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Silverudd's Blue
- Thread starter KYTinpusher
- Start date
Wow. The white ones are not a recognized SB color. It seems GFF has been producing a bunch of these. If this is supposed to be a splash, it is not a good representation. SB is a blue, black, splash breed. All of their eyes are light. One of the traits of SB are their dark eyes. The little black cockerel has mottling. SB are not mottled. I have never had a black with white tail feathers either. Wonder if they lay green eggs? They are pretty chickens, but do not conform to the description of a SB. I am so sorry to break this news to you. I’ve been working on mine for 4 years. This is a tough breed. The eyes on my splash pictured are too light for my taste. The other one is a dark blue.
I guess it's a good thing that I decided not to breed them. A knee injury & future surgery, has me downsizing. I'll just be honest with any future purchasers. Thank you for your quick response.
Vera
@cree57i here are a few of my other SB. All have light colored eyes. Any other weird stuff seen? The last pic has that blonde cockerel & one of the Black SB. I only have the 1 Blue pullet. I have 3 Blue Cockerels, 1 Blue Pullet, 1 Blonde Cockerel, 1 Blonde Pullet, 1 Odd Ball Splash, 2 Black Cockerels & 1 Black Pullet. Hard to get pics of everyone mixed in with the BCM.
The blues look correct except for the light eyes. My black hens are totally black. They don't have any white feathers. Red feathers are called red leakage. Does one of your blacks have red feathers? Difficult for me to tell. The real test will be if they lay green eggs. Your blue pullet doesn't look bad. Her eyes could be darker, but she otherwise is ok as far as I can tell. The last blue cockerel looks ok too.
I’ll have to verify about the white feathers. I was wondering about the splash that you said you see mottling. What do you mean by that?
Like them in blue, black, splash. White not so much!!
I am not sure if anyone is still responding to this thread, but I thought I would give it a try.
I purchased Silverudd's Blue (Isbar) hatching eggs from Omega Hill Farms last year. I loved everything about the breed, except there was one major flaw. They were hit hard with recurring respiratory infections and I believe the rooster I kept ended up with lung damage since he wheezed after every crow.
After doing a bit of research on the breed (not a lot of info out there) I found this on the Greenfire Farms site:
Greenfire Farms first imported this breed from Sweden in 2011. Our Isbars were fertile and produced many chicks, but we believe the birds were closely related and showed some signs of a suppressed immune system that could be linked to inbreeding depression. In 2013, we imported Isbars from unrelated flocks. These birds should allow breeders to mitigate the effects of inbreeding in their flocks.
So, I am guessing the respiratory issues were due to genetics. This year, I bred the rooster to Rhode Island Red hens. The outcome was - 1 cockerel (14 weeks), a second cockerel (10 weeks) and 5 pullets (10 weeks). I recently experienced another respiratory illness that has so far hit 5 out of 7 of my hybrids and 1 has died.
Has anyone out there had similar experience with Silverudd's and respiratory illnesses? Has anyone been able to breed it out?
I purchased Silverudd's Blue (Isbar) hatching eggs from Omega Hill Farms last year. I loved everything about the breed, except there was one major flaw. They were hit hard with recurring respiratory infections and I believe the rooster I kept ended up with lung damage since he wheezed after every crow.
After doing a bit of research on the breed (not a lot of info out there) I found this on the Greenfire Farms site:
Greenfire Farms first imported this breed from Sweden in 2011. Our Isbars were fertile and produced many chicks, but we believe the birds were closely related and showed some signs of a suppressed immune system that could be linked to inbreeding depression. In 2013, we imported Isbars from unrelated flocks. These birds should allow breeders to mitigate the effects of inbreeding in their flocks.
So, I am guessing the respiratory issues were due to genetics. This year, I bred the rooster to Rhode Island Red hens. The outcome was - 1 cockerel (14 weeks), a second cockerel (10 weeks) and 5 pullets (10 weeks). I recently experienced another respiratory illness that has so far hit 5 out of 7 of my hybrids and 1 has died.
