Bob Blosl's Heritage Large Fowl Thread

[NanaKat]

Karen Thankyou for posting the pictures of super hackle. I'm assuming this translated to any Columbian breed including Wyandotte. Does this disqualify a bird or cause a point reduction?

Lacy blues, Since Andalusion and Minorca are often mentioned together as similar size, would egg laying also be similar. My five Minorcas lay 3to 5 eggs a day in peak laying season. When it gets colder and the nights shorter 5 to 10 eggs per week.

Fred, I hope you are right about where we will be in five years. My Columbian Wyandotte flock is small...beginning with five hens and a rooster. Now i am up to 7 hens to 1 rooster and I hatch about 25 eggs per season. I have offered two trios for one of our local BYC state get-together a...one for our fundraiser auction and one for sale. This year I am aiming for 50 -75 hatch from this pen which besides the 7 CW also includes 2 nice Black Wyandotte and 1 Blue.
Again this year I will raise chicks to juvenile stage before selecting the keepers because the Wyandotte is a slow maturing breed. That is another reason why chicks may not be available from small breeders.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Fred, I hope you are right about where we will be in five years. My Columbian Wyandotte flock is small...beginning with five hens and a rooster. Now i am up to 7 hens to 1 rooster and I hatch about 25 eggs per season. I have offered two trios for one of our local BYC state get-together a...one for our fundraiser auction and one for sale. This year I am aiming for 50 -75 hatch from this pen.which also includes 2 nice Black Wyandotte and 1 Blue.
Again this year I will raise chicks to juvenile stage before selecting the keepers because the Wyandotte is a slow maturing breed. That is another reason why chicks may not be available from small breeders.

We just got our Barred Rocks from KathyinMo early, very early last spring. 7 of each. We have only put two cockerels and 4 pullets into the breeding pens. Though we have fed these giant birds, and yes, they eat a lot, for 9 months, they have just now, this week, begun to lay a couple of eggs per week. They're just starting. We will break up the breeding pens on May 1, as the heat and humidity in KY is too much and they'd have been together long enough. Doing the math, we cannot possibly hatch out enough birds, straight non selected birds right from the hatches, to satisfy the demand. The arithmetic simply is not there. We'll take a few orders for shipped eggs, but that's about it. No chicks this year.

We'll have a few Reds as well. Be glad to ship a few eggs. But in the big scheme of things, our contribution to those beginning is, and will remain, rather small.

I'm trying to launch a couple of young men in this way of life. I've got them started and they too will small numbers to contribute.
But, we're gonna continue to "go small, slow and right down the middle". Heard that from somebody on here.

 

[Bluetick340]

Guys book is called a new guide to breeding old fashioned working dogs.

 

[BarnGoddess01]

Quote:
I've had the best luck making connections at poultry shows. I met many of them first online but I don't think they really take us seriously until they see us doing the leg work and showing a sincere interest in working with the birds by showing up. Especially when they don't have huge numbers they are willing to part with. They want to make sure those they do part with are going into hands likely to take them seriously and keep working with them in a responsible way. That's been my experience, at any rate.

 

[fowlman01]

Finding them is the hard part. I searched all over the internet, it is not easy if you are new to a breed. If I had not found Backyardchickens, I would of never found the names of the breeders I found.

Most successful breeders of chickens do not hang out on the internet. You can find them by joining the APA/ABA or reading Poultry Press.

Walt

 

[saladin]

I've had the best luck making connections at poultry shows. I met many of them first online but I don't think they really take us seriously until they see us doing the leg work and showing a sincere interest in working with the birds by showing up. Especially when they don't have huge numbers they are willing to part with. They want to make sure those they do part with are going into hands likely to take them seriously and keep working with them in a responsible way. That's been my experience, at any rate.

The Internet is a great tool. However, the best networking source I know of is the SPPA and the SPPAs Breeders Directory which is the largest publication of it's kind in the United States and Canada.

 

[Arielle]

Quote: I agree, Fred , that connecting those that are looking to those that have old and wonderful lines to share is exactly what Bob is doing.

