Jest Another Day in Pear-A-Dice - Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm in Alberta

[hennible]

Wow good looking bird

 

[Arcnova]

I'll have to make up a list of the books you need to buy to study breeding and learning about genetics in chickens. I don't breed any of the breeds you list, from Orps, Rocks, EE's, Marans, Australorps or Cornish. You will have to ask people that do breed those breeds and what characteristics the modern lines they have possess. You could buy a copy of the Standard of Perfections and study the worded descriptions I suppose but that does not always represent what is in the breeds as well as talking to breeders with experience. We keep Brahmas (Brahmas are slow and steady to mature with many of us not seeing some come to full potential in size even at two FULL years of age...quality takes time! As meat birds they do make good size but I am not certain they grow at a rate to be economical for meat if desired to be quickly grown), Wyandottes, Booted and Chantecler chickens. I understand that frizzles have issues with their feather type being less than ideal for extreme weather conditions. The American Class of chickens all seem to do well in North America, so I expect any of them would have the correct feather types you are looking for. I do recall one lady that kept Cornish, a firm hard feathered breed, that she had to keep them in heated conditions to survive our winters in this province. Feather type in the Chanteclers is suppose to be good for climates here in NA, South Africa, France and other places in Europe. To take one breed or just the feather type and say they are good in all types of geographical locations is simplifying it too much. Each breed has a certain variance within it and too many different circumstances from how people feed, house, to the lines used right down to how stress the birds are kept...determines how well each chicken does in each location. I do know the chants were tested extensively by Bro Wilfrid for decades and he worked methodically at getting them to be productive for Canada's climates. He raised thousands of birds each year and meticulously kept production records...and was always striving for improvements. I cross colour varieties because I have studied colour genetics for 15 years and have somewhat of a handle on what my varieties possess so I can wade thru the rainbow and sorta figure out what just happened or not! Extremely rarely do I cross BREEDS and it had better be an Earth Shattering good reason to do that. I breed purebred registered dogs, sheep, goats and llamas. I raise "heritage" poultry as defined by Breeds Conservancy and therefore they must be from APA recognized breeds to be labelled "heritage." Many of our breeds trace back 60 years of work by the original breeders and we have invested 15 years of our own into their lines. I like uniformity, predictability and reliable count on it to happen breedings. I don't like crap shoots very much. It takes at minimum three generations to even begin to see if the breeding choices you have made are working towards your goals or ideals--F3's you can start to judge the outcomes of your breeding decisions by. Since you will be breeding hens and cocks, that means it will be six years before you begin to see what your breeding choices have started to produce. I expect a colour breeding program should take you 25 to 30 years to purify. A good example for a bench mark target is the Sebright breed that took Sir John Sebright 25 years of intensive inbreeding to set the henny feathers into the breed. If you choose an easy colour like self-White, it can take a mere four or five generations like in our bantam Chantecler project birds but self-Buff and the royalty of the show room (Partridge), will be alot more elusive and will probably take twice as long as the whites have. I don't quite understand why you would re-invent the wheel when so many already well established breeds are in existence for meat, eggs and suitable for general purpose. A breed is not considered pure by some people until 15/16's pure...some it is 31/32nds, 63/64's and some never consider it pure even when Ivory Snow pure (99 44/100%). As far as I understand, heat is dissipated in chickens by panting, moving their wings away from their bodies and fanning themselves, and of course, through their head gear. If you brood roos in too hot of temperatures, you encourage things like their earlobes, wattles and combs to grow larger to help them lower their temperatures. Feathered legged breeds like our Brahmas and Booteds tend to be less likely to kick up bedding and cast limerock stones all over your lawn scratching over zealously...clean legged birds tend to be more scratchy the bedding and tossy the rocks looking for goodies. I do not feel the best way to learn about genetics is to begin with mutts. I raised barnyard mutts for thirty years and they taught me how to keep chickens alive and well, but when it came to breeding, some of the most heinous disasters came outta mixes like that...I recall a four legged chick that lived two days from one of the breedings. About the only predictable outcome we could expect is that it was a chicken...and pretty durn close to resembling a Junglefowl is where they seem to be heading most often. Not alot of eggs, small sized, good doers, crafty survivors, very pretty feathers--oh the feather colours were great but so do the Junglefowl have marvelous colourations, eh. Heinz 57's are too complicated & complex and as I posted a little time ago, three different traits crossed together results in 256 different outcomes--very hard to learn the outcomes with that many variables resulting in that wide a predicted list. Purity is far better than complexity to begin learning...especially in genetic inheritance. One should begin with a very pure line of birds of begin to understand genetics. Take that very pure breed and replicate them for five or six generations to understand how like begets like and where some hiccups can occur. Scientists will cross say a Poodle with a Beagle to understand how heterozygous expression of known traits is exhibited...but that is taking known expected breeds and making one cross, a hybrid and studying THAT at length. My hair would fall out if I tried crossing two different breeds of chickens together without having a very solid understanding of the traits in each strain of that breed so that I could recognize their expression when crossed out and expressed impurely. I will type out my instructions tomorrow. I have an ill puppy to pester along with a spouse and self to feed.

