A Bielefelder Thread !

Oh my gosh! Not my cockerels! One of my Biel cockerels, my favorite breeder, mounts every female he gets near, even when temps are over 90. So far he's not only mounted the three Biel girls, but also my three White Rocks, four Australorps, two Barred Rocks and one Silkie...sometimes all in the same morning AND later that evening.
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Geeze, I'd love to have one like that !
 
So your saying people have been trimming cochin fluff and artificially inseminating for tens of thousands of years and that's the only way they can reproduce? Point me to the time period as to when the cochin was originally bred. Can you supply a link?

I suspect the Cochin fluff trimming issue is due to breeding and is what got the breed where it is today. If the bird has been around as long as you say natural selection would have taken care of the excess fluff.

How is a Bielefelder anymore "engineered" as you say, than a Cochin? What does it matter that the Biele is not a heritage breed?


I've whittled my Biele flock down to 4 cockerels and 10 pullets. All the cockerels are actively trying to breed the girls and the temp has been in the 100's here.
I don't know about fertility because I haven't tried to hatch any yet.
Engineered means they have been hybridized.
The Bielfelders are a brand new "breed" of cross breeding with other breeds to form what they are. This is a brand new breed.
As far as the Cochins, they go back thousands of years to China, where they were 'designed' and bred, along with Pekinese dogs & a host of other bizarre animals & birds...all beautiful, goldfish and beautiaul cats.
Chinese breeders 'made' new breeds, and not all could breathe easily, or breed easily.
Read up on it, and sorry I cannot supply a link, I am having my own episode with my own disease.
I'll try & get a few for you, but no promise, I am not feeling well.
 
I've read just about everything I could on Bieles that was available online before I acquired the breed and never realized they were hybrids. I know they were created from a few different breeds and now I know that is considered a hybrid. Thank you for explaining this.

My apologies to you Chickielady if my post came off as sarcastic. I actually thought you were being sarcastic in your reply to my post about fluff. So I'm very sorry. Don't worry about the Cochin link and my condolences to you for your health.
 
It's crazy that people think it's not big thing... If my dog killed her dog I'm sure she'd want some money since she just shelled out a ton having it heartworm treated... But "it's just a chicken"
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The laws here (as I learned afterward from a fellow Alabamaian on this site) require that she pays for the losses caused by her dog, she's supposed to have the dog put down, and if she chooses to keep the dog and it does it again, she'd have to pay double the losses. BUT after calling the local police and animal control, I have learned that the laws are pretty much non-enforceable since they consider the financial loss caused by the dog a civil matter. The police did NOTHING and animal control told me they could only come out and check the rabies vaccinations and give her a scolding (which they never showed up to do)

So I have to pay $72 in filing fees, $13 to have her served (and that's if I do it myself through the mail. It's $24 if they sherif's deputies have to do it) to get my $85 for my two birds... $85 spent, and $85 back... (I did learn that since she's at fault, I can request she have to pay the court fees but it's a gamble because if SOMEHOW I don't win the case I'd be out $85 for fees and whatnot AND have to compensation for my chickens and have nothing but a headache to show for it)

AND HERE IS AN INTERESTING SIDENOTE... If I don't file against her for the first instance and her dog does it again, I don't get the double compensation because I didn't file the first incident. So I'm risking losing more birds with only minimal comp by NOT pursuing it

ETA: Did I mention I'm flat broke and my husband and all my family that I asked to borrow the $85 told me "They're just chickens. Let it go." ? I'm surrounded by idiots. I swanny
Dang, feel for you ! It is bad enough from the outside, let alone coming from your own kin............and file every time ! If nothing else, can I be a bee in yer bonnet ? File every time & rack up income losses you are NOT getting.
 
I've read just about everything I could on Bieles that was available online before I acquired the breed and never realized they were hybrids. I know they were created from a few different breeds and now I know that is considered a hybrid. Thank you for explaining this.

