Arizona Chickens

[ejcrist]

I'm planning to cross Monty with a few of my NN girls, especially the green and blue egg layers since he also carries that gene. Crossing him with my buff barred NN hen, Cocoa Puffs, who also carries the green egg gene could result in some very pretty chicks. Lenny will remain part of my NN breeding for meat program.

Andres I'm not entirely sure about yet. He's still pretty young.

My next focused breeding will revolve around crossing my NNs with my Dark Cornish mixes to improve breast size. I'll probably put Heisenberg in with my Cornish-mix hen and my White Rocks and WR-mixed hens.

My DC-mixed cockerels will also need to be crossed with some NN hens/pullets before the heat sets in. There's no way my massive boy, Tubbs, will survive another summer out here.

He weighed in at 13 lbs the day I took this photo. The other day I thought he'd died. He was right outside my bedroom sliding door, flat on his back. I ran out to him in full distress, only to find him looking up at me as if to say, "A little help here?". I'm guessing he tried to breed my NN hen, Zen, who's VERY particular about which of the boys may touch her, and she probably kicked his butt. He's SO big that once he was on his back he simply couldn't get upright again without help, LOL!

I still can't get over how robust that fella is - 13 lbs - geeze!

Brings me to another point. I spent the last year acquiring some nice SOP Barred Rocks and RIR's to start breeding which I just put them in their individual pens today. They are nice birds for sure. However, when I got my incubator a couple of months ago we wanted to do a dry run incubating and hatching eggs, so we collected eggs from our layer coop/run which houses my Barred Rock rooster Hoss, 16 Barred Rock hens, and 9 White Leghorn hens. We collected both BR and Leghorn eggs for about a couple of days and incubated them. Not all were fertile but we ended up hatching 16 birds total. Three were obvious crosses - California Grays that are white with a couple of black splotches. The rest look like Barred Rocks but I know we hatched more than three leghorn eggs so apparently some of the CA Grays look just like Barred Rocks - I don't understand it yet but I'll figure it out eventually. But anyway I just wanted to say that all of Hosses kids are super healthy and growing like weeds. They're only eight weeks old but they're near as big as the full grown layers they came from - ain't kidding either. I heard of hybrid vigor but these are just hatchery BR and Leghorn crosses - nothing magical about them. I'm just really surprised at how good they turned out since we didn't selectively breed them or anything. Hoss is a nice rooster, big, strong, and healthy but he's not anything above average I wouldn't guess. He's not a SOP heritage bird or anything.

I need to take and post some pictures when I get a chance. Has anyone else turned out really nice birds from run of the mill hatchery birds that were just one breed or crosses like this? I'd be interested to know. I'm more of a fan of pure bred birds but after this experiment it's really piqued my interest in breeding quality crosses. There's definitely a place for it in any breeding program. I'm starting to suspect that crosses might make the best layers. I mean, production reds, etc., are crosses so it stands to reason.

 

[Banaynaychicken]

Not about chickens, but who doesn't love baby goats! My doe had triplets a few hours ago

AUAUAUAUAUAAGHGH!!!!

They are so precious!!

What breed?

ooooooooo the little cream in the middle is DARLING!

*grabby hands*

oo how I would steal one

 

[DesertChic]

I still can't get over how robust that fella is - 13 lbs - geeze!

Brings me to another point. I spent the last year acquiring some nice SOP Barred Rocks and RIR's to start breeding which I just put them in their individual pens today. They are nice birds for sure. However, when I got my incubator a couple of months ago we wanted to do a dry run incubating and hatching eggs, so we collected eggs from our layer coop/run which houses my Barred Rock rooster Hoss, 16 Barred Rock hens, and 9 White Leghorn hens. We collected both BR and Leghorn eggs for about a couple of days and incubated them. Not all were fertile but we ended up hatching 16 birds total. Three were obvious crosses - California Grays that are white with a couple of black splotches. The rest look like Barred Rocks but I know we hatched more than three leghorn eggs so apparently some of the CA Grays look just like Barred Rocks - I don't understand it yet but I'll figure it out eventually. But anyway I just wanted to say that all of Hosses kids are super healthy and growing like weeds. They're only eight weeks old but they're near as big as the full grown layers they came from - ain't kidding either. I heard of hybrid vigor but these are just hatchery BR and Leghorn crosses - nothing magical about them. I'm just really surprised at how good they turned out since we didn't selectively breed them or anything. Hoss is a nice rooster, big, strong, and healthy but he's not anything above average I wouldn't guess. He's not a SOP heritage bird or anything.

