Barnevelder breeders lets work together and improve the breed

[Totalcolour]

Many of the US lines like Johan, vB and KC have good lacing in the hens and solid black breasts in the males. It's just that the current US Barnevelder breed standard calls for laced breasts in males. According to the Dutch, males with laced breasts will cause a lot of problems with the female's lacing pattern. Solid black breasted males (like the Dutch standard) produce better laced hens.

Importing would be nice especially if really good quality lines with dark eggs could be brought in, but it's expensive and a gamble.

Trisha

Since I'm not showing, I shall breed for the Dutch standard. Since I have a nice Johan male with a solid breast. I think I "may" do quite well. Perhaps eventually there will be an APA with solid breasts, and then there will be a market for them. It doesn't really matter to me; I want the really nice laced hens.

I've never really thought about it, importing eggs. Does anyone know how it's done? I think it would be expensive, but . . .

Oh, I know someone who brought in eggs from Iceland, I think I'll give her a buzz and see how she did it. I'll get back to you all if I find out anything.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Thanks Trisha! For me, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Well, my rooster has the perfectly dark chest. However, comparing him to the rooster there, I definitely need to work on his back line (more U shape) and tail. (more fullness) It's great to see what I need to work on - as there is always something to work on!

 

[pickledchicken]

I love the pics Trisha thank you way cool ! That is one handsome rooster. Has anyone heard of Erhard Weihs he has some Barnies just wondering what his might be like?

 

[ChickenExtreme]

That Roo is beautiful, hope mine fills out like that

 

[mountainvieworchards]

Its hard to tell from the photo that that rooster has an all black breast. But he certainly has wonderful Barnevelder type and nice stout size. The reason I say it is hard to tell if he has a solid black breast is that I have roos that look that black from that distance but when you handle them they have reddish brown centers on a good number of breast feathers, that you can only see from up close or when handling the birds.

I have not worried much over my roosters breast coloration, that is I have not been particularly selecting for laced or solid black breasts. Perhaps that is because I have only ever shown pullets and hens. For my breeding I like to use the sons or brothers of my best double laced hens. They have to have nice type, good strong legs that are nice and yellow, good combs and must be of the best temperament. These are the key traits to a Barnevelder rooster in my opinion. As far as lacing goes, his job (my opinion) is to pass along the genes to his progeny and we don't really need him to be laced.

In looking at the standard I think it is important to look at our situation. I agree with Trisha that our roosters in USA are not heavily laced and the standard calls for a reddish brown center to each breast feather, so that is a bad match up with the majority of our US stock. With gold double laced Barnevelders the hen is the one that displays the double lacing and I think that is where we should put our focus. There are theories about what color males produce good color in the daughters and for what ever reason, these don't always agree and may work differently in different lines.

I think having a standard that calls for all male breast feathers to be laced or one that calls for only solid black are perhaps both off track of what we are trying to achieve in this breed. I suspect based on what I have seen, we need to balance the red in the male breast to produce hens with good lacing. I think most of us would agree we don't want a standard that requires double matings. And since our variety is named primarily for the coloration of the hen I think it makes sense to write a standard for the males that best achieves the best standard females.

I don't see our US birds having the weakness with the inner lacing that our Dutch friend showed us in the photo, so it is not currently a problem we have, at least not that I know of. Who knows it could become a problem if people start breeding hard for the strong lacing in males called for in the current standard. On the other hand I see nothing wrong with a nice type male, well balanced in color with some red flecking in the breast. Too much red, i.e. red that comes to the margin or the tip can lead to problems with lacing, but some red flecks in the breast can be very useful in a certain pairings. Such males can be used to correct too dark females or triple lacing in females.

My personal opinion is that the males who produce the best lacing in females are from the best laced mothers and have fathers from the best laced females. I think it is important that such males be included in the standard, and because of that, I would rather see it written more broadly instead of more narrowly. Sometimes if makes us feel good to draw up strict standards, but the more narrowly you write a standard the more correct you have to be. And as we can now see with the benefit of hindsight, the original standard for Barnevelders was written too strictly in the wrong direction, compared to what our collective experience now shows.

Perhaps we all need a few more years experience working with this breed and paying closer attention to such details before we change the standard one way or the other. If after careful thought and more sharing of information I think if we can come to some sort of a consensus it would be best long term situation for the breed and those who enjoy it. I haven't been nor do I intend to breed towards males as described in the SOP.

I thank Trisha for bringing up this issue and for providing information from the Dutch perspective, they have had the most experience with the breed and I give a lot of weight to their knowledge.
And perhaps we should enlarge the dialogue about any standard change so that people breeding Barnies don't go too far down the line of breeding strongly laced males only to have the rug pulled out from under them in three years or worse yet to find out they have ruined their lacing in their hens. That would cause headaches and could put a rift in our community we could all live without.

