Bresse Chickens

[tbird9]

Sadly, none of the eggs I ordered hatched. Half weren't fertile and the other half simply didn't make it. I REALLY wanted to raise some Bresse chickens for meat but now I have Icelandics cooking in the incubator and two more lines of eggs inbound so I think I may have to bow out of the Bresse festivities.

Half weren’t fertile! I would not be happy with that. Anyone selling eggs for hatching should at least be making sure they have enough roosters in the game and the birds enclosed well enough to ensure close to 100% fertility of the eggs.

Half not hatching I can totally understand, especially with shipped eggs. Even my own luck with eggs I’ve saved myself and know to be 100% fertile has been that low.

We started out with three breeding pairs/trios from Greenfire. I’m sure they were all fairly closely related, but we tried to maintain three lines with them. However, I’m down to two because of hatching issues with one line in particular. I was planning to order some more chicks from GF this spring to renew my genetics as I understand they have made further imports since we got our pairs.

I really don’t trust many of the other sources of ‘GF lines’, I’d rather pay to get them from the original importer.

 

[speedy2020]

Half weren’t fertile! I would not be happy with that. Anyone selling eggs for hatching should at least be making sure they have enough roosters in the game and the birds enclosed well enough to ensure close to 100% fertility of the eggs.

Half not hatching I can totally understand, especially with shipped eggs. Even my own luck with eggs I’ve saved myself and know to be 100% fertile has been that low.

We started out with three breeding pairs/trios from Greenfire. I’m sure they were all fairly closely related, but we tried to maintain three lines with them. However, I’m down to two because of hatching issues with one line in particular. I was planning to order some more chicks from GF this spring to renew my genetics as I understand they have made further imports since we got our pairs.

I really don’t trust many of the other sources of ‘GF lines’, I’d rather pay to get them from the original importer.

The best time to get hatching eggs is spring when the temperature not too cold or hot. If you can't find locally, there are few honest folks on Ebay. I purchased a dozen from a farmer through Ebay and 5 hatched out of 13 eggs. I also purchased a 2 years block of 6 locally $10 each few months later.

 

[speedy2020]

Believe me, if I could find a local breeder for Bresse chickens I'd be all over that. I may try again in the spring.

Check out this threads from your state.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/montana.99679/
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/bresse-in-montana.784027/

 

[speedy2020]

Half weren’t fertile! I would not be happy with that. Anyone selling eggs for hatching should at least be making sure they have enough roosters in the game and the birds enclosed well enough to ensure close to 100% fertility of the eggs.

Half not hatching I can totally understand, especially with shipped eggs. Even my own luck with eggs I’ve saved myself and know to be 100% fertile has been that low.

We started out with three breeding pairs/trios from Greenfire. I’m sure they were all fairly closely related, but we tried to maintain three lines with them. However, I’m down to two because of hatching issues with one line in particular. I was planning to order some more chicks from GF this spring to renew my genetics as I understand they have made further imports since we got our pairs.

I really don’t trust many of the other sources of ‘GF lines’, I’d rather pay to get them from the original importer.

Do you see any of your op-spring with partial 1/2"-3/4" white toes? I will cull any of the defect, but want to hear from you and other experience.

 

[cactusrota]

So, a couple of my pullets have this very light "ghost" pattern in their feathers. It's so pale I can only see it in the right light, so I'm really not sure my phone camera could pick it up at all, although I'm probably going to try soon. It's most definely not my imagination or fret marks. I picked one up the other day and could barely make out an actual pattern that looked like single lacing. Sooo... I did some research and found out there's a type of Gauloise Bresse, a gris (grey) called Bresse de Bourg, that's described as silver pencilled.
https://alchetron.com/Bresse-Gauloise-1970792-W
I had been really worried that my Bresse were not pure, but now there's a chance this could be some kind of leakage from this Bourg. Maybe the white Bresse were originally developed from this pencilled one...? it also makes me wonder if white Bresse are not actually a dominant silver instead of dominant white...
Things to ponder, I guess.

 

[cactusrota]

Here is another link that I ran through Google Translate:
https://translate.google.com/transl...onsite.com/pages/page.html&edit-text=&act=url

 

[cree57i]

I have searched and searched for a picture of the blue Bresse variety. Out of the 6 I received, 3 are cockerels and they all have silver in the hackle and saddle feathers. 2 of them are light blue, but it looks like the darker blue is correct. One of the 3 pullets is a pencilled variety, (not blue), but 2 of the pullets look just like the picture on this French site. I couldn't make the picture of the blue cockerel enlarge, but it looked like it has some streaks of silver on the hackles and saddle feathers. Not to the extent mine do though. Maybe I wasn't TOTALLY ripped off. Thank you so much for posting this site.

 

[cactusrota]

Here are the best pics I could get of the "ghost" lacing/pencilling. It's still really hard to see. I'm planning on crossing some of my Bresse with naked necks to get a better meat naked neck breed, and I have one young cockerel that is black with alot of silver pencilling... so I'm wondering if I crossed them with him if I could bring this back out in their offspring. It would enrage the purists I'm sure, but could be an interesting project.

If you look in this last pic, some of the wing coverts/secondaries look barred...

 

[cactusrota]

I have searched and searched for a picture of the blue Bresse variety. Out of the 6 I received, 3 are cockerels and they all have silver in the hackle and saddle feathers. 2 of them are light blue, but it looks like the darker blue is correct. One of the 3 pullets is a pencilled variety, (not blue), but 2 of the pullets look just like the picture on this French site. I couldn't make the picture of the blue cockerel enlarge, but it looked like it has some streaks of silver on the hackles and saddle feathers. Not to the extent mine do though. Maybe I wasn't TOTALLY ripped off. Thank you so much for posting this site.

I would love to see current pictures of your birds, if that's possible? Maybe we could do a fertile egg exchange next spring?

 

[speedy2020]

I have searched and searched for a picture of the blue Bresse variety. Out of the 6 I received, 3 are cockerels and they all have silver in the hackle and saddle feathers. 2 of them are light blue, but it looks like the darker blue is correct. One of the 3 pullets is a pencilled variety, (not blue), but 2 of the pullets look just like the picture on this French site. I couldn't make the picture of the blue cockerel enlarge, but it looked like it has some streaks of silver on the hackles and saddle feathers. Not to the extent mine do though. Maybe I wasn't TOTALLY ripped off. Thank you so much for posting this site.

I have one 3.5 years old Blue Bresse hen. She has some silver feathers as well. Those who own show quality Blue Orpington. They feather are beautiful.
I am raise White Bresse as dual purpose so the blue one end up in the pot soon.