- Aug 22, 2010
- 742
- 22
- 156
I guess our sun may be a little more harsh, plus we have very dry air with little to no humidity.
Cubalaya Thread For Sharing Pics and Discussing Our Birds
- Thread starter cubalaya
- Start date
Well, it has been a pleasure knowing all of you and I sincerely apreciate all the help everyone here has offered. My life has taken a radical turn and I am no longer able to keep my chicken breeding program going. God bless you all.
- Aug 22, 2010
- 742
- 22
- 156
Sorry to hear this, I hope you enjoyed them during your better health. Thank you for your patience in learning, and trying to start the club with us. I wish you well,
Zach
- Thread starter
- #2,264
first fowlsessed and now jungle. blessing on you both, whatever you do. cubalayas are not for everyone. i have been through a lot of breeds and if it is God's will, i will always have cubalaya. i kinda like the asil as a breed but for different reasons. i thought the black australorp a very good small farm chicken. faster growing and more productive for meat and eggs than many breeds.
We will certainly miss you.
Thank you all for your kind words. This has been hard for me and I feel that as much help as you all have given me, that you all deserve a better explanation for my decision. I actually wrote this to Troyer as a private message, but I feel I should share it with you all. It is the least I can do for all the help you have given me.
It is not because of my health. If you are not aware of it, I am full time minister for the Lord Jesus. I have been for over 30 years. The whole reason I got into Cubalayas was as a result of my search to find a good landrace breed that could be an almost completely self sufficient breed that could free range on my land which is actually a ministry called The Good News Camp. No matter where I have lived in the world, I have always had some good landrace chickens that could supply me with eggs and meat at minimal cost and effort. So, when the Lord called me to start The Good News Camp here in the US, I started looking for chickens to do the same thing here. Now in other countries, finding good landrace chickens is as easy as going down to the nearest farm and buying some of their birds. I had not the foggiest idea that all landrace breeds (or abilities) had been bred completely out of all American breeds of chickens when this all started. Thinking it would be as easy as it was in third world countries, I just went down to the flea market and bought some chickens. They all died. I bought 50 Rhode Island Red chicks as a feed store and raised them. They all died.
So I began searching for a breed that could do what I wanted. Now, you have to understand that, my way of thinking of what a good quality breed of chicken is, is almost complete opposite of what most Americans think and to some my thinking would be considered breeding blasphemy. I think Melody Hobbs (Buffalogal on BYC) described the American way of thinking when it comes to breeding chickens best ( in a recent conversation I had with her).
"All domestic chickens came from the jungle fowl, and they've been undergoing "artificial evolution" ever since man replaced nature by choosing this or that comb or color or feather pattern or skin color. As far as a breed is concerned, there is probably no 'purebred' anything, but by outcrossing based not just on the phenotype but also it's ability to reproduce itself, and careful line breeding, we can create a group of animals that not only strongly resemble each other, but will also continue to reproduce their traits. Every animal wants to be 'normal', that is, not have artificial pressure applied in regards to size or color or comb, and they are always trying to, if not "revert" back to wild type, at least find a happy medium. The challenge a good breeder faces is holding off that natural tendency as many generations as possible."
So my way of thinking of letting "nature take it's course" as the best way to breed, is the exact opposite of American way of thinking. Again, I did not know this when I started this journey and by the same token, as is common with all humans, everyone I was talking to naturally assumed I thought exactly like them and did not understand what I was trying to find. Of course it would have helped a lot if I would have known the correct terminology to explain what I was looking for, like "LANDRACE" for instance, which is a term I just learned recently and I think perfectly describes what I have been looking for. From Wikipedia: "A landrace is a local variety of a domesticated animal or plant species which has developed largely by natural processes,[1] by adaptation to the natural and cultural environment in which it lives. It differs from a formal breed which has been selectively bred deliberately to conform to a particular formal, purebreed standard of traits."
