Bob Blosl's Heritage Large Fowl Thread

[cluck-cluck]

So you think this could happen within a year of breeding?
You do know that the Punnett Square isn't going to do you a lick of good if you don't know the first thing about poultry genetics
And I will assume that you don't.

I will also say that it will a little longer than 9 months of having chickens to become a "Expert" of poultry.


Chris

Are you serious? He was joking!

Anyway, this thread is lively and informative, and I enjoy lurking, thanks

 

[Spangled]

Thanks, threeriverschick, for your reply. I appreciate it. Sorry to be so dense, but I understand better when I can see how the theory is applied to specific examples. Stuff that's self-evident to you and others, just isn't always evident to me. Sorry. (Responding to your comment: So you wish me to apply the philosophical statements to these concrete examples? Oh, I thought that was self-evident.) So, I'll have to re-read your reply a few times and stare at it for a while because some of it is a little bit too esoteric for me.

I went and refreshed my memory on who "what'shisname" is. It's Henry B. Wallace of Pioneer, not The Dollar Hen guy. Henry B. Wallace made the Leghorn hybrids by using standard breeding techniques with purebred Leghorns back in the late 1930s - 1940s. Hy-Line. That name, if not the same lines, is still around or was sometime in the last couple of years, for sure. Source of info on Wallace: Margaret Derry's Art and Science of Breeding: Creating Better Chickens, 2012, published Guelph, Ontario. Certainly, some folks, maybe not on this thread, who frequent BYC would own this book. Oddly enough, the book even touches upon the conflict in the 1950s, etc., between traditional breeders and geneticists. I wonder if it's a case of the more things change the more they stay the same.

Are there any breeders of Heritage White Leghorns reading this thread? That would be something, wouldn't it? (APA 1874) To be a Heritage White Leghorn, would the chicken strain have to be free from all influence of the White Leghorns sold by Pioneer and other big breeding companies? Would the strain, then, have to go way back before 1935 to be Heritage? If so, how do you find some strain that has been preserved so long?

 

[Chris09]

Are you serious? He was joking!

Anyway, this thread is lively and informative, and I enjoy lurking, thanks

Yes I was serious,
If he was joking, he wasn't showing it very well,

Chris

 

[Wynette]

Good morning, folks - I asked this question over on the Plymouth Rock thread, and Scott mentioned it might be better to ask here, so...

Question for some of you longtime breeders...as I look at my SOP and at the type of the Rocks pictured (and read the description for Plymouth Rocks), I see a different conformation than what I am seeing being placed at shows (APA shows). In the book, I see a shorter, more of a curved "U" shaped back to the cocks, and a very slight curve to the toplines of the hens. At the shows, it seems that a "V" shaped topline is what is taking top placings for Rocks. What I see at shows is almost exactly like the "V" on my Verizon cell phone as far as a topline.

Why?

Are we simply moving toward a different type, or is this due to the size of the Rocks becoming larger and larger? I'm not trying to offend anyone or be contentious, but am super curious about this. I have a ton of work to do with my silver pencileds, and as I move forward, do I breed for the Verizon "V" or for more of the shape that is described and pictured in the SOP?

 

[Fred's Hens]

This is perhaps my favorite pullet from this year's batch. Sorry, the photo is through the fence, but I do like the photo because it does show her shape well. Now, she is pre-laying age pullet, so she'll finish with more bulk and shape, but the basics are there, I believe.

How would she do if judged in a show? I've no idea. We'll find out, I'm sure, with some of her offspring. But, Wynette, she has the right shape, for my mind's eye. That inner sense of imagining. I've got those inner "blue prints" or mental pictures in my mind of birds from the late 1950's. She has that look.

Your question, though, is a good one.

 

[Chloe77]

I think she would be fantastic in a show. Show her by all means!

 

[Wynette]

Fred, I'd LOVE to see a nice conformation shot of her. She looks lovely - that is the underline I'm striving for in my silver pencileds.

 

[fowlman01]

Good morning, folks - I asked this question over on the Plymouth Rock thread, and Scott mentioned it might be better to ask here, so...

Question for some of you longtime breeders...as I look at my SOP and at the type of the Rocks pictured (and read the description for Plymouth Rocks), I see a different conformation than what I am seeing being placed at shows (APA shows). In the book, I see a shorter, more of a curved "U" shaped back to the cocks, and a very slight curve to the toplines of the hens. At the shows, it seems that a "V" shaped topline is what is taking top placings for Rocks. What I see at shows is almost exactly like the "V" on my Verizon cell phone as far as a topline.

Why?

Are we simply moving toward a different type, or is this due to the size of the Rocks becoming larger and larger? I'm not trying to offend anyone or be contentious, but am super curious about this. I have a ton of work to do with my silver pencileds, and as I move forward, do I breed for the Verizon "V" or for more of the shape that is described and pictured in the SOP?

The description and topline shown in the illustration is correct. If judges are picking something else it may be because that type is all that is being shown. I don't see that in shows on the west coast. Breed to the SOP and you can't go wrong.

Walt

 

[Wynette]

Thanks, Walt - do you think the topline question that I posed could possibly be coming from the larger sizes we are seeing?

 

[FOGELLY]

Fred, are your bids from GS? If so I have question for you and anyone else on here with GS Barred Rocks.
Mine where hatched in July, and looking very nice, but when do the cockerel heads grow into those huge bodies!

I guess I am just used to my RIR, but these Rocks sure look odd with there huge bodies and heads that look a month behind the body.

The pullets are not that way. They look like little hens already.
And man does this line eat! This time of year I get home after dark. If I go out and fill the feeders I have to remember to shut the coop door first or these Rocks will leave the roost to come out and eat in the dark.

I do really like them though. They have great personality.
I did hear however they take forever to start laying

Ron