Bob Blosl's Heritage Large Fowl Thread

[kathyinmo]

I see a new thread started up that I think we may all be interested in.

Check it out here.
How lucky are we! The OP of this thread is OLD ! ! !

 

[Robert Blosl]

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=crbobeator%3A%22Robinson%2C+John+Henry%2C+1863-%22
http://www.archive.org/details/poultrycrafttext00robirich
I was researching some books for a friend who called me asking me what I thought about some of the old classic books written in the early 1900 and if it would help him today with his large fowl project.
My answer is yes as I have read or reviewed about 100 old books and Poultry Journals and the above book was a beginner’s guide to new people getting into poultry to make a living as farmers. So as we sit back and wait for spring to come and watch our chicks grow up you can read some of these books on line or better yet do what I have done over the years and get these books sent to your public library by the Library loan system. I have this book coming to my local library soon and then I can enjoy reading it and looking at the pictures. If you see breeds that are in Mr. Robinson’s books you can consider these breeds official Heritage chickens as he was one of the fathers of Poultry Husbandry and interviewed many of the great breeders at their farms or at the shows they attended. So many are confused what Heritage Fowls are maybe if you see the breeds in his books you will understand what this term is about.
bob

 

[FOGELLY]

I suscribed to The Poultry Press a few weeks ago and got three issues yesterday.I could have stayed up all night reading them. Very good info and lots of breeders.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Bob, I just spent a good couple of hours reading Poultry Craft; it is excellent. Robinson has an uncanny way of being so easily truthful. I particularly appreciate his comment's on breeding--the need and precision of accurate inbreeding.

 

[Robert Blosl]

Yellow House there where some great chicken people from your state and writters. I K Feltch wrote a great book poultry culutre and a fellow named Paul Ives so many great writers and books Robinson I think wanted to be a poultry farmer but had a back injury that put him out of hard labor. So he loved the craft of poultry so he made a living writting articles for poultry magazines then got into the bussnees of writing books. He just got better and better. He had some great stories and interviews. Some of the best stories I ever remember him telling was his interview with E B Thompson he was the great barred rock breeder from New York. bob

 

[Robert Blosl]

I have a breeding questions to ask and maybe someone like Mr. Miller or Walt can give me the correct definition or the name of the term that I am trying to find to go along with a secret I learned from some master breeders of Plymouth Rocks in the 1960s. I met a man from Seattle Washington at the South West Washington fair when I was about 12 years old in the early 1960s who himself was in his 80s and a master breeder of White Plymouth Rock Large Fowl. He told me one of the best ways to breed up a strain and have a high scoring and winning line of White Plymouth Rocks is by line breeding and judious inbreeding to fix good traits on his White Rocks. He also told me you have to be careful as if you do this by yourself to long you can paint yourself into a corner and then you will have a bunch of inbreed culls that cannot reproduce themselves. This Old Master Breeder told me the secret was to have a partner who had the same line of White Rocks as you did. He had a fellow who had some white rocks that came from the same source in Wisconsin the old Bill Halbach line as he had. They both got chicks from Bill Halbach back in the 1940s and kept their partnership kind of secret but where friends and partners none the less. He told me they had a friend in Napa Valley California who showed chickens that would come up to the Oregon State Fair every year and show and about every six or eight years this fellow would bring my friend in Washington two super White Rock Hens that have molted and came back looking like a million dollars from the Californian and he would then take them back to Seattle and cross them back onto his males and go into another five to eight years of intense line breeding and inbreeding. Then the friend from Napa Valley would return two of the Seattle White Rock hens to the breeder in California to cross onto his line breed line. They would repeat this process for many many years until both of these men got so old they died and then the line was finished.
My question is very simply when you take live stock such as Holstein Dairy Cattle Duroc Hogs, Plymouth Rock Chickens and have a breeder in the North and a breeder in the South about 1,000 miles apart and they exchange a old blood lines going back say 50 years they have different feed, water, soil, grass and environment. What is the term if there is one for crossing back such a line every five to say eight years.????? Its a type of OUT CROSSING but it is the same gene pool that both breeders started 50 years earlier.