I need to take and post some pictures when I get a chance. Has anyone else turned out really nice birds from run of the mill hatchery birds that were just one breed or crosses like this? I'd be interested to know. I'm more of a fan of pure bred birds but after this experiment it's really piqued my interest in breeding quality crosses. There's definitely a place for it in any breeding program. I'm starting to suspect that crosses might make the best layers. I mean, production reds, etc., are crosses so it stands to reason.

I'm a huge fan of hybrid vigor. Did you ever "meet" Hellbender? He's the one who originally set up the "Breeding for Production" thread and was my online mentor for years before he died. He and I had many discussions about hybrid vigor vs remaining strictly "pure". I know that some people devoted to preserving and perfecting breeds via SOP sometimes take offense to promotion of 'backyard mongrels', but there's a lot to be said for their resilience to disease, general hardiness and production. I guess that's one of the things I love about the NNs. You can cross any breed with a NN and get another NN with a completely unique look and outstanding vigor and production. I've been told that NNs don't go broody, but several of mine do; NNs aren't good layers, but I have girls still laying 200-250 eggs per year in their second laying year; NNs aren't friendly....and you know how wrong THAT is.

That said, I started out with all hatchery birds - 4 Australorp pullets, 3 Silkies, and 3 Barred Rocks, one of which turned out to be a rooster I named Shadow. He was a very big boy, very hardy and gorgeous, but turned out to be mean. Before culling him, I bred him with my BR hens anyway and got an amazing flock of chicks out of him, including an even more impressive cockerel who fit SOP almost to a T, but I culled him because I just had too many roosters already and decided to focus on the NNs. Can you get really good quality birds from hatchery stock? Sure, but it usually takes longer to get there. Can you get really wonderful birds from backyard flock mixes? Absolutely!

 

[saguaroskeleton]

AUAUAUAUAUAAGHGH!!!!

They are so precious!!

What breed?

ooooooooo the little cream in the  middle is DARLING!

*grabby hands*

oo how I would steal one

They're Mini Nubian/Nigerians! The little middle ones name is Dally, she looks just like her dad, and has blue eyes too. She'll actually be for sale once shes old enough

 

[Banaynaychicken]

Quote:
*gasps*

and now im going to save money.

 

[BlueBaby]

I just received my hatching egg order for the Black Australorp hatching eggs today. One egg was broken, and one is a pretty skinny one that I won't set. So, I will be setting 14 eggs in the incubator tomorrow. I will not be setting any of my own flocks eggs this time, just these Black ones.

 

[ejcrist]

I'm a huge fan of hybrid vigor. Did you ever "meet" Hellbender? He's the one who originally set up the "Breeding for Production" thread and was my online mentor for years before he died. He and I had many discussions about hybrid vigor vs remaining strictly "pure". I know that some people devoted to preserving and perfecting breeds via SOP sometimes take offense to promotion of 'backyard mongrels', but there's a lot to be said for their resilience to disease, general hardiness and production. I guess that's one of the things I love about the NNs. You can cross any breed with a NN and get another NN with a completely unique look and outstanding vigor and production. I've been told that NNs don't go broody, but several of mine do; NNs aren't good layers, but I have girls still laying 200-250 eggs per year in their second laying year; NNs aren't friendly....and you know how wrong THAT is.

That said, I started out with all hatchery birds - 4 Australorp pullets, 3 Silkies, and 3 Barred Rocks, one of which turned out to be a rooster I named Shadow. He was a very big boy, very hardy and gorgeous, but turned out to be mean. Before culling him, I bred him with my BR hens anyway and got an amazing flock of chicks out of him, including an even more impressive cockerel who fit SOP almost to a T, but I culled him because I just had too many roosters already and decided to focus on the NNs. Can you get really good quality birds from hatchery stock? Sure, but it usually takes longer to get there. Can you get really wonderful birds from backyard flock mixes? Absolutely!

Yeah I gotta agree on the hybrid vigor. Here's Hoss's kids (8 week old Barred Rocks and Barred Rock-White Leghorn crosses):









About half of the eggs we hatched were white so I don't know why we only ended up with three mostly white birds but I'm very happy with them anyway.

Here's a couple of the NN cockerels I was telling you about that are 14 weeks old:









It's hard to see from the pictures but they're far bigger than the Leghorn or Cornish cockerels in the background.

 

[moms3cuties]

 

AUAUAUAUAUAAGHGH!!!!


They are so precious!!


What breed?


ooooooooo the little cream in the  middle is DARLING!


