B.Y.C. Dorking Club!

[pysankigirl]

I made a Dorkvelder by mistake!

 

[dalalune]

Hmmm....Craig is so enthusiastic about his colors; it is great fun to talk to him about them. Still, the colors aren't going to be lost. They're always right there sitting underneath. Creles, Cuckoos, Dark Greys, Birchens, Brown Reds, Coloreds all of these patterns and then some, pretty much everything that runs through the Old English Game specturm, can be had by crossing the primary Dorking varieties: White, Red, and SG, and these will only be great again if they are the focus of strong breeding efforts. Then, when these other non-Standard colors are recreated, they'll actually be good Dorkings.

Of course, go for it. No one's going to hate anyone, for the love of Pete! It's just trying to be really honest. In any breed where there are multiple varieties, all the superfluous varieties do is detract from the general health of the breed. If you look at poultry history, the strongest breeds of large fowl have 1 to 3 varieties of any value, and only one has four--Cochins. All of the other varieties always look like the dregs: poor vigor, poor conformation, small, small, small. It's just the way of it. Really the overall health of a variety depends on multiple breeders and concerted efforts. The more breeders working with a single variety, the greater the chance of it achieving excellence.

Your Reds will be strong, not only because of what you're doing, but because of what others are doing. Over the years, they're going to get bigger, meatier, longer, deeper, more productive. The feathers are going to become lusher; they'll be wider. Your hens won't have trreaded backs through the breeding season because of enhanced feather quality. They'll be vigorous and disease-resistant, and all of this because you're part of a community bettering Red Dorkings.

Our Whites are getting better and better, and their strength lies in the other homesteads that are picking them up. Nothing makes be feel more confident in the eventul success of what we're doing here, like the knowledge of budding success in the pens of other breeders dedicated to the Whites.

By all means enjoy the colors, but they'll always be fun mongrels. You'll have them for a bit, and then need to get something to cross into them, and you'll keep doing it in this sort of cycle: cross for vigor, fix the color, degradation; cross for vigor, fix the color, degradation. It's cool, as long as it brings you pleasure, but it really doesn't do anything for Dorkings per se.

So, it's not about censure. It's just about an actual vision of what you're doing. Craig has been an excellent ambassador for Dorkings. He spreads enthusiasm and gets everyone talking. Still, what he isn't doing is spreading around a bunch of high quality Dorkings reflecting the many years he's been breeding them. For all the years he's been working on Dorkings, none of his stock that I've ever seen in the last decade is of particularly strong quality. It's on par with everything else out there, of course, but it isn't better, and much of that has to do with all the color projects he likes to do. With careful analysis, we might see that it's because the general pool of Dorking quality has been going down the drain for decades--literally decades. All of these color varieties, which are really just color mongrels, are produced by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Dorking breeders have been so worried about the color of the barn that they failed to realize that the roof was caving in.

In the 90's there was a major effort made to get the Cuckoo Dorking into the SOP. To what avail? There's not a single flock of high quality Cuckoo Dorkings around today--not one, unless it's hiding somewhere in a pine grove unbeknownst to anyone else. If any censure is due, it's due in light of this flagrant example of upside down priorities, especially because they knew better than to allow themselves to be diverted by a variety that, even in England, was never anything more than marginal. All of the brouhaha was being done to get Cuckoo Dorkings into the SOP while the general state of the Dorking breed was starting to whirlpool above the drain.

I don't know any poultry community that talks more about "buiding the barn before you paint it" as much as the Dorking community, and yet, as a community they have, in the past at least, been so easily distracted by paint. The way to remove color as a factor is not to discount it but to revere it. The reasons for which all the Dorking barns look like Dorking sheds are several, not the least being that they have been unfairly censured in poultry literature for ridiculous minutiae that count for nothing. On the other hand, Dorking breeders for decades have been too busy painting sheds instead of building barns. To this day, all you have to do is go to ebay and there are already faux-breeders peddling a bunch of nothing as good quality Dorkings, and all they'll accomplish is the deception of new-comers who think that they're getting something worth raising. Instead they'll end up disappointed, and I bet most won't be back to try raising good Dorkings again.

These other non-Standard colors have never been anything but fancier's play--ever--anywhere--on this or that side of the Atlantic, and in any century from which we have reliable, written documentation. It's reasonable to imagine that fanciers have often kept a pen of this or of that for kicks because these colors do pop up if you cross the primary colors of White, Red, and Silver Grey. The only exception here would be to throw in the Colored Dorking, which is an intermediate color variety, not one that has an ancient tradition of on-going excellence, but one that did enjoy a fair level of success in the 1800's. It's weakness, like anything in a more or less Golden Duckwing pattern is that it is an intermediate pattern that cannot self-sustain over time. Its general health quite literally depends on the existence of strong Silver Duckwing, i.e. Silver Greys and Red Duckwing, i.e. Reds. Without the occasional, but regular, outcrossing to Reds, Coloreds will get lighter and lighter until they're just smutty Silver Greys. To anyone who has worked with Coloreds recently, this should sound rather familiar.