I didn't know that all the squabbling in the Euro zone about currency and trade extended into the poultry standards, very interesting.

Andy

 

[bstarr20]

Does anyone on here ship chicks? I only had one Roo hatch from the batch of eggs I bought this spring. Had no hatches from the other 2 batches of shipped eggs. (Not barnies) So would like to find a couple of girls for him. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. my silkie and guineas hatch just fine its only the shipped eggs I've had problems with.

 

[tls_ranch]

x100% what Andy said

My roos also have the slight red centers on breast feather, but the overall look appears solid black breasted. The lacing is excellent in the hens fathered by the dark roos. I wouldn't want to loose the good lacing on the hens to get laced breasts in the roos. I'd rather see a whole flock of stunning laced hens.....than a flock of ugly hens and one laced rooster, LOL.

Trisha

 

[Tailfeathers]

Its hard to tell from the photo that that rooster has an all black breast. But he certainly has wonderful Barnevelder type and nice stout size. The reason I say it is hard to tell if he has a solid black breast is that I have roos that look that black from that distance but when you handle them they have reddish brown centers on a good number of breast feathers, that you can only see from up close or when handling the birds.

I have not worried much over my roosters breast coloration, that is I have not been particularly selecting for laced or solid black breasts. Perhaps that is because I have only ever shown pullets and hens. For my breeding I like to use the sons or brothers of my best double laced hens. They have to have nice type, good strong legs that are nice and yellow, good combs and must be of the best temperament. These are the key traits to a Barnevelder rooster in my opinion. As far as lacing goes, his job (my opinion) is to pass along the genes to his progeny and we don't really need him to be laced.

In looking at the standard I think it is important to look at our situation. I agree with Trisha that our roosters in USA are not heavily laced and the standard calls for a reddish brown center to each breast feather, so that is a bad match up with the majority of our US stock. With gold double laced Barnevelders the hen is the one that displays the double lacing and I think that is where we should put our focus. There are theories about what color males produce good color in the daughters and for what ever reason, these don't always agree and may work differently in different lines.

I think having a standard that calls for all male breast feathers to be laced or one that calls for only solid black are perhaps both off track of what we are trying to achieve in this breed. I suspect based on what I have seen, we need to balance the red in the male breast to produce hens with good lacing. I think most of us would agree we don't want a standard that requires double matings. And since our variety is named primarily for the coloration of the hen I think it makes sense to write a standard for the males that best achieves the best standard females.

I don't see our US birds having the weakness with the inner lacing that our Dutch friend showed us in the photo, so it is not currently a problem we have, at least not that I know of. Who knows it could become a problem if people start breeding hard for the strong lacing in males called for in the current standard. On the other hand I see nothing wrong with a nice type male, well balanced in color with some red flecking in the breast. Too much red, i.e. red that comes to the margin or the tip can lead to problems with lacing, but some red flecks in the breast can be very useful in a certain pairings. Such males can be used to correct too dark females or triple lacing in females.

My personal opinion is that the males who produce the best lacing in females are from the best laced mothers and have fathers from the best laced females. I think it is important that such males be included in the standard, and because of that, I would rather see it written more broadly instead of more narrowly. Sometimes if makes us feel good to draw up strict standards, but the more narrowly you write a standard the more correct you have to be. And as we can now see with the benefit of hindsight, the original standard for Barnevelders was written too strictly in the wrong direction, compared to what our collective experience now shows.

Perhaps we all need a few more years experience working with this breed and paying closer attention to such details before we change the standard one way or the other. If after careful thought and more sharing of information I think if we can come to some sort of a consensus it would be best long term situation for the breed and those who enjoy it. I haven't been nor do I intend to breed towards males as described in the SOP.

I thank Trisha for bringing up this issue and for providing information from the Dutch perspective, they have had the most experience with the breed and I give a lot of weight to their knowledge.
And perhaps we should enlarge the dialogue about any standard change so that people breeding Barnies don't go too far down the line of breeding strongly laced males only to have the rug pulled out from under them in three years or worse yet to find out they have ruined their lacing in their hens. That would cause headaches and could put a rift in our community we could all live without.

I didn't know that all the squabbling in the Euro zone about currency and trade extended into the poultry standards, very interesting.

Andy

I agree with Andy with regard to black breasted males not necessarily being all black. If one were to look at my Barnie cock that I used this year, it would look like he had an all black breast. Below is a pic I took after bringing him home from the last show. You can't see the breat much at all but you can make out the lacing on the wing bows.


However, if you were to run your fingers thru his breat feathers, you would see the same thing Andy mentioned. There is reddish-brown centers on many of his breast feathers.

