A Heritage of Perfection: Standard-bred Large Fowl

[gjensen]

With this as my first season to store/incubate/hatch eggs, I agree that I was likely the source of most of my hatchability problems. However, when I first started looking into recommended breeder rations, my feed stated it contained 0.3% methionine, and 0.45% were recommended for meat-type breeder hens. By the end of my hatching season, the local mill had changed my former feed to 0.2% methionine. I found a different feedstore, this one keeps Purina Gamebird Startena in stock, with 0.5% methionine. I produced 16% live, healthy chicks. My recent broody hen produced 69.6%. Hurray for Mother Nature!
Angela

Good for you. Hopefully your streak will continue.

Supposedly, methionine is a common culprit when we get supplementing their feed.

 

[3riverschick]

Sometimes Agway exhausts me.

I go in and tell them what I want, they get out their feed catalog, we pick out the poultry feed I want, I pay for it and then when they put it in my car on the dock it is something else entirely!

With the excuse that's all they have in stock.

Today I went in looking for 22 % formula with low enough calcium it could be fed to the whole flock. That's Southern States Breeder formula. Ok, so we pick it out, I pay for it and out he comes from the warehouse with Purina Start and Grow non medicated Chick crumbles. Wait, that's not what I bought!

"Oh, it's all we have.

So I am thinking, " Why didn't you say so before bought it?".
So , my question, is it going to be ok to feed this to my adult birds who are siring and laying eggs?
What frustration!!

Karen

 

[Fred's Hens]

It's Purina, so it is all nice and vegetarian. But yes. You can and could feed that to any bird.

 

[Delight in Dominiques]

Now that you have it, compare your feed tags.

 

[3riverschick]

Ok, enough of this, Vamvakas. Stop needling Walt! I don't want this thread shut down too. It's a valuable
place to learn from the APA Master Breeders. In fact, this whole forum was set up just so they could
have a place to discuss serous breeding without this kind of interference from folks personal opinions.
Walt shared some valuable info on hatching trends. I appreciate it, thank you, Walt.
We will see how the Brinseas Mini Advances do this season. I haven't candled any of the eggs because they are small
bators and the eggs don't explode. Actually I sure appreciate these little gems. I am going to get more next year. They only
hold 7 eggs each. But with my small flock, it they let me do a lot of test hatches to test breed who is throwing what.
I only get about 7-14 chicks from each test mating. But that's enough for me to see if anyone is throwing any
obvious faults I need to cull for. In a year or so I will have the genetics of this gene pool sorted out and then
I can increase the size of my flock and start serious linebreeding, incubating in larger numbers. For right now,
this is not an optimal situation ( small gene pool) but like Sturgeon(sp?) said, "Start where you are, with what
you have". I am excited about the birds going to Fiestafeathers. She lives more than 500 miles from me and
will give the strain a 3rd home. So in 4-5 years we can trade birds.
the hen "March" has gone broody again. Wow does she like to sit eggs. I don't let her tho because it might
encourage the other hens to imitate her and that takes their eggs out of the running for 6 weeks, sigh. I am too small
an operation to let that happen. Funny her 1/2 sister doesn't go broody at all. they are polar opposites.
I admit to being a bit worried what this Tux ex May breeding will throw. It is really tight. I think if we dodge any classic
inbreeding defects, the males should be fabulous. It's close famly breeding on 3x APA grand Ch. Senior.
Senior's son, Junior who is Tux's sire threw lovely males when bred to May. So this is son to mother doubling
back on Senior. ( Senior is the sire of both Junior and May). The females last season were not as good as the males.
Lots of cushions. I got one hen here out of 12 who doesn't have that cushion. She is a May daughter by Tux. Maybe
I will breed her to her full brother 'Knight and Day' and see what falls out of the tree. If I was double mating, I would be
tempted to state I had a nice cockerel strain starting, sigh.
Best Regards,
Karen

 

[fowlman01]

Ok, enough of this, Vamvakas. Stop needling Walt! I don't want this thread shut down too. It's a valuable
place to learn from the APA Master Breeders. In fact, this whole forum was set up just so they could
have a place to discuss serous breeding without this kind of interference from folks personal opinions.
Walt shared some valuable info on hatching trends. I appreciate it, thank you, Walt.
We will see how the Brinseas Mini Advances do this season. I haven't candled any of the eggs because they are small
bators and the eggs don't explode. Actually I sure appreciate these little gems. I am going to get more next year. They only
hold 7 eggs each. But with my small flock, it they let me do a lot of test hatches to test breed who is throwing what.
I only get about 7-14 chicks from each test mating. But that's enough for me to see if anyone is throwing any
obvious faults I need to cull for. In a year or so I will have the genetics of this gene pool sorted out and then
I can increase the size of my flock and start serious linebreeding, incubating in larger numbers. For right now,
this is not an optimal situation ( small gene pool) but like Sturgeon(sp?) said, "Start where you are, with what
you have". I am excited about the birds going to Fiestafeathers. She lives more than 500 miles from me and
will give the strain a 3rd home. So in 4-5 years we can trade birds.
the hen "March" has gone broody again. Wow does she like to sit eggs. I don't let her tho because it might
encourage the other hens to imitate her and that takes their eggs out of the running for 6 weeks, sigh. I am too small
an operation to let that happen. Funny her 1/2 sister doesn't go broody at all. they are polar opposites.
I admit to being a bit worried what this Tux ex May breeding will throw. It is really tight. I think if we dodge any classic
inbreeding defects, the males should be fabulous. It's close famly breeding on 3x APA grand Ch. Senior.
Senior's son, Junior who is Tux's sire threw lovely males when bred to May. So this is son to mother doubling
back on Senior. ( Senior is the sire of both Junior and May). The females last season were not as good as the males.
Lots of cushions. I got one hen here out of 12 who doesn't have that cushion. She is a May daughter by Tux. Maybe
I will bred her to her full brother 'Knight and Day' and see what falls out of the tree. If I was double mating, I would be
tempted to state I had a nice cockerel strain starting, sigh.
Best Regards,
Karen