My point is two fold-- Hatchery birds are very easy to find; knowing about the well bred old lines is difficult; without Bob's effort I never would have "got it"

Perhaps there is a way to make the heritage old lines MORE accessable and more visible in the age of internet. I'm certainly not meaning to turn the small breeders into commercial producers, rather increase the the demand for these old lines so that more good birds will be produced. Increase the demand to increase the supply.

For a small flock that produces only 50 chicks a year bothers me. Yes 50 is better than 10 chicks. If this are a really good flock, and a single hen can produce 150 eggs a year, I see the possibllity for far more really good birds to be produced and start filling the back yards INSTEAD of the hatchery birds.

I'm not sure I"m making my point very well. I just think even back yard people would enjoy a beautiful well bred bird even if they never intend to become a dedicated breeder. ANd to put well bred birds in to as many hands as possible to help people become interested in these living works of art.

I have bred horses for a number of years: if buyers stop buying, I stop breeding. AND an elite mare no longer produces and the line ends. Hope this example explains my idea better . . .

 

[bnjrob]

Not sure how wise it is to apply that to small, top breeders. Breeders of top quality birds do not crank out thousands of chicks a day, like the hatcheries do. This is not an industry, of even small scale proportions that produce enough birds to justify the effort of maintaining a web presence of any kind. Urch does. A few others do, but not many. Many breeders may only produce 100 chicks or less, far less, each year. Some only hatch 50 quality chicks a year, or less. This is a specialized hobby, not a going business concern for them.

This is very, very small scale, folks. If I understand Bob's intent with this thread, it is to help connect folks and to encourage more participation.

You don't have to be cranking out tons of chickens in order to be found easily. But if people are going to wish that breeders would be able to pass on their knowledge and their poultry so that it isn't lost, they MUST find a way to allow themselves to be found easily by people that have no idea where to go to get the contact information.

I didn't know anything about this thread or that there were people willing to help locate birds until AFTER we finally found a breeder. There are people out there that don't know where to start and would never think to find the "Heritage Large Fowl Thread" on BYC as a way to obtain poultry. If you're new to chickens, you may not have a clue about anything except what they tell you at the feed store.

I know there are a lot of people that get irritated with the ALBC - but at least the ALBC is online and can be found easily and is accomplishing their mission of getting the word out about various "heritage" animals.

So far, even though I know where to look now, I still don't see much in the way of getting the information out about these old birds. It's worse if you don't know where to look. Unless more breeders are willing to get online and make sure they do some SEO (which is not hard to learn) so people can find them - pretty useless to lament that breeds are dying and info isn't getting passed on. Kinda hard to pass on info and poultry if people don't know what is going on. All it takes it BETTER COMMUNICATION. There are ways to make fast, easy,and even free websites as well as getting on Facebook so that people can search and find quality information and contact information of people who have or can put them in touch with someone who has these standard bred birds. Heck, get a Pinterest account and just start pinning photos of your chickens on your boards with a way to contact you if nothing else if you have birds that you are willing to sell. BYC is great, but there are lots of people that aren't willing to search through a bulletin board community when all they want is contact info for breeders. Marketing, Marketing, Marketing can help these old bird lines and breeder knowledge stay alive - IF people will take the time to do it. No need to be a big hatchery to accomplish that.

 

[bnjrob]

The Internet is a great tool. However, the best networking source I know of is the SPPA and the SPPAs Breeders Directory which is the largest publication of it's kind in the United States and Canada.

The last time I looked at the SPPA website, it was not the most user friendly, which can turn off some people. It also did not come up front and center in my searches when I was searching several years ago. It may be great for you as a networking tool, but if newbies that don't know where to look can't find it, or it doesn't come up in a more general search for "heritage chickens" (like on the first one or two pages of a search, then it isn't likely to reach newbies that don't know anything about standard bred fowl.

 

[neopolitancrazy]

Most successful breeders of chickens do not hang out on the internet. You can find them by joining the APA/ABA or reading Poultry Press.

Walt

Which reminds me, I subscribed to the Poultry Press before Thanksgiving, but haven't received my first copy. Should I contact them or continue to be patient-patience is not my strongest attribute

?
Angela