Has anyone out there had similar experience with Silverudd's and respiratory illnesses? Has anyone been able to breed it out?
Bravo for your efforts. Previously I had Silverudd Blues and loved the breed. They are well worth the effort you will put into them IMO.
It seems that the ORIGINALS were somewhat different from the ones that GFF subsequently got. The originals (and some of mine were frome Omega Hills, some from a person who got theirs from the First GFF imports)--- The originals had very dark, almost black-lloking eyes that were very luminous. The next ones that GFF farms was selling had yellow eyes.
I always bred Isbar to Isbar with the exception of some Isbar to Cream Legbar crosses, and we called those Ice Cream Bars. There was hybrid vigor they were also great birds.
People who got GFF birds that were probably fairly inbred from the beginning paird brothers and sisters I think, and never made the effort to seek out different genetics. The result was a disaster, the chicks either failed to hatch, hatched very weakly and subsequently died or didn't all grow to adulthood and people abandoned the breed rather than work with it. They were some of my all-time favorite chickens both for beauty and for temperament and the hens were producing huge green eggs with great frequency and the hens were not big food guzzlers. They really 'earned their keep'.
Temperament was outstanding - had one rooster -- hatched in 2014 at Omega Hills and sent to me (July 2014), that did develop respiratory problem his first winter (2014-15). I brought him into a house I had just moved into and he lived in the entry hall rather than outdoors for a long time. Some nights I would be upstairs working on the computer and hear him gurgling and wheezing and think 'he will be dead by morning'. However he lived -- and just died this summer. Perhaps due to time indoors, or being ill and nursed back to health he was amazingly friendly and talkative. He was the very best rooster I've ever had.
A local friend had more Isbars than I had and we worked to source the ones we considered correct (Very dark brown eyes - and confirmation (I should say 'type') of a pretty chicken). Between us, I think that we did improve the hatch rate and health of the chickens we had. My focus was Cream Legbars and not Isbars.
So my long term point is that this breed is well worth work that you would put into it. I'm downsizing chicken activity and have even sold my pens.
If you get responses -- or even directly PM some of the Isbar owners from the threads (I think there are a couple of threads on either Silverudds blue or Isbar or Blue Isbars -) You may find a network of people working to preserve these genetics. Even Omega Hills if they haven't minded to a large extent diversifying the ones that they have, may be slipping into close breeding -- which is OK sometimes to preserve and promote traits and others can weaken the genetics as GFF claimed they had suspected with their first Isbars, as you say.
For out cross, I'm curious why you selected RIR -- it would add their brown genetics to the egg and deepen the green (as our Ice Cream Bars perhaps reinforced the blue side of the Isbar's green eggs).
At anyrate, if you are able to breed these, and select your hatching, surviving and healthy individuals to pair with quality Isbars (I would seek a private breeder from BYC here if you can locate one that really cares specifically about this breed for either hatching eggs or chicks) -- perhaps you can help preserve the 'true' Isbar. It really would be a worthy effort.
I'm far from an expert, but if I can share any of the experiences I had with this breed and it would be of any help to you -- feel free to PM me.
There is also a product called Denegard that is widely used in the UK and has no egg withdrawal etc. that a vet from Texas A&M told me is the very best treatment for respiratory problems in fowl -- wish I had known about it in the winter of 2014-15 because it probably would have eradicated the respiratory problem of my rooster in a matter of days.
Good luck with your Isbars!
ETA Whoops, just re-read most of this thread and looked at the picts. I should be saying Silverudd's Blue
--- and NOW I see why you chose RIR as the outcross. 
It seems that the ORIGINALS were somewhat different from the ones that GFF subsequently got. The originals (and some of mine were frome Omega Hills, some from a person who got theirs from the First GFF imports)--- The originals had very dark, almost black-lloking eyes that were very luminous. The next ones that GFF farms was selling had yellow eyes.
