Bob Blosl's Heritage Large Fowl Thread

[3riverschick]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/611419/mille-fleur-leghorn-thread-pic-heavy/80 Post #88
Awh,
Cheryl Cohen of Omlet Ranch is going out of the breeding business.
She will be missed. I like checking to see what her next project was going to be.

 

[Matt1616]

One other thing that needs to be kept in mind. You can not maintain quality if you are trying to produce quantity. What that means is...I see some breeders that seem to have a unlimited supply of chicks year around. I would question the quality of their stock because at some point you have to breed lesser birds to get the numbers if you are selling that many birds. That leads me to another point that I think I seen someone make. I see no way for a person to make a profit breeding and selling chickens unless the quality is sacrificed. You simply can't produce enough quality birds to make a profit. All you can hope to do is make some of your feed money back. I know if I didn't have another expense from this day forward (including feed) it would take me several years to break even.

 

[catdaddyfro]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/611419/mille-fleur-leghorn-thread-pic-heavy/80 Post #88
Awh,
Cheryl Cohen of Omlet Ranch is going out of the breeding business.
She will be missed. I like checking to see what her next project was going to be.

Hate to hear of this but sometimes things have to change up a little for time you know
Isn't she also in with Wynnete(moderator) on the Silver-pencilled Rocks? I believe to be correct here, there is somebody maybe a good start on a SPPR project.

Matt I agree with you on both of your posts here tonight I still got a a lot to absorb from all the rest I read from earlier on here, boy this thread gets overwhelming at times but I sure like it though, now its nighty-nite time for me though. LOL

Jeff

 

[3riverschick]

One other thing that needs to be kept in mind. You can not maintain quality if you are trying to produce quantity. What that means is...I see some breeders that seem to have a unlimited supply of chicks year around. I would question the quality of their stock because at some point you have to breed lesser birds to get the numbers if you are selling that many birds. That leads me to another point that I think I seen someone make. I see no way for a person to make a profit breeding and selling chickens unless the quality is sacrificed. You simply can't produce enough quality birds to make a profit. All you can hope to do is make some of your feed money back. I know if I didn't have another expense from this day forward (including feed) it would take me several years to break even.

Hi Matt,
Not only that, but some breeds have a definite breeding season bred into their historic record.
In Sussex fowl, the breed was created to be great winter layers. Plus be ready to be crammed and ready for market for english Derby Day celebrations. This required the chicks to be hatched from Jan. thru March.They should be done hatching by the 1st week of April. The historic record tells us the best winter layers are March hatched. And the females need to be winter layers so the chicks can be hatched early enough to be ready to eat at Derby Day. I see folk complaining their Sussex don't lay during the winter. But when were those birds hatched?
Sussex fowl were specialized for very specific purposes. When one does not breed them according to the historic record, one trifles with the productive abilities built into that variety and/or the breed itself. In fact, each color variety was bred for a specific purpose.
Best,
Karen

 

[Hangtown Farms]

I am not super with these. Marans and more ( Lee Penny )
on here asked me to post these as he does not get on here much. These are ( Red) Crele Dominique . All I know is what he has told me.
If you want his email message me and I can get it for you.
What I have heard.
Lay a cream color egg. Auto sexable and they breed true. He had said that these where around in the south years ago.
I am interested in these. Any ideas ? Thoughts? He would like to get others working on these more as well so please message me if you want to contact him.
Jason

 

[3riverschick]

Crele Dominques. Oh I am absolutely smitten! How beautiful. I wonder if he created them on an e+ or eWh base? In any case, just stunning. Basically Crele is barred wildtype ( when built on the e+ {wildtype} base). Or it can be a barred Wheaten bird. {eWh base}. I know recently someone published a book on the Dominque. That's about all I have to offer.
Karen

 

[Hangtown Farms]

Crele Dominques. Oh I am absolutely smitten! How beautiful. I wonder if he created them on an e+ or eWh base? In any case, just stunning. Basically Crele is barred wildtype ( when built on the e+ {wildtype} base). Or it can be a barred Wheaten bird. {eWh base}. I know recently someone published a book on the Dominque. That's about all I have to offer.
Karen

I know these are very pretty. Love the Red coloration. Even prettier than my crele penedesenca

 

[OSUman]

Do you have any photos of your Anconas?

Egg breeds get a bad name from people calling them flighty, but once you know how to work them they're really quite easy. First thing is to do any capturing at night with a redlight head lamp. Box them up, and they're ready for you to work with them the following day. I no more stress about working with my Anconas that I do working with the Dorkings. Moreover, you can put some selection pressure on your birds by not using for breeding particularly obnoxious birds.