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In the meantime, this is ClaraBELL (yes, that's a ding dong torture the turkey & make it crazy BELL) and she has assisted me in teaching many persons on how to properly HOLD a chook...she never complains about being held upside down for what would choke a normal live chook, eh. Her rarity is that she is a HEN (most stuffies and plushies of chickens are ROOs) and she has legs with toes for you to inspect and grip in our fingers...flippy wings to do an inspection of, and respectable wattles and a decent hen comb for the head examine (do I need my head examined about now perhaps?). Doggone & Chicken UP! Tara Lee Higgins Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

Whew! Lots of info! A lot of things I didn't know. Thanks. A little discouraging though. I was hoping I could make do with the stock I had on hand for the most part. The time factor doesn't bother me and I'm not surprised it would take that long. There are a lot of variables to take into account. I love having chickens and I will keep them around however long I may. As for reinventing the wheel, that's always the way I've learned the best, to start at the very beginning and understand how it got where it is today so I know why it works. My calculus teacher probably wanted to hang me by the end of the first semester for that very reason, lol. If I just used the formula like everyone else my answers always came out wrong, but when he showed me how they developed the formula (how they invented the wheel) I was finally able to get it right. I think sideways *shrug*. I will have to consider what you've told me before I decide how to proceed. Perhaps I will put a known breed in one or two of my runs for a few years and just continue to keep the most vigorous and friendly of my mutts from each year in the main run for later. do you think showing birds would be helpful in learning how to achieve a specific outcome? Sorry to hear your puppy is ill. I hope he/she is well soon. And thank you again for all your help.

 

[Arcnova]

@bamadudePretty!

 

[perchie.girl]

Now pic

Hes grown in to a handsome dude.... awesome.

deb

 

[bamadude]

Thanks. Hes pretty good to his ladies too.

 

[CanuckBock]

The belle province of Quebec is supporting Canada's only recognized breed of poultry. Hats off to the ten producers attempting to make Canada's chicken a viable positive and QUALITY PREMIUM commodity...Bravo indeed!

http://www.agannex.com/poultry-production/labour-of-love:

Labours of LOVE​

GENETIC DIVERSITY
The Quebec poultry federations decided to encourage commercial production of heritage breeds for several reasons. While all producer groups are always interested in developing new niche product markets, they were also very concerned about maintaining the Canadian chicken flock’s genetic diversity as an insurance policy against future climate change and disease outbreaks. Maintaining the chicken’s gene pool is a constant battle. Delegates to a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) conference in Switzerland in 2007 were told that more than 1,000 domesticated chicken breeds have vanished in the past century.