I always bred Isbar to Isbar with the exception of some Isbar to Cream Legbar crosses, and we called those Ice Cream Bars. There was hybrid vigor they were also great birds.
People who got GFF birds that were probably fairly inbred from the beginning paird brothers and sisters I think, and never made the effort to seek out different genetics. The result was a disaster, the chicks either failed to hatch, hatched very weakly and subsequently died or didn't all grow to adulthood and people abandoned the breed rather than work with it. They were some of my all-time favorite chickens both for beauty and for temperament and the hens were producing huge green eggs with great frequency and the hens were not big food guzzlers. They really 'earned their keep'.
Temperament was outstanding - had one rooster -- hatched in 2014 at Omega Hills and sent to me (July 2014), that did develop respiratory problem his first winter (2014-15). I brought him into a house I had just moved into and he lived in the entry hall rather than outdoors for a long time. Some nights I would be upstairs working on the computer and hear him gurgling and wheezing and think 'he will be dead by morning'. However he lived -- and just died this summer. Perhaps due to time indoors, or being ill and nursed back to health he was amazingly friendly and talkative. He was the very best rooster I've ever had.
A local friend had more Isbars than I had and we worked to source the ones we considered correct (Very dark brown eyes - and confirmation (I should say 'type') of a pretty chicken). Between us, I think that we did improve the hatch rate and health of the chickens we had. My focus was Cream Legbars and not Isbars.
So my long term point is that this breed is well worth work that you would put into it. I'm downsizing chicken activity and have even sold my pens.
If you get responses -- or even directly PM some of the Isbar owners from the threads (I think there are a couple of threads on either Silverudds blue or Isbar or Blue Isbars -) You may find a network of people working to preserve these genetics. Even Omega Hills if they haven't minded to a large extent diversifying the ones that they have, may be slipping into close breeding -- which is OK sometimes to preserve and promote traits and others can weaken the genetics as GFF claimed they had suspected with their first Isbars, as you say.
For out cross, I'm curious why you selected RIR -- it would add their brown genetics to the egg and deepen the green (as our Ice Cream Bars perhaps reinforced the blue side of the Isbar's green eggs).
At anyrate, if you are able to breed these, and select your hatching, surviving and healthy individuals to pair with quality Isbars (I would seek a private breeder from BYC here if you can locate one that really cares specifically about this breed for either hatching eggs or chicks) -- perhaps you can help preserve the 'true' Isbar. It really would be a worthy effort.
I'm far from an expert, but if I can share any of the experiences I had with this breed and it would be of any help to you -- feel free to PM me.
There is also a product called Denegard that is widely used in the UK and has no egg withdrawal etc. that a vet from Texas A&M told me is the very best treatment for respiratory problems in fowl -- wish I had known about it in the winter of 2014-15 because it probably would have eradicated the respiratory problem of my rooster in a matter of days.
Good luck with your Isbars!
ETA Whoops, just re-read most of this thread and looked at the picts. I should be saying Silverudd's Blue
--- and NOW I see why you chose RIR as the outcross.
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ThatCityChick
Chirping
Hoping to get some Silverudd's Blue! Their green eggs are so pretty!
My goal would be to have them for a project bird. I would love to eventually work with other breeders to have them admitted to the SOP book. I am working on creating my own "standard of perfection" for SB based of the information I can gather from those who have the birds and from research online.
Would you consider them to have a body more typical of an egg layer or a dual purpose?
Are backs flat or sloped?
What tail angle would be most common or desired or doesn't matter?
My goal would be to have them for a project bird. I would love to eventually work with other breeders to have them admitted to the SOP book. I am working on creating my own "standard of perfection" for SB based of the information I can gather from those who have the birds and from research online.
Would you consider them to have a body more typical of an egg layer or a dual purpose?
Are backs flat or sloped?
What tail angle would be most common or desired or doesn't matter?
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