Now along this journey, I figured out that nobody understood what I wanted and at one point I decide that there were no landrace chickens left in this country and decided to try to see if I could breed my own. But because I am a fulltime minister and my income comes from free will donations from supporters of my ministry, I also felt a heavy burden that my landrace breeding program not be a financial burden on the ministry. So what I decided to do is have a two part project. Part one would be to breed show quality birds that I could sale hatching eggs and offspring from to generate income to offset the cost of owning them and Part two, was to use all the culls from part one to generate a good landrace breed by simply releasing them into nature and letting nature take it's course and see if any of them survive. My hope was that by starting with breeds that originally came from landrace breeds and still possessed some of the qualities, like ability to fly and good camouflage wild type coloring, that somewhere hidden in their gene code was the landrace survival genes that their ancestors had. At least that was my plan.
Several factors have led to my decision to quite breeding chickens. First, although I did make about $600 dollars selling hatching eggs through eBay this spring from my quality birds; due to the high temps of summer and freezing temps of winter, inconsistent laying of eggs, lack of local interest in quality breeds and low sale value of chickens and many other factors, it is obvious there is no way that I can make my birds pay for themselves. This means that they are a financial burden on ministry resources and I just can't justify this expenditure and still feel that I am being a good steward of the resources that God puts in my control. Second, the effort involved to properly take care of and breed show quality birds is quite time consuming and detracts from the time I could be using for ministry. Now as long as the Lord had me in a stable position here at the Good News Camp, I had extra time on my hands to devote to my breeding project without detracting from my ministry; but recent events have changed that.
And this brings me to the main reason that I have made the decision to quite breeding chickens. Over the last several years, less and less people have been taking advantage of the ministry services that I provide here at the camp. Over the last couple of years I have attempted to branch out into other areas and use the camp for other services and even recently offered to house the victims of the tornadoes in Oklahoma (which not one person took advantage of because of the distance of the camp). I have been praying and asking God for direction in what to do for some time. Once again, I feel that it is wrong from me to receive financial donations for ministry if I am not actually doing ministry. A few days ago, I received some devastating news from the family that originally donated the land for the camp and have been a vital source of logistical and community support for the camp. The father has stage four colon and liver cancer and is not expected to live much longer. The financial burden of his care combined with the failure of several investment in oil prospecting over the last few years has forced the family to the position that that have to sale off their 300 acres of land on which their family has lived for the last 150 years and they have all been born and raised. Although the family has not supported the camp in significant financially way, they have provided me with an incalculable amount of logistical support in heavy equipment like tractors, backhoes, welders and other tools, not to mention an almost unlimited supply of building materials from oil field scraps, without which, I could not have accomplished 90% of what I have accomplished here at the camp. Without them here, life at them camp will become much more difficult and expensive. This is not to mention the loss of community, which will leave my wife and I completely isolated with no close family or friends anywhere near us.
I have always told people that ask me how to find God's will for their life, "If God wants you to move, He will make things uncomfortable where you are until you move." It certainly seems that this is the case with what is going on in my ministry now. Combine this with the fact that I have been feeling for some time the desire to get back into the evangelistic style of ministry that I have done previous to building the camp and I think it is clear what the Lord is saying. The main thing that has been preventing me from making evangelistic trips to other countries, is that fact that I have no other person who can adequately care from my chickens and I cannot leave the camp for more then a week at a time. So, in this regard, the chickens have become a ball and chain that I just can't tolerate anymore.
I do have some really nice Cubalayas that I know that someone would love to have. I hate that most of them will die at the hands of predators now that they are all running free. I planned to do this with culls anyway, but not the quality breeder birds. I am going to try sale off my flock of show quality Sebrights and Polish which I know I can find buyers for locally and that I know have no chance of surviving free ranging (I got them just to sale eggs from). Nobody in this region knows what a Cubalaya is and shipping is just too expensive to send them anywhere. It is what it is I guess.
I have really enjoyed the time I have spent learning and meeting all of you. I do not regret taking this journey at all. It has taught me so much about the American mentality that I was unaware of. This whole experience has made me that much better of a minister. Breeding chickens was always a side hobby to my main purpose for being on earth, which is to help people. I guess you can say, from a spiritual stand point, that I am a breeder of quality people, not quality chickens. I consider myself blessed to have known all of you and my only regret is that we have never met in person. I pray God's rich blessing on you all. Please know that, even though I may not be a gifted chicken breeder, I am gifted at helping people and I am always here if you or anyone you know needs help.