I have a line of White Rock Large fowl that I had sent to me by my childhood friend Jim Volk of Washington State 25 years ago. This line was breed by a fellow named Oliver Bowen from California for over 25 years and is the sons line of Bill Halbach the master breeder, judge and former APA President Harold Halbach line which was his fathers old line from the 1920s . So if you think about this the line I have is basically like the old west coast line from Seattle and Southern California. It is possible some of Mr. Bowens line came from the old master breeder in Californian when he got started and when the old man died. None the less my line is still pure Bowmen which means my line is about 50 years old to the Halbach breeding as my old friend did in Seattle many years ago. I have breed these old white rocks just as my friend did in Seattle using the Standard of Perfection as my guide with large bone structure, extended keels to give my males that gravy bowl appearance and my females lay like fools the year around.
Yesterday I have found a lost line of mine that I gave to a friend ten years ago and he gave a trio to another friend three years ago. I have shared many birds with the locals but most of them die out in two or three years but this time I hit pay dirt and got some real nice birds to cross back onto my line which I want for fresh vigor. I only have two others in the USA who have my line one fellow in Nebraska and one fellow who lives in North Dakota. I have two new fellows we started one in Canada and one in Ohio this fall but will not be able to help me for two or three years with fresh blood.
So is there a term for this breeding method of crossing a pure strain of live stock onto another line of the same strain about a thousand miles apart?? Look forward to your replies. Its exciting to find lost strains of Heritage Large Fowl such as this old line of White Rocks. Many family’s have had great success showing these birds in youth programs as they clean up so nice with such great Plymouth Rock Type and they have a bird that can lay about 200 eggs per pullet year and that is what these folks want in a heritage fowl. Robert Blosl Silverhill, Alabama Past National Secretary of the Plymouth Rock Fanciers Club of America

https://www.backyardchickens.com/image/id/5745931/width/200/height/200/flags/ZC

https://www.backyardchickens.com/image/id/5745956/width/200/height/200/flags/ZC
https://www.backyardchickens.com/image/id/5745996/width/200/height/200/flags/ZC

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v11/katz0556/IMG_0172-2.jpg

 

[fowlman01]

I am not sure what the question is Bob. I do know that when Oliver Bowen got back into the white Rocks in the 70's he got birds from all the great breeder of that time, except Sturgeon. I had Sturgeon birds, so maybe that is why....I don't know. The Halbach's have always had wonderful white Rocks. I don't know who the person is in the Napa Valley. My breeding partner lives there (Bob Jones/Jones and Leonard) but he has only raised barred Rocks and they were also Sturgeon birds. There were not a lot of LF white Rocks around here in Northern Calif.

Are you talking about Vern in WA? There were a lot of good white Rocks up in WA at that time. Bill Winger also had some good ones up there. The Sjorgion bros in Victoria also sold a lot of nice Rocks here on the west coast. Oliver also got birds from Shelby Harrington...basically everyone who had good ones. Ultimately Olivers got too big and had leg problems.

 

[catdaddyfro]

Mr. Leonard or whomever else wishes to comment here I gather the Question Mr. Blosl is asking is here I copied out his text. As we know some speed readers sometimes miss the point at hand me included.

I know of the type/style of breeding he is referring to but I'm not sure of the correct terminology it is called either.

What is the term if there is one for crossing back such a line every five to say eight years.????? Its a type of OUT CROSSING but it is the same gene pool that both breeders started 50 years earlier.

So is there a term for this breeding method of crossing a pure strain of live stock onto another line of the same strain about a thousand miles apart??

 

[Robert Blosl]

Walt this goes back befor Bill Winger because Bill and I are the same age. It was Carl F. Hove Hall of Fame White Plymouth Rock breeder from Seattle Washington. He was installed into the Old White Plymouth Rock Club Hall of Fame along with Bill Halbach the fellow who sold him his start of White Rock in the 1940s. The breeder from Napa Valley area was a string man Emile Prebee. He was a nice fellow and treated us kids so nice. He had some great Buff Wyandottes Large Fowl as well as I think Buff Orpingtons. The secret breeder in California was unknown. Vern Sorenson was my mentor and took me to these shows as a young boy as long as Jim Volk and Tom Durgan from Centralia.

My question is if you have a strain of chickens 50 years old ad you have two guys breeding the same strain and swap birds every ten years this is not a out cross like getting birds from Shelby Herring ton from Delaware. Shelby's birds where mostly the Wabach line from Pennsylvania.

Is this a out cross is this Eugenics or what the heck could it be called.

Let me give me a example: A person who lives in the mid west got some Rhode Island Reds from Don Nelson fine strain of birds. He then got some eggs from another breeder who's birds are a mixture of strains. They are OK but not in the same class as the Nelson birds. If this person crosses the two lines this is a indirect big time OUT CROSS. But what would you call it if a person say in Georgia who has had the Don Nelson Birds for twenty years send my friend two hens ad he crosses these females onto his males he got from Don Nelson three years ago. Its still pure Don Nelson line.

I was told that the secret is you did not destroy the gene pool but by getting birds that are at least 600 miles apart the distance and change of climate, feed, grass and water or environment is like a shot of new vigor or blood. Many breeders of Hogs and cattle did this in the old days to get increased vigor but not loose their milk production or weight on their hogs.

Many people think if you cross stains you are going to hit the lottery. In Rhode Island Reds you will get vigor but you also get color culls. If you had a strain of Reds like I had at one time that lay ed 200 eggs per pullet per year and crossed them onto a strain that had females that lay ed 150eggs per pullet year you could not expect these chicks to lay like mine. You would be lucky to get 160 eggs per female per pullet year. I hope you see my point. Its a out cross but within the original master breeders line. bob

 

[kathyinmo]