfect. All but one of the other boys were invited to dinner, leaving me with two flawed roosters that I could never hope to breed to standard. Luckily for me, this breed isn't compatible with my environment anyway so I've abandoned any nature of breeding pure Biels. Instead I have one rooster I adore to the point of allowing him to live in my bathroom during the worst heat of summer, one rooster that's about to come to dinner, one hen that's about to come to dinner, and one hen that received a stay of execution because she suddenly started giving me jumbo dark eggs on a regular basis. Maybe...just maybe I'll cross her with one of my Naked Necks to preserve her best qualities before she's invited to dinner.

 

[AtaraxyAcres]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Disappointed, but not to the point of quitting. The cost of failure is really not very large ... I will still end up with good backyard chickens. I have learned a lesson ..and hope others will not make the same mistake.

 

[otakalhasas]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Disappointed, but not to the point of quitting. The cost of failure is really not very large ... I will still end up with good backyard chickens. I have learned a lesson ..and hope others will not make the same mistake.

As it is said, good things come to those who wait! I started out in dogs (Lhasas) in the mid 1970's. It was not until my fourth Lhasa that I had any quality. And quality I got! He finished his championship quickly and went on to be the #6 Lhasa in the USA in 1989. And a few years later, his son was #10 in the USA.

What did I learn? Stick to your guns, hold the course, and go for it!

 

[Fosmorefarm]

I have only had contact with a few breeders that seem to care about breeding them to the German Standard of Perfection, although I believe there must be a lot more conscientious breeders out there. When I asked questions on several of the groups I belong to not one person admitted to having birds with white ear lobes. So am I the only one? Look at the BF on ebay and you will see a large number of them have white lobes, a disqualification. Black breast barring, a DQ. Multiple white tail feathers, a DQ. And some with a vee shaped body type not the full body that they are supposed to have. And people are still buying those fertile eggs from poor quality birds to hatch inferior quality birds.

 

[Eggscoozme]

I spoke with someone at Greenfire Farm to try to find out why my pullets have white ear lobes, she said oh my we have only heard of a few people with them. BULL. After looking on ebay and several groups on Facebook selling eggs I believe at least half of the BF breeding birds out there are not good birds. White eaIr lobes, black breast barring, poor type and multiple white tail feathers to name a few things wrong with them. Some of those things are faults and some are DQs. It looks like I will be going to a closed flock on my BF to protect myself from what is out there. I am selling of all my second flock I bought as egg layers only because of the white ear lobes. Even the two with red lobes may be carriers and I won't take a chance on selling chicks or eggs and perpetuating the problem so I am getting rid of those too.

I had recently discovered one of my hens has white earlobes too. Stock purchased off eBay who got their stock from GFF. I was going to dump my whole flock, but have since decided to cull the white earlobes, and hope my Roo(s) are not carriers.....see what their offspring produce (I have some red-earlobe hens) and may proceed with in line breeding to hopefully, end up with a SOP stock.

I just invested too much money to give up hope unless someone out there knows that my attempt will be futile? LMK

 

[otakalhasas]

I had recently discovered one of my hens has white earlobes too. Stock purchased off eBay who got their stock from GFF. I was going to dump my whole flock, but have since decided to cull the white earlobes, and hope my Roo(s) are not carriers.....see what their offspring produce (I have some red-earlobe hens) and may proceed with in line breeding to hopefully, end up with a SOP stock.

I just invested too much money to give up hope unless someone out there knows that my attempt will be futile? LMK

I hear you. I should think that if you are VERY careful in your breeding red lobe to red lobe and only red lobe you will eventually have a red earlobe line. But if your roos are carriers (or your hens for that matter), the white lobes may crop up upon occasion. I should think that red is dominant to white - anyone know for sure?

 

[Bine]

Breeding Bielefelders is not the easy. The color pattern is tricky, the body line has some challanges and you have to keep an eye on egg performace, weight and character. So Bielefelders are great for first time holders, b/c they are - in you climate- robust, calm and friendly but if you want to breed Bielefelders to show level is def. not Beginners Breed. If you like a challange and if you are ready to raise 100+ chicks a year... from what I saw, I would estimate 6 to 7 years of hard culling til you get a stable population that could compete in a show setting here.
So, it is not that bad.
I saw some lovely birds on us websites and I saw some that looked more like brownish, washed out version of a german sperber or belgium cuckoo.