B.Y.C. Dorking Club!

[chickenmum]

Let's start a B.Y.C. Dorking Club! Feel free to join if you have Dorkings, want Dorkings, like Dorkings, are going to get dorkings, are interested in Dorkings, etc. Sign right up!

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Wow! Sorry about the difficult luck with you Sand Hill Order, but I hope you reconsider.

As everyone begins to surf through poultry world there are a lot of elements to consider.

Not all chickens are created equal. Indeed, most end up failing the Standard. The oft quoted number is that one in ten is worth using in a breeding program. This, however, is a generalization, and is certainly dependent on the breed. The commoner breeds are bred is high enough number that the gene pool is greatly diversified, but with the rare breeds this is not the case.
The three breeds you mentioned, Orloffs and Crevecoeurs, are so rare that I would be surprised if there were truly up to snuff fowl anywhere in the US or even the world--no exageration.

Crevecoeur are now so rare that if they are not soon adopted by a dedicated breeder their fate is sealed.

What all of this means is that you can not get good stock in these breeds; it no longer exists. Orloffs, crevecoeurs, houdans, redcaps, these breeds are all gasping for air like dying fish. To purchase them is to know that your stock is going to be highly inferior and that you're going to work hard for several years to even begin to approach the Standard. Too much white in an Orloff or some positive white in a Crevecoeur are, at this point in the game, the least of a breeder's worries.

As for Dorkings, well they're not as bad off as the aforementioned, but they're still not in tip-top shape--not even almost. They, too, have been neglected for a very long time, and the result is degredation. In nature there is no stasis; there is evolution or entropy. You're going up, or you're going down. Folk haven't been raising poultry commonly for decades now, which means that our breeds have been whithering away for a long time, and they bare the marks.

Silver grey Dorkings and Red Dorkings are the strongest currently. Colored dorkings are a more problematic color pattern to begin with because it tends not to breed true to standard. The whites are probably the most dangerously rare. Rebuilding them is critical. We have been working on it for a good little while now. I expect good results in the next two or three years at which point, if the gov't doesn't find a way to shut it down, we will try to begin shipping them to make them more readily available. Even then, they will still be a work in progress. Multiple decades of neglect cannot be erased in a few seasons.

Try not to be discouraged, it can be so annoying to see all of these prize-winning white plymouth rocks or leghorns, knowing that our rare breeds are not even close to them in quality. On the other hand, it really says something to get the dreggs of what remains of our rare breeds and resurrect them. Anyone can buy white plymouth rock chicks from a breeder and win the county fair. That takes no skill, and is no real prize won. The one who can ressurect the Crevecoeur is a hero.

Cheers!

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Okay so I just got off the phone with Mr. Russell and he got me all excited about the non-standard colors again. Head-> desk. I tried to resist…I really did, but OMG I really like the guy and his enthusiasm infectious. And he wants to give me eggs from his two best pens. How can I say no to that? He is talking about needing to spread around the genes before he becomes unable to have chickens and doesn’t want the genes lost.

Please don’t hate me, but I can’t say no. so I will do reds. But also a couple other colors …I looked up the colors he was talking about and was lost. They are so gorgeous. And it really is all about how typey they are, right? The color is just window dressing so if I breed for typey birds that aren’t the APA normal colors does that make me a bad person?
(bracing for the censure)

Hmmm....Craig is so enthusiastic about his colors; it is great fun to talk to him about them. Still, the colors aren't going to be lost. They're always right there sitting underneath. Creles, Cuckoos, Dark Greys, Birchens, Brown Reds, Coloreds all of these patterns and then some, pretty much everything that runs through the Old English Game specturm, can be had by crossing the primary Dorking varieties: White, Red, and SG, and these will only be great again if they are the focus of strong breeding efforts. Then, when these other non-Standard colors are recreated, they'll actually be good Dorkings.