Because Silversides had produced a report on how to save endangered breeds 20 years ago, the federation turned to him in 2007 to come up with a new proposal to save the Chantecler breed. He jumped at the chance. He produced a new proposal that included a large enough breeding plan to preserve the Chantecler’s gene pool and allow for the development of a market for them so the breed could support itself. In short, his report concluded that the best way to save the breed was to market it for the dinner plate.

Quebec’s three poultry supply-management federations, which control the hatching egg, table egg and broiler production, signed an agreement with the federation of producers of heritage breeds, which allowed limited commercial production and market access for the Chantecler in 2009. Gaining the right to produce the breed commercially was a huge step. Without the quantities that were allotted, there is no way producers could maintain sufficient supply to develop a market. “Once that’s in place, you can develop your business plan and your slaughtering plans and all of the rest of it, really,” says Silversides.

Andrè and some of his Chanteclers ​

GETTING STARTED
A year into production, results are less than optimal, says Bélanger, one of the 10 producers involved in the project. He started with about 100 Chantecler, in 1998. He’s now up to 300. He split the group in two and put half with 15 roosters and half without. He is using a 48 x 20 foot temporary shelter specially adapted for chickens, with small openings on the sides for the birds to go in and out, as they wish.

The shelter isn’t heated and the birds can remain outside until the temperature reaches –20 C. Bélanger will move them indoors, inside the barn during the winter – which will remain unheated – and dismantle the temporary shelter to make room for the new barn he plans on building next spring.

Bélanger’s barn also houses three pigs and a flock of sheep. Because most Chantecler were raised on mixed farms, they have better disease resistance and foraging ability, among other things, explains Silversides. This is why this breed, unlike current hybrid varieties, is better adapted to such an environment. They don’t require strict biosecurity protocols that restrict one species per unit.


NUMBERS ARE DOWN
There is quite a learning curve involved in going from a small 42-egg hatcher to one that contains 750 eggs, explains Bélanger. “I can hardly imagine what it’s going to be like once we start with the ones that can hold up to 3,200 eggs!”

Bélanger goes on to explain that they’ve been asked to comply with industry regulations from the get-go, but the race has more or less returned to its natural state as producers switched to more performing hybrids.

“Very little selection was been made in the past 50 years and producers are finding it challenging to meet the goal of having a uniform flock that averages 200 eggs a year, even though the standard established for the breed is 225 eggs per bird.”

He estimates it will take a good three years, or six generations, to get the breed back on track to meet the target of 8,000 dozen eggs per year, using 500 layer hens.

Bélanger is aiming to finish the birds at about the same weight of a conventional chicken. The target weight for males will be 2.1 to 2.2 kilograms at 18 weeks and between 1.7 to 1.9 kilograms for the females, at 20 weeks. All 10 Chantecler producers’ goal is to produce roughly 20,000 birds, per year, as allocated by the federations.

Dr. Silversides isn’t surprised Bélanger’s layers aren’t performing to Brother Wilfrid’s standards. He says this is an example of natural rather than artificial selection. “If you take away the selection, the breed will find an ideal body weight and an ideal number of eggs which are different from what we want.”

He thinks Bélanger won’t have any problem achieving his goals within that time frame. He cautions producers of over-selecting the birds to the point that they resemble broilers. “If they do, then what’s the point?” he says.


Federations supportive of the project
Saving a breed from extinction doesn’t happen overnight. “It’s a long-term project,” explains Martin Dufresne, president of Les Éleveurs de volailles du Québec. He says the Chantecler producers are in the start-up phase, and are probably facing a few hurdles. What’s more, the breed isn’t known for its performance so it comes as no surprise that things aren’t progressing as quickly as they had hoped.

Ten producers, from various regions in Quebec, were given the right to produce the Chantecler. So far, each operator has been hatching his or her own eggs and producing meat birds as well as eggs, according to the breeding plan outlined by Dr. Fred Silversides, a poultry research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada who produced a report to help save endangered species in the 1970s. They feel it’s the best way to reduce the risk of disease or anything else going wrong.

