Bob Blosl's Heritage Large Fowl Thread

[Lacy Blues]

When growing out birds to pick future breeders, do most of you hold on to existing breeders until you know you have a better one? Pen space is getting tight around here.

What do you do with cocks that are over a year old that you no longer wish to use for breeding? Do most of you butcher your own birds? I would like some tips on how to process and cook older males. Last year, I processed a 9-month old German New Hampshire, and I had a devil of a time getting my hand inside the body cavity to remove the lungs. I have a 1 year 4 month old Good Shepard Barred Rock that has to go, unfortunately he was producing a lot of curled toed chicks while his brother's chicks are coming out fine. I am not looking forward to those stiff, narrow pelvic bones.

My easiest recipe for cooking older birds is a crock pot. I got myself a nice big one so I could fit one of my mature Delawares into it. Anyway, I put the bird in the crockpot and then add a bottle of teriyaki sauce and two cans of pineapple chunks in juice (not syrup) and cook it on high for 5 of 6 hours. Cook up some rice to go with and maybe some asparagus thrown into the crock pot during the last 20 minutes or so and you have a meal ready to eat! Yumm!

Oh, and for those narrow pelvis, when you open the abdomen just behind the keel bone, keep going with the knife and open it all the way to the rib cage. That's the immediate solution. For the long term solution, start breeding birds that have more room in their nether regions. It will take a while. It counts in the males as well as the females. Check all your prospective breeders for spacing between the pubic bones as well as between those and the end of the keel.

 

[Lacy Blues]

Oh, and yes, I do hang onto my existing breeders before finding one to replace them. Makes pen rotation a hair pulling experience! If I didn't hang onto my existing breeders and something happened to the young stock, I'd be up a creek!

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

Evenin' all......was just enjoying ChickenTV and a "*odk@/tonic" sitting with my grow out cockerels (prior to the downpour) and I see a startling trend and need some advise/confirmation

I hatched from 2 pens this year, double mated, so I was focused on a male pen and a female pen.(BTW - for those of you who dont know me, I raise LF Columbian Plymouth Rocks, sorry to have been rude, and they are all Dec/Jan hatch). I am seeing some extraordinary improvements in my pullets from Pen 1 (female mating) for color, type and FINALLY losing that darn/everlasting cushion and the feathering is getting much tighter (losing that Brahma influence)

My males are a bit of a different story. I've culled down to 12, the best remaining 6 from EACH pen. Tonight, I noticed that 4 of the 6 cockerels from Pen 1 (female pen) have squirrel tails BADLY. My gut tells me that ALL 6 need to go since they have the same sire(even the two without squirrel tails). The sire was slightly higher tailed, but was used to improve lift in the females who were flat backed! Can someone help me confirm??

Now there are 4 really nice, promising looking cockerels coming along from Pen 2, the male pen, although 2 are a little lighter hackled/saddled than I'd like to see, but type, width of back (all the way to the tail) is excellent, full tails showing a slight lift so far. One I call JJ (Jack Jr) as he was sired by JACK (#9) and he is already nearly the size of his sire at 6+ months old and Jack is 12lbs!! There are a couple of nice "smutty" backed females with good type that I will probably keep for next season just to maintain undercolor and improve hackle/saddle in the males.

Can someone help me out with my Pen #1 cockerel question??

Everyone have a great evening and stay dry.....headed to Memphis tomorrow, but hope to get a few pictures of my 2013 hatched birds to post over the weekend

Thanks

 

[Lacy Blues]

Evenin' all......was just enjoying ChickenTV and a "*odk@/tonic" sitting with my grow out cockerels (prior to the downpour) and I see a startling trend and need some advise/confirmation

I hatched from 2 pens this year, double mated, so I was focused on a male pen and a female pen.(BTW - for those of you who dont know me, I raise LF Columbian Plymouth Rocks, sorry to have been rude, and they are all Dec/Jan hatch). I am seeing some extraordinary improvements in my pullets from Pen 1 (female mating) for color, type and FINALLY losing that darn/everlasting cushion and the feathering is getting much tighter (losing that Brahma influence)