My apologies to you Chickielady if my post came off as sarcastic. I actually thought you were being sarcastic in your reply to my post about fluff. So I'm very sorry. Don't worry about the Cochin link and my condolences to you for your health.
No problems, just look, they were not here 2 years ago, and go back a few before, they were there either, they are a brand new "Engineered" breed.............."A hybrid, and I liked the breeds induced....but not so much now.
The ones I have cross bred are doing well.
The full bred Biels, are doing ok, we'll see what this next influx of biels do, so far, every year I have watched & the lasy huge hatch (from a state I will not disclose) each and every bird found a freak place to commit suicide, be it between 2 gates stacked against a barn...or flying until they crash against a barn wall & DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I find so many of them right close to the coop door, twitchin...
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The herd of black javas never had this problem, nor did the Icelandics , also housed in this very coop, nor did the Marans (Black, Blue & Cuckoo)
Sorry guys I just have Lupus, I ain't dying...just low at the moment, and thanks for your well wishes !
 
Dang, feel for you ! It is bad enough from the outside, let alone coming from your own kin............and file every time ! If nothing else, can I be a bee in yer bonnet ? File every time & rack up income losses you are NOT getting.

I've pretty much come to a dead end as far as getting any compensation for my dead chickens. It comes down to saving money for a fence for my chickens or filing the court fees.
 
See, this is when we confuse terms...
A Hybird traditional meant a cross of to species of animals/plants. The most prominent would be the Mules, a cross between donkyes and horse..The ancient philosophers believed that this was a hybris, a offence against the gods and nature.

Today we often use the term Hybrid for the F1 generation of animals that are a (extrem) cross of beeds. This animals (F1) show the same uniform in apperence and qualities that a breed shows but if you breed them with each other the offsprings (F2) will show a big variety. almost non will look like or show the same qualities of their grandparents (P) or parents (F 1).
Hybirds are breed b/c of the positiv effects that an over-expression of a genes in heterozygote gene typs can have in the F1 generation. They are often more produktive than the P/F2 generation.
And it is much easier/faster to bind two gualities together. You breed a Cornish to a RIR and you have a F1-brid with a big frame like the cornis and rapid weight gain like the RIR in 21 days, when the creation of a breed that would breed true both qualities in every generation, would take much more time... maybe 21 years not days.

Engineering in contrast is the direct manipulation of the genes in a organism resulting in genetic modified organisms. This kind of technology is done in plants for years know transfarering genes from bacterias to peanut plants or tomato plants i.e. to make the plant resistant to different pathogenes.

If a breeder sits down, writes down the qualities he wants to have in his breed, than takes the SOP and picks breeds that have this qualities and than sets up a breeding plan and crosses the breeds to that detailed plan, he is a smart guy and may work as an engineer for Daimler but the resulting breed is not engineered.


All our breeds are the result of crossing, backbreeding and inbreeding and seleciton, half-consious like the farmer's wife who liked the black hen best, natural, like the fact that in regions with a high fox popoulation you find more brown-redish chickens do to the Bambi-Effect or planed, like the Bieleflelder or Bresse Gauloise.

O/c many breeds have long roots in history and look quite the same for centuries. Birds that look like my Barbus are found in paintings from the early 1700s and some breeders believe that they came all the way form Malaysia to Belgium, but that is only speculation and they were, like most breeds, registered around 1900 as a breed.
And maybe we will have some surpises when we gene-map the birds.... like the persian cat breeders... they were shocked when gene research found out that the persian cat has nothing to do with Persia or Asia Minor but are a mix of russian longhaired cats.
 
Bine you kind of beat me to it on one of your points.

Getting back to how this conversation started with whether or not to trim fluff. I'm trying to understand why Chickielady is saying too thick of fluff is a trait that can't be changed or is forever locked in basically(if I understood her correctly). Leaving cochins out of this convo. Bielefelders being hybrids are results of heritage(established breeds) birds being crossed. At a point in time the heritage breeds were hybrids also. Through selective breeding traits can be bred for with results. Why can't thickness of fluff be one of those traits. I look at my flock and see different sizes, forms, colors, sickle feather lengths, feet and leg differences and many others.

Chickielady I may have entirely misunderstood your point on the fluff.


I can't help to not think some of these fertility issues folks are complaining about could be due to inbreeding. I can see how this breed could be run into the ground quickly with folks calling themselves breeders when they're really only flippers. Just a thought but how many folks on this thread got their Bieles direct from GFF. Who knows the breeding history of their birds and/or how they were bred. GreenFire imported the first Bieles in 2011. I've been told that the reason they brought the second import in 2013 was because of inbreeding.

These are just my thoughts and I would like to here everyone elses. I've spent many hours on this forum reading threads and a lot of times I waded through more nonsense and opinions rather than hard facts, wasted time, didn't learn anything, and gained only frustration.
 
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