Landrace/adaptive breeding discussion

[U_Stormcrow]

Can you tell me about the black one with the brown on its chest?

This One?

Most recent hatching. Age is three weeks +/- (part of the May 6-8 hatching). One of my barnyard mixes. Too dark to be what I'm looking for - they stand out against my orange clays and pick up more sunlight than the less dark colors. I'm concerned for heat stress.

As an adult, it will likely look a lot like the bottom hen two comments above, assuming it is also a hen.

Keeping it for now to see what happens. Its not an out, more like a possibly useful bunt.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

And my localtion is Florida Panhandle, but for your purposes, @LaurenRitz , I am "Wiregrass". My property shares more in common with my Inland neighbors in Alabama and parts of South Georgia than the coastal Panhandle.

Clay sands, tall wirey grasses, native blackberries (thorns), hickory, oak, and (largely planted) pines, undergrowth tends toward youpon holly, native grapes (muscadine). Lots of rain (over 50"/average), withh two hot summer months when we expect essentially no rain at all... Seasonal average temp is 68, zone Growing zone 8a, yearly high is high 90s, yearly low is mid teens. Supposedly 350-400 chill hours annually, that's been highly variable of late. The rest of my Wiregrass neighbors are zone 7b - annual highs about the same. lows closer to 10, and more chill hours.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

and to help with the visuals:

"Wiregrass"

 

[centrarchid]

I'm fourteen years into my effort that started as a composite of Voter strain American Dominiques and multiple American Game strains. The resulting flock is between 1/2 and 2/3's American Game. Decent growth and egg laying are easy. Good parenting was attribute of founding stock and has been retained. Beating predators is not advancing.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I was asked to do a presentation on adaptive breeding in a few weeks. Could any of you help me by providing a good picture of one of your birds, what stage you're at (grex, proto-landrace, etc.), your general location, and which breeds are included in your population? Only if you feel comfortable with it.

I have multiple projects at differing stages. I’ll provide pics of each:

1.

These don’t have a label, but I have enough of them with consistent traits, and they do well enough, that I would consider them foundational stock for a landrace. They’re barnyard mixes of Florida Cracker gamefowl, Wahl aseel, and Liege. They’re all equaling out to having the body and size of an American gamefowl. Coloring in hens is black with some brown lacing or penciling. Roosters are black with gold or orange hackles and saddles. Eyes are the most variable trait, being brown, red, or black. As these are the derivative products of more focused breeding projects I have going on, you can either classify this line as being 2-3 years old or 4+ years old
depending on whether you reckon their origins as beginning with my other projects or at the point I threw out some of my project birds to free-breed.

2. The Florida Cracker gamefowl themselves are a landrace of Florida adapted gamefowl. They were common on Florida backwoods farms through the early and mid 1900s. I coined the term “Cracker” gamefowl for them. Crackers themselves just regarded them as labeled “gamefowl,” as they did other Florida landrace livestock we now add the “Cracker” label to.

It is unknown whether my current flock is of the old Florida landrace or not. I found them on a farm in central Florida about 5 years ago and they were the closest thing I could find to what I grew up. “Old timers” who have seen my Crackers in person say its what they remember them to be. I remember my childhood flock birds having larger bodies than these, but observers remember theirs from the early-mid 1900s being sized like my current flock.

I now keep few pure Cracker gamefowl on my farm. I’ve crossed them to similarly typed American games for a larger body that lays full sized eggs.

I have other lines I work on that are more deliberate in their breeding for specific results and I wouldn’t consider them landraces but instead breeds-in-progress.

My habitat is the far north of the Florida peninsula, a couple of hours or more east of Stormcrow. I’m zone 8b. My farm is woods and blueberry fields situated in low pine flatwoods and swamplands. Summers are hot and humid. Winters swing between hot and freezing. No snow most years. Lots of insects and small animal life. Lots of seasonal seeds and fruits. Precipitation swings between flooding and drought. The chickens water from several natural ponds and marshy areas as well as leaky facets. I provide dedicated waterers to new free-rangers and phase them out as they learn the farmyard. They only get a few handfuls or commercial feed each day for the entire flock of free range adults. They forage for the rest of their daily food needs. They reproduce freely on free range.

 

[No Coop No Problem]

I had a thought. A couple times my girls went broody and snakes got into the nest. Once, the hen broke broody. The next time (different hen) she tried to protect her nest and a bunch of the eggs got trampled.

I watched her drag the crushed eggs out of the nest and eat them.

From a survival standpoint that makes sense. Get the damaged eggs out of the nest and prevent them from being discovered by predators.

I wonder if egg eating is another example of a broken broody instinct? The obsessive urge to "clean the nest" separated from actually being broody?

Not wasting resources is a near universal trait in wildlife. All of my chickens eat broken eggs, and almost all mammals eat the placenta after birth