Of course, go for it. No one's going to hate anyone, for the love of Pete! It's just trying to be really honest. In any breed where there are multiple varieties, all the superfluous varieties do is detract from the general health of the breed. If you look at poultry history, the strongest breeds of large fowl have 1 to 3 varieties of any value, and only one has four--Cochins. All of the other varieties always look like the dregs: poor vigor, poor conformation, small, small, small. It's just the way of it. Really the overall health of a variety depends on multiple breeders and concerted efforts. The more breeders working with a single variety, the greater the chance of it achieving excellence.

Your Reds will be strong, not only because of what you're doing, but because of what others are doing. Over the years, they're going to get bigger, meatier, longer, deeper, more productive. The feathers are going to become lusher; they'll be wider. Your hens won't have trreaded backs through the breeding season because of enhanced feather quality. They'll be vigorous and disease-resistant, and all of this because you're part of a community bettering Red Dorkings.

Our Whites are getting better and better, and their strength lies in the other homesteads that are picking them up. Nothing makes be feel more confident in the eventul success of what we're doing here, like the knowledge of budding success in the pens of other breeders dedicated to the Whites.

By all means enjoy the colors, but they'll always be fun mongrels. You'll have them for a bit, and then need to get something to cross into them, and you'll keep doing it in this sort of cycle: cross for vigor, fix the color, degradation; cross for vigor, fix the color, degradation. It's cool, as long as it brings you pleasure, but it really doesn't do anything for Dorkings per se.

So, it's not about censure. It's just about an actual vision of what you're doing. Craig has been an excellent ambassador for Dorkings. He spreads enthusiasm and gets everyone talking. Still, what he isn't doing is spreading around a bunch of high quality Dorkings reflecting the many years he's been breeding them. For all the years he's been working on Dorkings, none of his stock that I've ever seen in the last decade is of particularly strong quality. It's on par with everything else out there, of course, but it isn't better, and much of that has to do with all the color projects he likes to do. With careful analysis, we might see that it's because the general pool of Dorking quality has been going down the drain for decades--literally decades. All of these color varieties, which are really just color mongrels, are produced by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Dorking breeders have been so worried about the color of the barn that they failed to realize that the roof was caving in.

In the 90's there was a major effort made to get the Cuckoo Dorking into the SOP. To what avail? There's not a single flock of high quality Cuckoo Dorkings around today--not one, unless it's hiding somewhere in a pine grove unbeknownst to anyone else. If any censure is due, it's due in light of this flagrant example of upside down priorities, especially because they knew better than to allow themselves to be diverted by a variety that, even in England, was never anything more than marginal. All of the brouhaha was being done to get Cuckoo Dorkings into the SOP while the general state of the Dorking breed was starting to whirlpool above the drain.

I don't know any poultry community that talks more about "buiding the barn before you paint it" as much as the Dorking community, and yet, as a community they have, in the past at least, been so easily distracted by paint. The way to remove color as a factor is not to discount it but to revere it. The reasons for which all the Dorking barns look like Dorking sheds are several, not the least being that they have been unfairly censured in poultry literature for ridiculous minutiae that count for nothing. On the other hand, Dorking breeders for decades have been too busy painting sheds instead of building barns. To this day, all you have to do is go to ebay and there are already faux-breeders peddling a bunch of nothing as good quality Dorkings, and all they'll accomplish is the deception of new-comers who think that they're getting something worth raising. Instead they'll end up disappointed, and I bet most won't be back to try raising good Dorkings again.

These other non-Standard colors have never been anything but fancier's play--ever--anywhere--on this or that side of the Atlantic, and in any century from which we have reliable, written documentation. It's reasonable to imagine that fanciers have often kept a pen of this or of that for kicks because these colors do pop up if you cross the primary colors of White, Red, and Silver Grey. The only exception here would be to throw in the Colored Dorking, which is an intermediate color variety, not one that has an ancient tradition of on-going excellence, but one that did enjoy a fair level of success in the 1800's. It's weakness, like anything in a more or less Golden Duckwing pattern is that it is an intermediate pattern that cannot self-sustain over time. Its general health quite literally depends on the existence of strong Silver Duckwing, i.e. Silver Greys and Red Duckwing, i.e. Reds. Without the occasional, but regular, outcrossing to Reds, Coloreds will get lighter and lighter until they're just smutty Silver Greys. To anyone who has worked with Coloreds recently, this should sound rather familiar.