Dufresne says the Quebec poultry federations recommended they eventually concentrate their activities and designate one central location to produce all the chicks they need to increase their overall efficiency, and truck the chickens to the nine remaining facilities.

“They will have an expensive product, which will require a good marketing strategy to cater to an upscale niche market,” says Dufresne. He feels the heritage breed federation’s plan to save the Chantecler is serious and well structured. If demand takes off, production of the Chantecler would be handled like any other breed, and would have to comply with regulations, and follow supply management guidelines.

“We took exceptional measures to save the Chantecler because we felt it would be cost prohibitive if producers had to pay for quota for an inefficient bird,” explains Dufresne. “Producers are well aware, however, that things would change if there proves to be an increasing market demand for the product, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing in itself. The project would never have been able to materialize without help on our part.”

 

[hennible]

Cool Tara.

 

[CanuckBock]

Quote:

Cool Tara.

What's even kewler is Andrè...last time I talked to him on the telephone (his English is pretty decent...my French sucks--très mauvais!)...he had TWELVE POUNDER Chantecler roos...yeh, 12 pounds! Love it...absolutely love it!

 

[drumstick diva]

Tara would your sick puppy be Fixins?

I lost two from congestive heart failure many years ago and their symptoms were like hers, except they had a chronic, dry cough.

 

[CanuckBock]

As my DW and Fav.#2 DD and 3 grandbabies show chickens, I will just say I have been there done that!
Scott

Here are my instructs...will be curious to hear Scott, if you and yours do any of this differently. It is a style we all develop and use to our own personal preferences. I suppose as long as we cover it all, it works.

This is why ClaraBELL was acquired...she is a great DEMO bird.

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Here's her feeties...

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You have alot of control with your fingers evenly spaced out, under the bird's belly.

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Now if this was a REAL LIVE chicken...about now, there would be animal cruelty persons screaming in the WINGS...

"Put her DOWN right side up!!! Walk away from that Chook...away!"

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Hurly bird...whirly hurly bird...

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Even plushy ClaraBELL looks a tad relieved to be right side up again.

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See how nicely nestled she sits in the palm of yer hand...

Is that a glare, stinky eye ClaraBELL...am I making even a plush bird ANGRY BIRD...better break into a relaxing enjoyable sing song and sooth the angry birds...soothing song...of SIXTEEN CHICKENS AND A TAMBOURINE...eh...

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Buck Shot & Benny - Sixteen Chickens and a Tambourine

Sixteen Chickens and a Tambourine
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Sixteen Chickens and a Tambourine
by Roy Acuff:

So dat be how you hold a chook, examine a bird in hand too...

Whew! Lots of info! A lot of things I didn't know. Thanks.
A little discouraging though. I was hoping I could make do with the stock I had on hand for the most part. The time factor doesn't bother me and I'm not surprised it would take that long. There are a lot of variables to take into account. I love having chickens and I will keep them around however long I may.

As for reinventing the wheel, that's always the way I've learned the best, to start at the very beginning and understand how it got where it is today so I know why it works. My calculus teacher probably wanted to hang me by the end of the first semester for that very reason, lol. If I just used the formula like everyone else my answers always came out wrong, but when he showed me how they developed the formula (how they invented the wheel) I was finally able to get it right. I think sideways *shrug*.

I will have to consider what you've told me before I decide how to proceed. Perhaps I will put a known breed in one or two of my runs for a few years and just continue to keep the most vigorous and friendly of my mutts from each year in the main run for later. do you think showing birds would be helpful in learning how to achieve a specific outcome?

Sorry to hear your puppy is ill. I hope he/she is well soon. And thank you again for all your help.

As I said I would...

List of books.
- The Chicken Health Handbook, By Gail Damerow, Copright 1994, ISBN 10 0 88266 611 8 (pbk).