I've read the other posts about the lacing in males supposedly taking away from the lacing in the females. That's the first I've seen on it. I don't dispute it and I can't say one way or the other because I haven't been able to determine anything like that yet. However, having said that, I have learned a long time ago that one needs to get confirmation - usually at least 2-3 different reliable sources - before accepting what one reads on the internet as fact. So again, not saying I dispute what was said, just saying it would do us all well if there was more substantiating evidence for such a claim.

Personally, I like the looks of the double-laced males and I personally like the challenge of seeing if I can get there.

I recently read an article from Kenny Troiano about "sex-linked traits" and was blown away. Had to read it about four times to be able to understand it. I wonder if lacing could be a sex-linked trait? Andy's comment, "My personal opinion is that the males who produce the best lacing in females are from the best laced mothers and have fathers from the best laced females." would tend to lean toward that conclusion.

I would also have to disagree - respectfully with "I would rather see it written more broadly instead of more narrowly. Sometimes if makes us feel good to draw up strict standards, but the more narrowly you write a standard the more correct you have to be. And as we can now see with the benefit of hindsight, the original standard for Barnevelders was written too strictly in the wrong direction, compared to what our collective experience now shows." The Standard is called "Standard of Perfection" for a reason. One of the problems I have is that the Standard allows for too much variance and personal preference as is. I see this debate many times in other threads that I follow for some of my other breeds. Especially the Ameraucana breed. There are a lot of folks who want to pretty much just toss out all the hard work, effort, time, expense, dedication, and commitment that the original breeders put forth to get the SOP accepted in the first place and run willy nilly with every new "variation" or "project" they come up with.

Now I'm not saying there can't be room for some experimentation or "projects" or such but they should be done to move a new "variety" into acceptance in the SOP. I would submit that it is quite possible that the "collective experience" is a result of simply not adhering to the SOP. I can tell you from personal experience that I have fell victim to this fault. For years my birds always did well at the shows I attended. Males included. Some walked away with BB and I know at least one time with Reserve Continental. So I felt victim (I hate that word but can't think of another right now) to not paying attention. Thankfully, I somehow got it pointed out to me and now I'm working towards what the SOP calls for. I can only imagine that those involved with the process of getting the Barnies accepted (and it's quite an arduous process) gave this all some thought and knew what they were doing before putting pen to paper with the recommended SOP.

I have no doubt that the majority of Barnie owners - including breeders - have all black breasted males but that don't mean that we ought to be changing the SOP. Breeding to the SOP isn't supposed to be easy folks!! If it were easy, it wouldn't be the Standard of PERFECTION! Moreover, there would be little solace in winning Best of Show with a Barnevelder if everyone could do it. I definitely think we all, myself definitely included, could use a few more years with the breed before we start down a road of trying to undo that which has already been done and undo all that effort, dedication, and commitment which led to the success of getting our Barnies approved in the first place. For those who do show, we've seen birds on Champion Row and birds that have won the coveted Best of Show or Grand Champion Largefowl or such and wondered in amazement at all the time, effort, and dedication that went into producing that bird. I submit that maybe, just maybe, if there were more folks actually breeding to the SOP, we might actually start seeing a whole lot more males with nicely laced breasts. Could that possibly be????

Btw, just as a side note, from what I can tell there has been a disagreement between the Dutch and the Europeans that dates back quite some time. The same exact discussion/debate was held with regard to the Welsummers. And for those who don't know, the Barnevelders were accepted into the APA at the same show by the same exhibitors in Vancouver, WA in 1991. Admittedly, one of those original breeders is a good friend of mine so in the interest of full disclosure, you now know where some of my bias comes from.

God Bless,

 

[tls_ranch]

I've been trying to graft my new chicks that hatched a few days ago in the bator to a broody hen without any luck. I tried two broodies that have been sitting for weeks and neither wanted anything to do with chicks.

So, I tried a last ditch effort to avoid having to run a heat lamp at night. I took my momma hen's 8 older chicks away from her (they're already feathered out) and gave her the new baby chicks.


Yay, success at last! She loves her new little ones and what a good momma!





What do you think about the bigger splash chick?...I'm thinking cockerel based on stance.

 

[ChickenExtreme]

I've been trying to graft my new chicks that hatched a few days ago in the bator to a broody hen without any luck. I tried two broodies that have been sitting for weeks and neither wanted anything to do with chicks.

So, I tried a last ditch effort to avoid having to run a heat lamp at night. I took my momma hen's 8 older chicks away from her (they're already feathered out) and gave her the new baby chicks.


Yay, sucess at last! She loves her new little ones and what a good momma!





What do you think about the bigger splash chick?...I'm thinking cockerel based on stance.

They are so adorable, Congrats