My males are a bit of a different story. I've culled down to 12, the best remaining 6 from EACH pen. Tonight, I noticed that 4 of the 6 cockerels from Pen 1 (female pen) have squirrel tails BADLY. My gut tells me that ALL 6 need to go since they have the same sire(even the two without squirrel tails). The sire was slightly higher tailed, but was used to improve lift in the females who were flat backed! Can someone help me confirm??

Now there are 4 really nice, promising looking cockerels coming along from Pen 2, the male pen, although 2 are a little lighter hackled/saddled than I'd like to see, but type, width of back (all the way to the tail) is excellent, full tails showing a slight lift so far. One I call JJ (Jack Jr) as he was sired by JACK (#9) and he is already nearly the size of his sire at 6+ months old and Jack is 12lbs!! There are a couple of nice "smutty" backed females with good type that I will probably keep for next season just to maintain undercolor and improve hackle/saddle in the males.

Can someone help me out with my Pen #1 cockerel question??

Everyone have a great evening and stay dry.....headed to Memphis tomorrow, but hope to get a few pictures of my 2013 hatched birds to post over the weekend

Thanks

Walt pointed out to us quite a while back that squirrel tails are caused by the abdominal spacing being too tight. In the future, I'd say check your birds you used to see which have the best spacing. Perhaps keep the two cockerels that are not squirrel tailed and mate them to the widest females you have. Hopefully those two males have decent spacing. If they also show the improvement you were breeding for, I'd say to hang onto them and use them with wider females or mate back to their mothers if they are wide.

Just my two cents. I'm no pro but spacing is something I've been working on for while... so hopefully, I'm learning something worth sharing.

 

[BGMatt]

Evenin' all......was just enjoying ChickenTV and a "*odk@/tonic" sitting with my grow out cockerels (prior to the downpour) and I see a startling trend and need some advise/confirmation

I hatched from 2 pens this year, double mated, so I was focused on a male pen and a female pen.(BTW - for those of you who dont know me, I raise LF Columbian Plymouth Rocks, sorry to have been rude, and they are all Dec/Jan hatch). I am seeing some extraordinary improvements in my pullets from Pen 1 (female mating) for color, type and FINALLY losing that darn/everlasting cushion and the feathering is getting much tighter (losing that Brahma influence)

My males are a bit of a different story. I've culled down to 12, the best remaining 6 from EACH pen. Tonight, I noticed that 4 of the 6 cockerels from Pen 1 (female pen) have squirrel tails BADLY. My gut tells me that ALL 6 need to go since they have the same sire(even the two without squirrel tails). The sire was slightly higher tailed, but was used to improve lift in the females who were flat backed! Can someone help me confirm??

Now there are 4 really nice, promising looking cockerels coming along from Pen 2, the male pen, although 2 are a little lighter hackled/saddled than I'd like to see, but type, width of back (all the way to the tail) is excellent, full tails showing a slight lift so far. One I call JJ (Jack Jr) as he was sired by JACK (#9) and he is already nearly the size of his sire at 6+ months old and Jack is 12lbs!! There are a couple of nice "smutty" backed females with good type that I will probably keep for next season just to maintain undercolor and improve hackle/saddle in the males.

Can someone help me out with my Pen #1 cockerel question??

Everyone have a great evening and stay dry.....headed to Memphis tomorrow, but hope to get a few pictures of my 2013 hatched birds to post over the weekend

Thanks

Are you intending to keep double mating or are you going to try and merge them back into single mating? If double mating, I would keep the two males that do not have the squirrel tail from the female pen for continued use in the female breeding pens, assuming you're happy with how those pullets are turning out. If single mating is your end goal I agree with your instincts, ditch the ones from the female pen.