Karen, his posts and posts like that are the reason serious breeders no longer post on BYC. I will continue to post here, as know it all teenies don't bother me much. Their posts take care of it. As anyone who can read will see that I posted an observation based on what I have seen/heard over 50 years. Just an observation. Maybe he can give some information that supports that people are indeed having problems hatching this year. No one I know is having problems, but then the people I know are very good at hatching. I'm not and I'm not having any problems either.

Walt

 

[3riverschick]

Thank you for not leaving, Walt! You will forget than I will ever learn about poultry breeding.
I just hope I do a good enough job culling this season to find the good stuff in these small hatches.
They really have me worried I won't be wise enough to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Best,
Karen
BTW, That "Educator" badge fowlman01 has cannot be earned or result from public nomination
on BYC. Unlike the other BYC badges, this one is only bestowed on a very limited basis
to select poultry persons deemed by the BYC admins to be exceptionally knowledgeable.

 

[bnjrob]

Ok, enough of this, Vamvakas. Stop needling Walt! I don't want this thread shut down too. It's a valuable
place to learn from the APA Master Breeders. In fact, this whole forum was set up just so they could
have a place to discuss serous breeding without this kind of interference from folks personal opinions.
Walt shared some valuable info on hatching trends. I appreciate it, thank you, Walt.
We will see how the Brinseas Mini Advances do this season. I haven't candled any of the eggs because they are small
bators and the eggs don't explode. Actually I sure appreciate these little gems. I am going to get more next year. They only
hold 7 eggs each. But with my small flock, it they let me do a lot of test hatches to test breed who is throwing what.
I only get about 7-14 chicks from each test mating. But that's enough for me to see if anyone is throwing any
obvious faults I need to cull for. In a year or so I will have the genetics of this gene pool sorted out and then
I can increase the size of my flock and start serious linebreeding, incubating in larger numbers. For right now,
this is not an optimal situation ( small gene pool) but like Sturgeon(sp?) said, "Start where you are, with what
you have". I am excited about the birds going to Fiestafeathers. She lives more than 500 miles from me and
will give the strain a 3rd home. So in 4-5 years we can trade birds.
the hen "March" has gone broody again. Wow does she like to sit eggs. I don't let her tho because it might
encourage the other hens to imitate her and that takes their eggs out of the running for 6 weeks, sigh. I am too small
an operation to let that happen. Funny her 1/2 sister doesn't go broody at all. they are polar opposites.
I admit to being a bit worried what this Tux ex May breeding will throw. It is really tight. I think if we dodge any classic
inbreeding defects, the males should be fabulous. It's close famly breeding on 3x APA grand Ch. Senior.
Senior's son, Junior who is Tux's sire threw lovely males when bred to May. So this is son to mother doubling
back on Senior. ( Senior is the sire of both Junior and May). The females last season were not as good as the males.
Lots of cushions. I got one hen here out of 12 who doesn't have that cushion. She is a May daughter by Tux. Maybe
I will breed her to her full brother 'Knight and Day' and see what falls out of the tree. If I was double mating, I would be
tempted to state I had a nice cockerel strain starting, sigh.
Best Regards,
Karen

That's what you gotta do - start where you are. Last year we had to hatch from pullet eggs just to get more numbers of live birds on the ground. This year, we hatched from hens/cocks and I can see the difference. But then we had to hatch from pullet/cockerel eggs again a couple of months ago with this new bloodline we have now, just to keep the bloodline alive since it was thought to have died out and the guy that has a handful of the birds is like me - didn't want his birds to be the last ones alive. The eggs from those birds weren't the best shaped and the hatches weren't great, but beggars can't be choosers and we're happy to at least have some that we can work with and keep their gene pool going. I do wish the hatches had not been so male-heavy this year. I think we got MagicChicken's luck this year and wound up with more males than females instead of the more even 50/50 split like we usually get.

 

[fowlman01]

Thank you for not leaving, Walt! You will forget than I will ever learn about poultry breeding.
I just hope I do a good enough job culling this season to find the good stuff in these small hatches.
They really have me worried I won't be wise enough to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Best,
 Karen
 BTW, That "Educator" badge fowlman01 has cannot be earned or result from public nomination
on BYC.  Unlike the other BYC badges, this one is only bestowed on a very limited basis
to select poultry persons deemed by the BYC admins to be exceptionally knowledgeable.

Post your young and we can try to go through them. The older they are the easier it is to separate them.

Walt

 

[3riverschick]

Ok. They hatch in 3 and 11 days. At what ages should I post their pics? Each week or?
I can feather sex the pure Boese . Not sure about the 1/2 Boese outcross, time will tell.
Thanks Walt!
Best,
Karen