BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

[Our Roost]

What you are really looking for is the perfect chicken in your own mind. I have had silver laced wyandottes before. I wanted golden but they were sold out . Mine were hatchery stock. They are noted to be a dual purpose bird but I found they were better at laying than tasting. I had read somewhere that the goldens were a nice roaster bird. I had to clip their wings because they are a bit flighty and I would find them fence sitting overlooking the run area. You will have to experience them yourself and make up your own mind. You may like them, I did not.

 

[Shellz]

What you are really looking for is the perfect chicken in your own mind. I have had silver laced wyandottes before. I wanted golden but they were sold out . Mine were hatchery stock. They are noted to be a dual purpose bird but I found they were better at laying than tasting. I had read somewhere that the goldens were a nice roaster bird. I had to clip their wings because they are a bit flighty and I would find them fence sitting overlooking the run area. You will have to experience them yourself and make up your own mind. You may like them, I did not.

I agree. I had gold-laced Wyandottes from a Canadian hatchery & the cockerels were the best roasters of all the hatchery birds I ever raised.

 

[hellbender]

I'm actually not planning to breed the ones with feathered feet. They're pretty birds, but I'm not a fan of the feathered shanks.

IF I were you, I'd not be too quick to discount the birds you have with feathered shanks. Eventually, I'll persuade you to cross your NN hens with Buckeye cockerels. You will have good layers and delightfully flavored, fully bodied meat birds too.

 

[millbrookfarm]

How much variety did you want?

Thinking purely about color genetics, bielfielders would be a great choice if you like the barring as barring thrown over other colors and deliberately made not pure breeding for the barring will give you variable coloring, possibly extremely variable depending what they were crossed with.

One other way is to add silver to a line that is otherwise all gold. Perhaps a non-barred silver bird bred to biels? You'd get mixed gold, golden and silver birds and the patterns would be dazzling if you never kept a rooster pure for barring and kept some non-barred hens around for breeding.

An example could be: cross a non barred silver bird with a different pattern from biels(can be silver laced, birchen, columbian...) to a biel, then keep the silver non-barred offspring and basically do back crosses to pure biels and also to each other(keep some barreds for this) with attention towards selecting the silver and different-patterned not pure barred roosters/non barred hens for the 'back crosses'.

Have you looked at pioneers? They are supposed to be variable in coloring but are very meat-bred.

I think I'm going to have to get some of these bielefelders. People keep mentioning them to me.

They look like they fit the bill but for the coloring aspect but something that I might be able to change if its not variable enough.

Plus I don't think there is a breeder nearby which might give me a corner on the local market.

So you are saying if I cross them with another breed or just a non standard color of biels I'd get a lot of different colors?

 

[millbrookfarm]

What you are really looking for is the perfect chicken in your own mind. I have had silver laced wyandottes before. I wanted golden but they were sold out . Mine were hatchery stock. They are noted to be a dual purpose bird but I found they were better at laying than tasting. I had read somewhere that the goldens were a nice roaster bird. I had to clip their wings because they are a bit flighty and I would find them fence sitting overlooking the run area. You will have to experience them yourself and make up your own mind. You may like them, I did not.

You are right it my perfect breed for me not perfect for everyone.

 

[millbrookfarm]

A lot depends on the breeder. Luanne over in Alachua County, who does BLRWs, told me she breeds for fast and fleshy growth on her cockerels, and instructed me to "push them" on growth speed and size. I am tickled that I have one cockerel that is basically everything she told me to look for. As for the Blues, yes they throw blue/black/splash. It is an incomplete autosomal dominant. I am using the black phase color culls from Luanne to jumpstart my Gold-Laced flock-to-be with size and type.

I'm trying to keep that in mind; each bloodline can almost be a different breed. Whichever breed or breeds I pick I need to choose bloodlines hitch reflect my purposes. Part of the reason that I haven't focused on Wyandotte or orpingtons since most of there selection has been for te show ring and nt necessarily for production though I'm sure someone out there is selecting for production.

 

[DesertChic]

IF I were you, I'd not be too quick to discount the birds you have with feathered shanks. Eventually, I'll persuade you to cross your NN hens with Buckeye cockerels. You will have good layers and delightfully flavored, fully bodied meat birds too.

LOL! You really don't have to work that hard at persuading me. Buckeyes are on my "want" list.

 

[Kev]

I think I'm going to have to get some of these bielefelders. People keep mentioning them to me.

They look like they fit the bill but for the coloring aspect but something that I might be able to change if its not variable enough.

Plus I don't think there is a breeder nearby which might give me a corner on the local market.

So you are saying if I cross them with another breed or just a non standard color of biels I'd get a lot of different colors?

I am not familiar with the breed either, the only reason I mentioned them as they came up several times and their color genetics potentially would give you a fair bit of color diversity.

As far as I know, biels come in one color only. It's the barring that can make a rather big difference in appearence in mixes. Outcrossing to a silver will add even more color variety- down the line this would throw biel pattern except in b/w, biel without barring in both gold and silver and if you use a silver with pattern genetics not found in biels, the patterning will be very variable- such as the extra pattern genes in any laced birds, even spangled, pencilled will add a lot of pattern variety but the laced has the most 'extra genes'.

So if you end up being attracted to biels and still want color variety, something like a silver laced wyandotte, orpington, laced whatever probably would make you happy, color wise.

 

[bnjrob]

I jumped into turkeys pretty fast 4 years ago. I built a tractor out of old trampoline legs, wood, pvc, welded wire and tarps. I had never built anything before. My turkeys lived about 6 miles away from where I live, in a heavy predator prone area. That summer and fall, we had some horrible straight line winds out of the NE. Every time, I was sure my tractor and birds would be gone. Every time, they were still there. The tractor wasn't always in the same place, but it was right side up. One day, a friend came and took the turkeys to her place and showed me how to butcher them. That night, we had big winds again. I went over to feed the horses and my tractor was gone. The wind had picked it up and blown it several hundred feet. It was laying upside down, stopped by a pasture fence. All we can figure is, those birds must have been holding that pen down for dear life, every time the wind blew. That tractor was retired after that.

Man, you dodged the bullet on losing birds for sure. Good thing they were turkeys and not bantam chickens trying to hold that tractor down.

After we made our first one that was so big and heavy, we wanted to go lighter, but so many people in our area had lost birds and houses because of normal winds that we have all the time or with our usual thunderstorms, that safety was a huge concern for us if we tried to build lighter housing. In the end, we decided that we'd rather have heavier housing than lose birds. The a frames we build now are lighter than our other designs, but they are still made with 2x4 lumber and pretty heavy, while the wide base makes it easier for even the small pens to stay put in the wind. Around here, it we don't even need a storm to send things flying across the pasture. A normal windy day with 30-40 mph winds when a cold front is moving in or a warm front coming up from the Gulf is enough to do plenty of damage if we let it.

 

[dfr1973]

I agree. I had gold-laced Wyandottes from a Canadian hatchery & the cockerels were the best roasters of all the hatchery birds I ever raised.

The three Wyandotte cockerels I had the other year were VERY tasty and flavorful. Left enough of an impression on me to pursue working with the breed as my #1 project.