It is not because of my health. If you are not aware of it, I am full time minister for the Lord Jesus. I have been for over 30 years. The whole reason I got into Cubalayas was as a result of my search to find a good landrace breed that could be an almost completely self sufficient breed that could free range on my land which is actually a ministry called The Good News Camp. No matter where I have lived in the world, I have always had some good landrace chickens that could supply me with eggs and meat at minimal cost and effort. So, when the Lord called me to start The Good News Camp here in the US, I started looking for chickens to do the same thing here. Now in other countries, finding good landrace chickens is as easy as going down to the nearest farm and buying some of their birds. I had not the foggiest idea that all landrace breeds (or abilities) had been bred completely out of all American breeds of chickens when this all started. Thinking it would be as easy as it was in third world countries, I just went down to the flea market and bought some chickens. They all died. I bought 50 Rhode Island Red chicks as a feed store and raised them. They all died.
So I began searching for a breed that could do what I wanted. Now, you have to understand that, my way of thinking of what a good quality breed of chicken is, is almost complete opposite of what most Americans think and to some my thinking would be considered breeding blasphemy. I think Melody Hobbs (Buffalogal on BYC) described the American way of thinking when it comes to breeding chickens best ( in a recent conversation I had with her).
"All domestic chickens came from the jungle fowl, and they've been undergoing "artificial evolution" ever since man replaced nature by choosing this or that comb or color or feather pattern or skin color. As far as a breed is concerned, there is probably no 'purebred' anything, but by outcrossing based not just on the phenotype but also it's ability to reproduce itself, and careful line breeding, we can create a group of animals that not only strongly resemble each other, but will also continue to reproduce their traits. Every animal wants to be 'normal', that is, not have artificial pressure applied in regards to size or color or comb, and they are always trying to, if not "revert" back to wild type, at least find a happy medium. The challenge a good breeder faces is holding off that natural tendency as many generations as possible."
So my way of thinking of letting "nature take it's course" as the best way to breed, is the exact opposite of American way of thinking. Again, I did not know this when I started this journey and by the same token, as is common with all humans, everyone I was talking to naturally assumed I thought exactly like them and did not understand what I was trying to find. Of course it would have helped a lot if I would have known the correct terminology to explain what I was looking for, like "LANDRACE" for instance, which is a term I just learned recently and I think perfectly describes what I have been looking for. From Wikipedia: "A landrace is a local variety of a domesticated animal or plant species which has developed largely by natural processes,[1] by adaptation to the natural and cultural environment in which it lives. It differs from a formal breed which has been selectively bred deliberately to conform to a particular formal, purebreed standard of traits."
Now along this journey, I figured out that nobody understood what I wanted and at one point I decide that there were no landrace chickens left in this country and decided to try to see if I could breed my own. But because I am a fulltime minister and my income comes from free will donations from supporters of my ministry, I also felt a heavy burden that my landrace breeding program not be a financial burden on the ministry. So what I decided to do is have a two part project. Part one would be to breed show quality birds that I could sale hatching eggs and offspring from to generate income to offset the cost of owning them and Part two, was to use all the culls from part one to generate a good landrace breed by simply releasing them into nature and letting nature take it's course and see if any of them survive. My hope was that by starting with breeds that originally came from landrace breeds and still possessed some of the qualities, like ability to fly and good camouflage wild type coloring, that somewhere hidden in their gene code was the landrace survival genes that their ancestors had. At least that was my plan.
Several factors have led to my decision to quite breeding chickens. First, although I did make about $600 dollars selling hatching eggs through eBay this spring from my quality birds; due to the high temps of summer and freezing temps of winter, inconsistent laying of eggs, lack of local interest in quality breeds and low sale value of chickens and many other factors, it is obvious there is no way that I can make my birds pay for themselves. This means that they are a financial burden on ministry resources and I just can't justify this expenditure and still feel that I am being a good steward of the resources that God puts in my control. Second, the effort involved to properly take care of and breed show quality birds is quite time consuming and detracts from the time I could be using for ministry. Now as long as the Lord had me in a stable position here at the Good News Camp, I had extra time on my hands to devote to my breeding project without detracting from my ministry; but recent events have changed that.