Cuckoos are had by crossing Whites and SGs, which will also create Dark Greys, Birchens, and Mottled, especially if you cross F1s on F1s. Birchens, if crossed to Reds will create Brown Reds. Creles are had by crossing Reds and Cuckoos. Spangled are had by crossing Mottleds onto Reds. We could do this again and again, but to what avail? It all comes down to Whites, Reds, and SGs. The question is how good is the barn and not about whether we can or cannot paint a shed. The reality is that the poultry world here or at the hatcheries is full of painted sheds. Recently, on another chat site, I foolishly chimed in on a thread talking about non-Standard colors and how we might save the traditional varieties, but the talk was the same as it always is, ie "Don't tell me what color I can paint my shed!". It wasn't even worth trying to continue the conversation.

If Dorkings are ever going to be show stoppers again, if they're ever going to merit the effusive praise that they received through merit in by-gone days as the single best pure-bred meat breed ever developed, it will be in the three colors: White, Red, and Silver Grey. It's going to take another solid decade of weighing birds, culling hard, and strong focus to rebuild the caved in roof on the Dorking barn, and even then there really won't be room for another barn. In reality, we will be fortunate if we get these three back there.

So, in conclusion, we are all free to do whatever it is we'd like, but you'll only get bread from following a recipe that leads to bread. If you want biscuits, bake biscuits. It' your kitchen, and it's all good. The only problem is if you really are hoping for bread but find in the end that you've been following a recipe that leads to biscuits. Then you're sad. The only unfortunate thing is if you've been convinced that biscuits and bread are the same thing, because then we're not being honest. Also, avoid falling into the sham of trying to pawn off biscuits as bread. It's unfair to tell beginners that there's a whole lot of heritage in an empty shell.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

So, I have just taken out an absolutely awesome hatch from the incubator. I'm thrilled.

It's been a long road of serious culling and discipline. I know I sound like a color Scrooge, but trust me, were this the 1920's and every Tom, Dick, and Henrietta on the street had chickens, I'd be the worst color-o-holic of them all! Bringing this strain around has not been easy. I had only one cull out of twenty chicks---one! A few more weeks of this and Lord knows what could happen!

Great health. Excellent hatch rate. Good color, a high percentage of the chicks have the silvery cast that is nice to see in the Whites. Toes range from good to excellent in placement. All RC, all 5-toes, the only cull for color looked a bit too much like a Red Pyle.

Giving into my inner bumpkin..."Hot diggety!"

 

[GirlWithTheTJ]

I just received my 36 Silver Grey Dorkings and i just had to share! We've wanted them for a long time and finally found some in Canada that we could ship! They are so adorable and i can't wait to see their little personalities! Im in love!

 

[Thomas K.]

Hi everyone!
Dorking is my favorite chicken breed, and this is my flock 1, and flock 2. From Slovakia.
Thomas

 

[robinwhiskers]

Where did y'all get your Dorkings from? One day I want to get a Dorking roo and name him Rex Goliath.

 

[Tervuren]

Going to cheerfully resurrect this thread, because my Dorking, Dora, laid her first egg today! She’s a late maturer, as all the info on the breed says, 7 months! Her egg is definitely pure white, not cream or tinted like I think they’re supposed to be. Doesn’t particularly matter to me, just interesting. All the girls are still having a party about her laying out in the run.

 

[Geckolady]

Going to cheerfully resurrect this thread, because my Dorking, Dora, laid her first egg today! She’s a late maturer, as all the info on the breed says, 7 months! Her egg is definitely pure white, not cream or tinted like I think they’re supposed to be. Doesn’t particularly matter to me, just interesting. All the girls are still having a party about her laying out in the run. View attachment 2898303View attachment 2898305View attachment 2898304View attachment 2898306

I have a silver grey Dorking named Dora, too!

 

[WriterofWords]

LOL I'm sure the $300 is a typo since the chicks are only $4 at McMurray!