 

[Narragansett]

I have been trying to keep up with this thread for the last couple of weeks. It seems to have kicked into overdrive. I don't post a lot but I want to kick my to cents in. I don't know if it will help anyone understand any of this any better but here goes.
As far as the term "Heritage" goes...it means many different things to different people. To some it means Non Hatchery pure bred birds as they were intended to be by the originators of each breed. There is no disputing that what the hatcheries sell are poor representations of what these breeds were originally meant to look like. To others the term "Heritage" means they can get $10.00 a chick for their birds instead of $2.00 a chick. And there are yet others that it means various others things between the 2 things that I have mentioned. Now, knowing Bob like I do I think when he started this thread he was meaning "Non Hatchery" or "Pure Bred"....nothing more and nothing less. I think some of you are trying to make it more complicated than it really is.
As far as breeders being hard to get stock from....I am a breeder and I can speak for myself when I say that some of you guys make it sound so easy to just pump out thousands of chicks each year so that everyone that wants some can get them. Well, it is not that easy. I have many orders for several different breeds that I raise and show each year and as hard I try I never fill them all. For example this past year I had about 25 orders for RIR chicks. I managed to fill about half of them. As a show person my first objective is to hatch for myself. I will always hatch for myself first because if something were to happen like predator attack or bad weather or disease, I have to make sure that I get what I need to carry on. After I hatched for myself I started hatching for orders. First problem I had was a light malfunction where my light timer wasn't working for about a week before I realized it. It took me a week or so to get them back to laying right again so I could continue setting eggs. About the time I got going good again I had a hen go broody and that messed the other hens up because they all want to lay in the same nest so it took me about a week to get that straightened out and I was back in business again. Well, about 3 weeks and I had another hen go broody so that set me back another week. I'm telling you all this because it is not as easy as it may seem. I guess the other thing that will make all this make sense is that most breeders that I know as well as myself don't breed from 20-30 hens. I breed from one or two Trios and that is it. I don't flock mate, I only breed my best birds. I don't know any serious show breeders that have 20 or even 10 hens that they would consider good enough to breed from to produce possible winners. What that means is you can only hatch a certain amount of chicks out of a limited amount of hens each year. Getting back to my story, after about 4-5 months of hatching chicks and many days that i had to take off work to make trips to the post office to ship chicks I got my fill and shut the incubators down so could give the hens and myself a rest. Now most of the people that I didn't fill the orders for were understanding but a few were pretty ugly about it. There is one more thing that I and many breeders have learned....that is that alot of beginners think that they can get chicks from you after they saw a picture of a bird that you won with in Poultry Press and that every chick that they get is going to grow up and look just like that and when they don't they call raising sand about how their birds don't look like that bird that they seen at the show. Well, there are alot of factors that go into that bird that they seen in the Poultry Press or at the show. The living conditions, quality of feed, and conditioning. Anyway, these are just a few examples of why it is not as easy as it may seem to get everyone the birds that they desire.
Matt

Right on. The American education system creates a self absorbed narrow minded product that cannot see the bigger picture and cannot think for itself. Many of those types who want everything handed to them also expect that the breeders exist for no other reason than to provide show quality birds to others. Another thing that they don't understand is that not every chick hatched out of even the best quality bird will be a quality bird itself. There are many, many culls produced by even the best matings. These folks think that they can buy 4 chickies from a breeder, end up with a pair, and go on to advertise so and so's line using the name as a marketing tool to sell inferior birds to the unsuspecting. Some breeders go so far as to refuse to sell anything, disposing all of their culls themselves. The narrow minded crowd is often confounded by this practice, not realizing that the breeder is protecting his name and reputation from stupid people. One breeder who doesn't sell birds says that he would rather have people mad at him for what he doesn't sell them than for what he does. The amount of ignorance that exists among the American public is just astounding, and it's increased exponentially thanks to the internet. Profound emotional retardation is rampant. It's one click of the mouse away. People don't want to try to rise above it. They actually enjoy wallowing in it. It's really quite pathetic how they allow themselves to remain so stifled, and not try to improve their situation. Of course politicians and the government love that attitude. They can get away with anything because of it, and take away the rights of the sheeple without so much as a whimper.

 

[buffalogal]

I am not super with these. Marans and more ( Lee Penny )
on here asked me to post these as he does not get on here much. These are ( Red) Crele Dominique . All I know is what he has told me.
If you want his email message me and I can get it for you.
What I have heard.
Lay a cream color egg. Auto sexable and they breed true. He had said that these where around in the south years ago.
I am interested in these. Any ideas ? Thoughts? He would like to get others working on these more as well so please message me if you want to contact him.

To be honest, they look remarkably like the colorful mongrels that turn up in my mixed flock of yard birds when a clever hen manages to hide a clutch of eggs and hatch off chicks. I'm not saying that is what the birds in the picture are, just that it's not hard to duplicate that color and hatchery-style type. You can read my sig file for the basic "ingredients" to create your own, just add a pinch of Game and you're good to go.