This one will educate you about keeping your chickens healthy...and it will explain why showing landfowl is a very risky endeavour indeed. Even attending a show is risky since humans may harbour ILT in our very nostrils for 24 hours...meaning we could go to a show, come home and breath on our birds and cause them to become ill.

- Creative Poultry Breeding, By W.C. Carefoot, MSc, PhD. Copyright 1985, Published by Veronica Mayhew in 2005.

This is a MUST have 200 pages or so of AWESOME how you breed better chickens with genetics for the Fancier...so we can understand and use genetics to our advantage. Some of the research has been superceded by new discoveries but still THE most awesome book on chicken breeding I have ever had the delight of owning, reading, studying and applying.


Once you mastered Dr. Carefoot's breeding "bible" you may want to dive further into the chicken genetics endeavours...both these books are excellent learning texts that will keep you busy for years...

- Genetics of Chicken Colours, By Sigrid Van Dort, David Hancox. Copyright 2009, ISBN 978 90 6674 404 2
- Genetics of Chicken Extremes - The Basic, By Sigrid Van Dort. Copyright 2012, ISBN 978 94 6190 118 7

These publications listed may be obtained from Veronica Mayhew (nfi) in England. E-mail her at: [email protected]



The APA/ABA Youth Program website has lots of good info on chicken & show stuff...meant for youth but <<whispering>> good for all ages! I was Canadian Adviser and just adore all the info packed in there! Lots of fun chooky reading...

http://www.apa-abayouthpoultryclub.org/educational_material.htm


I missed the part about good comb...here's the scoop thar...single combs are wild type and best suited to a JUNGLE residing chicken...the big old single comb dissipates heat well. Now in the Great White North, them big old single combs, the points on the comb get frozen, turn black and slough off...and it HURTS the chicken...some cases so much the hens quit laying eggs, the cocks quit breeding the hens...it is OUCHY! Best all rounder comb, for me because I can only speak about my hands on experiences are the Cushion Combs of the Chantecler breed (pea and rose comb combine to make cushion comb, also called walnut or strawberry though these two combs are a bit different in expression than the Chantecler Cushion comb). Pea and Rose combs do well in cold climates, if small, less stuff to freeze. Whilst smart chickens tuck their heads under the wings at night when it is usually the coldest, not all chickens do that and end up with ouchy frozen combs. NOW to counter, the BIG SINGLE comb does better in hot humid regions...so you got find a nice medium type comb it you live in both hot and cold environment.


Addressing the re-inventing the wheel...so I propose a question..."why do you need to make a breed of chicken?" Why can't you just keep the birds you have on the go, add some if you want to tailor them more to a dual purpose bird (or better yet, make TWO kinds...one for meat and one for eggs...specialize as it is easier to make an egg chicken OR a meat chicken but not try to make a chicken EXCEL at both...that is what the commercial mush meats and egg swillers are...TWO BREEDS for eggs or meat and not ONE for both. ONE breed does OK...but never as good as one or the other, eh). Why does the chickens you have now have to be moved back into being a BREED? What benefit is that to you personally?


My attitude about making NEW BREEDS runs in the following way...always a reason for me to be a cranky old sop, eh...

As you can read above in the Labour of Love article...:

Hmm...had wanted the text in this photo to be readable...ah well, type it out I guess:
A FLOCK OF CANADIAN CHANTECLERS
Frontispiece. The picture was made on the grounds of the poultry plant at La Trappe, Canada. This is another breed "made to order" to meet a special set of conditions. The method used was to mix together the various desirable ingredients, and sift out the qualities needed by means of "the sieve of selection." The purpose in creating the breed was to get one eminently fitted to Canadian conditions; all fancy characters were eliminated, especially those that were considered undesirable. It was to be an all-purpose breed: a good winter layer, and heavy enough to be useful for meat as well.

So that be that for now...

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada