Sumatras

After reading the brown red sumatra topic and seeing all the people interested in them I thought I'd make a sumatra topic. This is for the discussion of sumatras and also for pics. I love to see other peoples sumatras. What is everyones opinion on the current state of alot of the sumatras?

I will be posting pics later today of some of ours.

Here are the only two pictures I have of my pair of Black Sumatra Bantams. I know the quality sucks because they are scanned copies. Stupid computer lost the originals... At least the image in my mind of them isn't grainy...lol

Celeborn and Galadriel:





They were fairly young in both of those pictures. In the second one they might have been 5 months or so and in the first one they might have been 7 or 8. I didn't really have them long enough to mature.

They were beautiful birds in person. Those pictures don't do them justice at all. I always wanted to get them on the ground too, but the Bantam Black Australorps I had were bigger so I got them out of the breeder cages first. Galadriel was never a great layer. One or two eggs a week was the norm and it took her forever to start. Over time you could see Celeborn's face darken as well. I can't remember how many spurs he had. But I don't think it was multiple. I think the reason his face wasn't as dark as the pictures shown on the breeders website was because mine were in covered cages of the ground where sunlight didn't hit their face to give them a "tan".

Here are some pictures of the flock they came out of.

http://home.att.net/~Myakka2/blaksumbanty.htm

The breeder is in Florida. I thought his birds looked very nice. I won mine an an auction on eggbid for a three month old pair. Don't remember how much though.

As far as problems with Sumatras. In general I think red faces instead of mulberry are now the norm. Even though the Standard calls for mulberry. You don't see multiple spurs as much either, or at least not with the bantams. I always wanted to get some Large Fowl in Blue, Black, and Splash, and Bantam in Blue and Splash as well. Would have loved to have found some white ones, or any other color for that matter as non-standard as the color may be. Sumatras are a beautiful bird with a regal carriage no matter the color. They should conform to the Standard though.

I LOVE my Sumatras! I'll admit, they scared me a little bit at first because they would fly towards my face (I thought to puncture my jugular vein) but they will actually "roost" on my arm/shoulders and eat from my hand!

Mine are from show stock back east--I want to say VERMONT? I would say that mine are pretty close to breed standard, although I would like their combs to be darker. I see a lot of BRIGHT RED combs on Sumatras....and I have to keep looking for better birds all of the time.

I have five sumatras. The only pics I have of them are either old or sucky. I will get some pics of them later.

They are gorgeous! I got a couple Sumatra pullets from Ideal last year, but they died ANYONE HAVE SUMATRAS FRO IDEAL? I might order some more this year, though. How are they in cold weather? Also....how aggressive are they with other breeds?

Sorry, I do not have any IDEAL birds...my Sumatras are kept separate--the pullets were okay with everyone else but once the roosters reached about 4 months old--they were trying to kill each other, the other roosters and breeding very aggressively on every hen/pullet I had. So they are all separated. I'd suggest ordering hatching eggs from a reputable breeder if you're looking for anything close to breed standard.

I would have some awesome pics right now if my wireless would work. I have some old pics on the website of our original rooster.
Right now we have largefowl and bantams in black and blue. For bantams we have 2 pair of blacks and a pair of blues. The blue bantam roo we have has the largefowl look to him and an awesome tail. His only flaws are that he has single spurs and his comb is alittle big.
For largefowl we have a quad of blacks and for sure 3 blue cocks and 1 blue hen, I am not sure what happened to the other blue hens (had 3 going into winter).
We basically had to start over with our largefowl because our main rooster died and the hens we had werent that good. We ended up with one Diablo daughter and some other black and blue hens and a blue rooster that was too big. He must have weighed 8 lbs and had a domestic look to him but he had a nice long tail. good comb, and too many spurs to count, they went down to his bottoms of feet.
We bred them together and got some okay birds. The hens looked great but the cockerels had the fathers tail. The tails were long and all but it just didnt look right. They were soft feathered like a rock or andalusian. When we were selling some crele phoenix birds I was loading them into the truck for the guy and saw a blue sumatra and asked if he bred them. He said he did and it turned out that the rooster was out of our original birds! He looked alot like his great grand father. The guy was going to take him to a trader because he had single spurs. I got the rooster from him and he has matured very nicely and he has a second spur coming in, a good comb, and great type.

I think that alot of the sumatras now a days are bred too much for size or tail length. We got some from another breeder and they had horrible bottoms of feet, they were basically white. Many of the birds have red faces or single spurs or a combo of all 3 "no-no's". When we are setting up breeding pens we always set up pens to compliment the other birds. An example is the new rooster. He basically has single spurs but great foot bottoms and type so we are going to breed him to hens that have yellow foot bottoms that could be brightened up, they have lots of spurs so they will make good chicks with the rooster. All of our breeders have dark faces.

I dont know if any other breeders that have blue have noticed this but we mated a pair of blues together and got one splash cockerel and he had a spotted face. It was mostly red with some black specks. He also had light blue legs when he started to color in but by the time he went to his new home his legs turned willow. It seems that the blue dilutes everything with them.

As far as the bantams go I know that they were created by cross breeding. If any sumatra breeders here are serious into them they know of the famous Schock and Berger sumatras. We got our bantams directly from Myron Berger and they were some of his best. He told me that his main cross was with OEGB. He told me that some other breeders used rose comb bantams and thats why the white earlobes show up. Because of the OEGB in them many have the wings like an OEGB and red faces.

I love sumatras and all but it seems that alot of them are going down the drain because of poor breeding.

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Really? The worst any of my sumatras have done is briefly and non-seriously attack his brother. And my birds are about 9 months old.

I just gave away 7 of these cockerals. I kept one black and one blue. I also kept 2 each color hens. I'll try to find pix of by oler roo. He loves to pose.

For some reason my pix upload small...just click on them.

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Really? The worst any of my sumatras have done is briefly and non-seriously attack his brother. And my birds are about 9 months old.

Yup.