Cuckoos are had by crossing Whites and SGs, which will also create Dark Greys, Birchens, and Mottled, especially if you cross F1s on F1s. Birchens, if crossed to Reds will create Brown Reds. Creles are had by crossing Reds and Cuckoos. Spangled are had by crossing Mottleds onto Reds. We could do this again and again, but to what avail? It all comes down to Whites, Reds, and SGs. The question is how good is the barn and not about whether we can or cannot paint a shed. The reality is that the poultry world here or at the hatcheries is full of painted sheds. Recently, on another chat site, I foolishly chimed in on a thread talking about non-Standard colors and how we might save the traditional varieties, but the talk was the same as it always is, ie "Don't tell me what color I can paint my shed!". It wasn't even worth trying to continue the conversation.

If Dorkings are ever going to be show stoppers again, if they're ever going to merit the effusive praise that they received through merit in by-gone days as the single best pure-bred meat breed ever developed, it will be in the three colors: White, Red, and Silver Grey. It's going to take another solid decade of weighing birds, culling hard, and strong focus to rebuild the caved in roof on the Dorking barn, and even then there really won't be room for another barn. In reality, we will be fortunate if we get these three back there.

So, in conclusion, we are all free to do whatever it is we'd like, but you'll only get bread from following a recipe that leads to bread. If you want biscuits, bake biscuits. It' your kitchen, and it's all good. The only problem is if you really are hoping for bread but find in the end that you've been following a recipe that leads to biscuits. Then you're sad. The only unfortunate thing is if you've been convinced that biscuits and bread are the same thing, because then we're not being honest. Also, avoid falling into the sham of trying to pawn off biscuits as bread. It's unfair to tell beginners that there's a whole lot of heritage in an empty shell.

WoW! Thanks for the time you spent to map this out! I agree that it is important to stay focused on type-production-vigor. Your post has renewed my "focus" on the Reds and to just eat those Sussex eggs!

Anyone want some Sussex hens!?!

 

[ki4got]

Quote: so would a pure dorking... better even!

 

[yinepu]

so would a pure dorking... better even!

yeah well.. that's the one plus of having chickens.. we can eat our mistakes...

 

[Rockashelle]

yeah well.. that's the one plus of having chickens.. we can eat our mistakes...

That was funny!

 

[Yellow House Farm]

I made a Dorkvelder by mistake!

Yeah....who was the sneak? The Dork or the Velder?

 

[Yellow House Farm]

So, I have just taken out an absolutely awesome hatch from the incubator. I'm thrilled.

It's been a long road of serious culling and discipline. I know I sound like a color Scrooge, but trust me, were this the 1920's and every Tom, Dick, and Henrietta on the street had chickens, I'd be the worst color-o-holic of them all! Bringing this strain around has not been easy. I had only one cull out of twenty chicks---one! A few more weeks of this and Lord knows what could happen!

Great health. Excellent hatch rate. Good color, a high percentage of the chicks have the silvery cast that is nice to see in the Whites. Toes range from good to excellent in placement. All RC, all 5-toes, the only cull for color looked a bit too much like a Red Pyle.

Giving into my inner bumpkin..."Hot diggety!"

 

[ki4got]

So, I have just taken out an absolutely awesome hatch from the incubator. I'm thrilled.

It's been a long road of serious culling and discipline. I know I sound like a color Scrooge, but trust me, were this the 1920's and every Tom, Dick, and Henrietta on the street had chickens, I'd be the worst color-o-holic of them all! Bringing this strain around has not been easy. I had only one cull out of twenty chicks---one! A few more weeks of this and Lord knows what could happen!

Great health. Excellent hatch rate. Good color, a high percentage of the chicks have the silvery cast that is nice to see in the Whites. Toes range from good to excellent in placement. All RC, all 5-toes, the only cull for color looked a bit too much like a Red Pyle.

Giving into my inner bumpkin..."Hot diggety!"

LOL you may convert me to a white-bird lover someday... but currently the closest to white i can keep here with all our red clay and mud, is a vaguely tannish color. not very attractive at ALL!

 

[pysankigirl]

Yeah....who was the sneak? The Dork or the Velder?

The dang Velder. LOL

she is too dark and I saw a little of the patterning coming through, but with only one copy of the gene, it's gonna be pret-ty messy.

 

[pysankigirl]

LOL you may convert me to a white-bird lover someday... but currently the closest to white i can keep here with all our red clay and mud, is a vaguely tannish color. not very attractive at ALL!

Yeah, I cant even think about anything staying white in virginia. We would have buff dorkings in no time!
I remember when I first moved down here. I was used to black-brown loamy dirt. I didn't understand what this stuff was at all.