And this brings me to the main reason that I have made the decision to quite breeding chickens. Over the last several years, less and less people have been taking advantage of the ministry services that I provide here at the camp. Over the last couple of years I have attempted to branch out into other areas and use the camp for other services and even recently offered to house the victims of the tornadoes in Oklahoma (which not one person took advantage of because of the distance of the camp). I have been praying and asking God for direction in what to do for some time. Once again, I feel that it is wrong from me to receive financial donations for ministry if I am not actually doing ministry. A few days ago, I received some devastating news from the family that originally donated the land for the camp and have been a vital source of logistical and community support for the camp. The father has stage four colon and liver cancer and is not expected to live much longer. The financial burden of his care combined with the failure of several investment in oil prospecting over the last few years has forced the family to the position that that have to sale off their 300 acres of land on which their family has lived for the last 150 years and they have all been born and raised. Although the family has not supported the camp in significant financially way, they have provided me with an incalculable amount of logistical support in heavy equipment like tractors, backhoes, welders and other tools, not to mention an almost unlimited supply of building materials from oil field scraps, without which, I could not have accomplished 90% of what I have accomplished here at the camp. Without them here, life at them camp will become much more difficult and expensive. This is not to mention the loss of community, which will leave my wife and I completely isolated with no close family or friends anywhere near us.
I have always told people that ask me how to find God's will for their life, "If God wants you to move, He will make things uncomfortable where you are until you move." It certainly seems that this is the case with what is going on in my ministry now. Combine this with the fact that I have been feeling for some time the desire to get back into the evangelistic style of ministry that I have done previous to building the camp and I think it is clear what the Lord is saying. The main thing that has been preventing me from making evangelistic trips to other countries, is that fact that I have no other person who can adequately care from my chickens and I cannot leave the camp for more then a week at a time. So, in this regard, the chickens have become a ball and chain that I just can't tolerate anymore.
I do have some really nice Cubalayas that I know that someone would love to have. I hate that most of them will die at the hands of predators now that they are all running free. I planned to do this with culls anyway, but not the quality breeder birds. I am going to try sale off my flock of show quality Sebrights and Polish which I know I can find buyers for locally and that I know have no chance of surviving free ranging (I got them just to sale eggs from). Nobody in this region knows what a Cubalaya is and shipping is just too expensive to send them anywhere. It is what it is I guess.
I have really enjoyed the time I have spent learning and meeting all of you. I do not regret taking this journey at all. It has taught me so much about the American mentality that I was unaware of. This whole experience has made me that much better of a minister. Breeding chickens was always a side hobby to my main purpose for being on earth, which is to help people. I guess you can say, from a spiritual stand point, that I am a breeder of quality people, not quality chickens. I consider myself blessed to have known all of you and my only regret is that we have never met in person. I pray God's rich blessing on you all. Please know that, even though I may not be a gifted chicken breeder, I am gifted at helping people and I am always here if you or anyone you know needs help.
Last edited:
- Jun 10, 2012
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Here is a 3 month old bantam cubalaya project cockerel.
I very sorry to hear about you leaving chickens Jungle, although I can respect your reasons. I wish you all the best in the future in all your endeavors.
Take care and God Bless,
Chris.
Take care and God Bless,
Chris.
- Jun 10, 2012
- 7,538
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Originally I had thought he was a pullet because of feather color, but as time goes on it's obvious that he's a cockerel. At this time he is a light blue red, we'll see how he matures.
The hen is 2 1/2 lbs and the rooster was 2 lbs. Both parents have bantam in their bloodlines. I am hoping to make bantam sized cubalaya that look like large fowl in every way except size. I am in no hurry to get there, I'll take as much time and generations as needed to get them that way. I will do everything I can to get real double tailed cubalaya bantams. A lot of the cubalaya bantams I've seen don't have the lobster tails.
Last edited:
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