Bob Blosl's Heritage Large Fowl Thread

[Robert Blosl]

Thank you I want to make it to my Third year in August before I get penalized. I have tried to be a good boy and not offend the Feed Store chicken folks. We are such a minority in this web site I can not see how they would be threatened that we would convert all the people to old fashion Standard breed chickens. Heck in three to five years half of the people give up these breeds and go back to the feed store chickens anyway its easier to have chickens and let the other guy be a preservationist.

We have come a long way in almost three years. So many have got some good birds. We had a big push in Barred Rocks one year New Hampshire's, a few Orpingtons, and this year lots of folks in big Reds.

Thanks for all your posts and pictures its been enjoyable.

 

[3riverschick]

Quote: what did you think of this book? shell to showroom I saw it the other day and was wondering about its worth?
Thanks.
Karen

 

[maryhysong]

Thank you I want to make it to my Third year in August before I get penalized. I have tried to be a good boy and not offend the Feed Store chicken folks. We are such a minority in this web site I can not see how they would be threatened that we would convert all the people to old fashion Standard breed chickens. Heck in three to five years half of the people give up these breeds and go back to the feed store chickens anyway its easier to have chickens and let the other guy be a preservationist.

We have come a long way in almost three years. So many have got some good birds. We had a big push in Barred Rocks one year New Hampshire's, a few Orpingtons, and this year lots of folks in big Reds.

Thanks for all your posts and pictures its been enjoyable.

Well Bob a lot of it is due to your hard work and caring about these breeds that some of them are making a come back. I also have to say that I so appreciate your postings, I have learned a lot from yours and other long time breeders postings here.

 

[3riverschick]

Quote: Bob, you have less than 3 years on BYC, less than 2,000 posts, and already am a "BYC Educator". That speaks volumes for the quality of your posts and this thread. This thread is one of the finest on BYC.
Congrats,
Karen

 

[BLT79]

What chickens are in the Heritage Breeds?

 

[Fred's Hens]

What chickens are in the Heritage Breeds?

The term "heritage" is a marketing tool. A nice word and different groups define it differently. On this thread, it is merely used to evoke interest in real, genuine, bred to the Standard, large fowl. In other words, it could have been titled, "Pure Bred" or "Standard Bred" large fowl, but the word Heritage evokes something, and I personally believe it evokes a good thing.

The modern strains are so very polluted and watered down. For decades, they've been bred for production, production, production and bred in large groups, or flock bred until they are really quite unrepresentative of breed. They just sort of, kind of look like the breed, sort of behave like the breed. There has been this homogenizing effect and it is quite ho hum in it's effect.

Some years back, several folks got together to push for the term Heritage, meaning birds that look like and act like the birds of 50 or 100 years ago. The ABLC has their definition here. http://albc-usa.org

 

[Fred's Hens]

One final thought.

Since the poultry genetics corporations have developed the super fast maturing broilers and super fast maturing, high laying commercial layers, the older breeds, particularly the older dual purpose, so called, breeds have taken a pounding and in some cases were virtually abandoned and have been so rare that they almost were extinct.

Perserving these rare old blood lines and keeping them "up to Standard" is a passion and hobby of many folks here. Others preserve these old blood lines for purposes of competitive poultry showing, another great passion and hobby. Without these folks keeping these old birds alive and sharing with others the joys of owning them, they'd have disappeared. The world would be left with only commercial broilers on one hand and hyper layers on the other. Those are the birds that the meat and egg industry is interested in, not the old birds.

Would we really want a world with only commercial birds? I personally would not, which is why I keep heritage, standard bred birds and share the joys of them with others who are interested in them. As an American, our heritage involves the breeds first developed here. The APA's American Class. It is indeed a part of our American agricultural heritage.

 

[kimberly35042]

Very well said. Thank you.

 

[3riverschick]

Quote: Basically, purebred fowl admitted to the APA Standard before 1952. Includes bantam and large fowl breeds. In this thread, we concentrate on the Large Fowl breeds. Mixed breeds ( even tho both parents are Heritage breeds) are not considered Heritage breeds. We do appreciate folk who have them, as some day they may decide to get large fowl heritage breeds. Many of us started with different breeds than we have now. Finding the right heritage breed for oneself is an exciting journey.
Best,
Karen
Here, this is what you need. http://www.amerpoultryassn.com/store.htm The 2010 APA Standard of Perfection book. Has so much valuable info in it. Including color Standards for all the APA breeds and the year they were approved. ( so you can figure out which are Heritage) This book isn't selling on the open market like the AKC Book of Dogs. It is owned by the APA and only available thru them. The contents aren't allowed to be published anywhere without permission. It's a lovely high quality hardback on glossy paper. The price is well worth it.

 

[aveca]

what did you think of this book? shell to showroom I saw it the other day and was wondering about its worth?
Thanks.
Karen

I love all of those old books including shell to showroom...it is free on cornell free library and google for e reader...you get a glimps into the history of the poultry world..like everybody says..some of it take with the grain of salt but historically this book and so many others are so valuable..they were the founders of poultry breeding today..without those people , we would have jungle fowl..they set the standards, decided the crosses to make , knew what worked and what didnt, the birds only evolved from there....one of the interesting stories in those book was about the chicken doctors or chicken fixers..this was a whole industry..when showing was in its apex and there were maybe 200 australorp on the line..or white leghorn..these guys were hired to fix them up and they were perfectionists..they knew how to doctor feathers to make the bird look text book for the day befor a show..they used some unscrupulois methods at times like on a leghorn that was as near perfect as it could be but had a broken or off colored main tail feather..they knew how to get that feather out of the shaft and replace it with a feather from another bird...just crazy stuff like that keeps me reading till 2 in the morning sometimes..dont recomend that but found it interesting that people actually got paid to do that..today we know that some of the left over problems in todays flocks are because of instead of breeding it out...they disguised things...we now know that only creates problems later on..so lot of valuable lessons ..