Edit: I like what Lacy Blues said about using the widest females, but I'm guessing you're probably already doing that to keep size up.

 

[desertmarcy]

My easiest recipe for cooking older birds is a crock pot. I got myself a nice big one so I could fit one of my mature Delawares into it. Anyway, I put the bird in the crockpot and then add a bottle of teriyaki sauce and two cans of pineapple chunks in juice (not syrup) and cook it on high for 5 of 6 hours. Cook up some rice to go with and maybe some asparagus thrown into the crock pot during the last 20 minutes or so and you have a meal ready to eat! Yumm!

Oh, and for those narrow pelvis, when you open the abdomen just behind the keel bone, keep going with the knife and open it all the way to the rib cage. That's the immediate solution. For the long term solution, start breeding birds that have more room in their nether regions. It will take a while. It counts in the males as well as the females. Check all your prospective breeders for spacing between the pubic bones as well as between those and the end of the keel.

Thanks, my crock pot is not big enough for one of these huge Barred Rocks, but we use a solar cooker and this time of year, it slow cooks beautifully! Hmmm, pineapple and teriyaki sauce, that sounds good.

It never occurred to me to check the pelvic bone spacing on the males, I just assumed they were always tight because they are not laying eggs. So you are saying, in males of the same age/breed, you see a difference in their pelvic bone spacing, and use that as one of your criteria for keepers? Sometimes I sell processed birds, and people don't want a whole chicken that has been sliced up that far, but we will probably keep this one for ourselves.

 

[OSUman]

Here is one of my Lamona cockerels, the white needs to be cleared up more and I need to figure out how to get legs a brighter yellow. I cant wait for him to finish growing out.

 

[catdaddyfro]

Scott I can't imagine your stock going from the tails I see(mine here) and have seen(your other/older stock and others that have offspring from you) to an abrupt squirrel tail!

I could see them raising some yes, 45* to 50* but the definition of squirrel tailed is 90* or more from the angle of the backbone in other words right angle/+(Serama) I think ones eye gets trained/used to seeing something like your birds tails for example so/too low in fact they are almost not at 40* on a lot of Rocks(more trends/fads there) and when one does get up to a 45* it seems just a dilemma and far off.



Maybe you jostled the vkdao bottle one too many jiggers this evening on the adult beverage,

Post us some pics of those guys and gals were due a good shot by now, anyhow.

Jeff

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

Scott I can't imagine your stock going from the tails I see(mine here) and have seen(your other/older stock and others that have offspring from you) to an abrupt squirrel tail!

I could see them raising some yes, 45* to 50* but the definition of squirrel tailed is 90* or more from the angle of the backbone in other words right angle/+(Serama) I think ones eye gets trained/used to seeing something like your birds tails for example so/too low in fact they are almost not at 40* on a lot of Rocks(more trends/fads there) and when one does get up to a 45* it seems just a dilemma and far off.



Maybe you jostled the vkdao bottle one too many jiggers this evening on the adult beverage,

Post us some pics of those guys and gals were due a good shot by now, anyhow.

Jeff

Jeff

Well, maybe "squirrel tailed" is over-exaggerated a bit, but I know there are a couple with tails 60-75degrees from horizontal at least!! And I'm betting' its that darn male I used in the female pen....but DANG the girls are looking good this year

 

[catdaddyfro]

Jeff

Well, maybe "squirrel tailed" is over-exaggerated a bit, but I know there are a couple with tails 60-75degrees from horizontal at least!! And I'm betting' its that darn male I used in the female pen....but DANG the girls are looking good this year

Some times thats what you got to do to get er done though esp. when trying to get an established line up and going. you will do it in due time I know it youv'e come a long way already keep on plowing youll get to other end soon this I:m sure.

If yall see my mistakes its because I'm tyoping in the dark Yes I can see the screen I can tsee the kjeys

guess I could turn on the lights huh

Jeff