*grabby hands*


oo how I would steal one

They're Mini Nubian/Nigerians! The little middle ones name is Dally, she looks just like her dad, and has blue eyes too. She'll actually be for sale once shes old enough

*gasps*

and now im going to save money. 

I sure wish I had room! Sure would love one for the milk it tastes much like cow's milk. I already have 20 full grown chickens and I know I'm not supposed to get anymore, bah humbug!!! -grrr!

On the distressed note, I can't seem to compliment or give praise to anybody because my cell phone is not functioning, with its touch part on the thumbs up. So here's a whole bunch of thumbs up to everybody with some of the neat comments in this thread!

 

[azchickens14]

The humidity was screwed up because I didn't add water to the well in the bottom of the hatcher. I use a Hoverbator for hatching. The dry hatch was a deliberate experiment, because in prior years I had had trouble with violently fluctuating humidity in the hatcher - often to the point where the observation window fogged and I couldn't clear it no matter how long I left the little vent plug open. The dry hatch didn't work because all but one of the chicks wound up badly shrink wrapped. I managed to rescue most of them, but had to cull two of the rescues within a day or two. The rest are fine and happy and running around. (Normally I try not to rescue, but this time the problems were my fault so I made an exception.)

The most recent hatch went much better. For years I have used cheese cloth over the grate in the hatcher to make cleanup easier. That causes problems because if any cheese cloth threads drop into the water they wick up water, which increases the water surface area and makes it harder to control the humidity. It's hard to keep the cheesecloth out of the water when it is stretched across the whole grate. The cheese cloth was not an optimal solution. For this last hatch I used paper towels on top of the grate instead of cheese cloth. Worked much better.

The Hoverbator water tray has different size wells. I started with a medium surface area well and monitored hatcher humidity for a couple of days. It was still low. So I added another small well. Still too low. Added another small well and bingo - it held around 48%, with minor fluctuations that were similar to fluctuations in the nearby incubator so I think they were related to ambient humidity.  Once I got the humidity stabilized I topped off those particular wells before adding the paper towels and the eggs. I also made sure the grate was perfectly dry before adding anything, because extra surface area (like drops of water spilled on the grate) adds to the humidity and can send it spiking. This latest hatch went really well. I didn't open the hatcher once. The humidity held without spiking. 7 out of 9 eggs hatched properly. An 8th egg partially zipped but had other problems. I had to cull that chick. The 9th egg didn't pip.

There is a genetic component to the hatch rate. I have Black Javas from two different lines. Birds from one line have had a low hatch rate. Birds from the other line pop out like popcorn, often 12-24 hours ahead of the original line, under identical incubation and hatching conditions. This year I hatched some eggs from the more vigorous hatching line, and some eggs that were from a line cross. The vigorous line is still hatching like popcorn. The mixed line is now hatching 70-80% instead of below 50%. Making progress.

Edited to add: I kept the humidity around 48% through most of the hatch, but once the birds start hatching the humidity spikes a bit. The spikes topped out in the mid-high 50% range.

Thank you so much for the great response! I kind of wish I had too high of humidity, but I supoose that is not good too. Really interesting about the dry hatch attempt. I can definitely underatand helping them out when they are shrink wrapping. The only one from my first attempt that survived was stuck to a large chunk of shell. I didnt want to open the incubator, so there I was with a wire hanger slowly peeling off the shell through the vent hole. Not a good experience as it was stuck and screaming for help (a very different chirp for sure) and here I was with a hanger trying to get it off as fast yet gentle as I could.
It's good to know that if I am having problems with humidity near hatch that moistening a small amount of cheese cloth might help. I picked up some sponges yesterday, soaked them and then added them to the incubator. This finally seemed to get the humidity high enough. Now wether that will still be the case at hatch day who knows.

That's crazy about the genetic component! I NEVER would have guessed that. The eggs I got from a friend's chickens have been hatched in their incubator before (obviously not the same ones lol), but im not sure what the exact percentage his hatch rate is. I believe it is pretty good. Do you have an idea why a certain line hatches so much better?

 

[MagicChicken]

Quote:
No idea why the hatch rate was so low in that one line. It was an old, heritage line of birds and it needed a lot of work. A good breeder can improve the hatch rate over time by breeding for that characteristic. Don't forget to pay attention to the whole bird when you are deciding which ones to breed. If you select based on one trait (like color) without also paying attention to all the other traits (like body shape and productivity), the other traits will go downhill quickly. A wise person once told me to select for vigor first. Strong, healthy birds that can get out of their own shells should be a top priority. Everything else is gravy. At least with chickens you can eat your mistakes.