Bob Blosl's Heritage Large Fowl Thread

[bnjrob]

I also prefer live birds. I'd prefer to both sell and purchase live chicks/adolescents. The reasons given above are solid reasons. But definitive or absolute statements are pretty hard to validate.

A large number of folks on these (H) threads the last few years have gotten their start through shipped eggs, and from some pretty darn good breeders. There are too many successes to count. The advent of bubble wrap and proper wrapping of eggs has resulted in hundreds of boxes of shipped eggs arriving with the contents visually, in pristine condition. Eggs breaking has become almost a non issue.

What hasn't changed, it seems to me, is the resultant poor hatch rates. The handling of the boxes is brutal on the eggs internal integrity. That issue remains.

Started birds would be ideal, but when you're talking about breeds that are hard to find....I was desperate for anything when I went looking for the ones that I wanted. Didn't matter if it was eggs, chicks, juveniles, or adults. There just wasn't enough people that had them that were either willing to sell or willing to ship them in any form. Fortunately I found someone that was willing to sell me day old chicks and I spent about 14 hrs in my car driving to get them. It was worth it though and I'd do it again to get the birds that I wanted.

 

[Robert Blosl]

I got a message from a person who wants to get started in Blue BREEDS. Not gong to say what kind.

My wife goes nuts when she reads this stuff as she knows that after six years of being Secetary of the Plymouth Rock Club I get at least three requests per year. To date not one of them stuck with the program or found anything to work with in Large Fowl.

Most of these people cant even master a incubttor yet want to take on the hardest color pattern in Poutlry.

You got to double mate these crazy birds to get good females and males. They don't even understand whtat that term means. Even the top ten breeders of poultry if given these kind of breed would through their hands up in the air and give up. It cost to much money today for the efforts.

I think we need to scale down our expectations on Rare breeds. Most of the people on this board are not going to show them. Then whats the reason to go crazy and breed them to the standard of perfection. You will be lucky in ten years to get a bird to score 93 points and then if a person who wants to show your strain they will be disipointed as they will not get on champion row with this breed with these qualities.

I think you should get the best you can from say Mr. Urch or Dick Hortsman and just try to keep them at that level and enjoy them. Put the standard of perfection down and just enjoy what you have.

I have two Shelter Dogs one is regetered one is mixed. I am as happy as a clam on high tide with them. I don't plan to show my dogs. I don't want Expensive regersted dogs anymore I had them.

In chickens I do try to improve them.

I have many master breeders whoj have great birds but when it comes to selling you eggs they work and don't have the time to fool with them. Their results have been bad. However, why not drive to thir home and pick up three tofive dozen. I did twenty three years ago. I drove six hundred miles round trip to Gary Underwoods home and got the eggs. I hatched 27 chicks which was good as I had not hatched in twenty years.

I also would drive three to four hundred miles to a breeder to pick up two ckls two hens and two pullets for breeding.

I don't want show champions as breeders I want birds with good traits with some faults and I can compensate these faults in my breeding.. Its simple if I want to make a wooden ladder twelve feet tall I can take a eight foot two by four and six foot two by four and nail them together and it will be twelve feet long. Make my wooden steps for me to climb and I can paint my house at the highest level. This is what you do in breeding.

I have seen master breeders of R I Reds raise a lot of great birds, champion large fowl of the show kind. Have young point chasers come in and buy him out and leave him with his culls. Next year he takes these culls and he does it again. The point chasers are here today gone tomorrow Red Folks. They last about three to five years.

In shipping large fowl it cost about $250 to ship three birds. Stress is not a big deal but boy it cost some money. Sending chicks I did it for years and no more. To much trouble.

I tell my new friends I am helping to have a breeding pen of eight females and two males and that's what they supply the newbies with. Do not sell them your best chicks You will screw yourself in the long run as a breeder.

Most of these people in three years will not have these birds and half of them will be killed in one year by varmints or dogs or hawks or owls.

Why do I know this. That's what I have been doing for twenty years. Only have one good breeder to show for and three newbies working their way up the ladder.

Good master breeders need to first provide for their needs. Then they cull the junk. Then at the shows they go to or at their homes they will sell their left over birds. Some wont sell nothing. They don't want their name tarnished when people say I have Mr. Jones birds. They say Mr. Jones don't have chickens like this.

Keep dreaming. Keep hoping and keep trying. Buy the way I got a order for a dozen white rock eggs in July. Do master breeders or breeders of rare chickens have breeding pens going in JULY?

 

[cybercat]

Bob you are so right. So many jump on the band wagon of heritage stock and get into the harder colors because they look so good in there patterns. When most of these folks should stay with the solid colors to understand what breeding is about. It takes alot of space time and heart ache to raise chickens to the SOP. For those of us working our way up and farming them also it takes even longer. This is one reason why I do not sell. Not because mine are not good but I have had lots of losses. But since I am farming chickens are not a hobby only but a food source for us. So I keep at it and work to better what I have have with no expectation of having winning birds.


We see alot of fades here BYC in breeds. Depending on what everyone is talking about, it might get alot of attention or not. Problem here is most just want yard birds. There are many here that do more than that and many of them have bantams and not large fowl. I can see why you get fustrated for you love what you are doing and it takes time to deal with folks that really might not go more than a year with it. But then there are those like myself and a few others that stick with it. So keep thinking positive. We do apprieciate all that you do.

 

[Lacy Blues]

I believe it was on this thread, though it may have been on the Old and Rare Breeds thread... someone said something about master breeders on a site somewhere and the discussions they hold on feeding, etc. I thought it was in the last couple days and I meant to go and check it out when I first read it but for whatever reason forgot to. I remembered that I wanted to go see about it and have been scanning this thread over the last two weeks and can't find any mention of it.

Does anybody know who said it, where the conversation was being held or anything about it?

 

[cbnovick]

Bob you are so right. So many jump on the band wagon of heritage stock and get into the harder colors because they look so good in there patterns. When most of these folks should stay with the solid colors to understand what breeding is about. It takes alot of space time and heart ache to raise chickens to the SOP. For those of us working our way up and farming them also it takes even longer. This is one reason why I do not sell. Not because mine are not good but I have had lots of losses. But since I am farming chickens are not a hobby only but a food source for us. So I keep at it and work to better what I have have with no expectation of having winning birds.


We see alot of fades here BYC in breeds. Depending on what everyone is talking about, it might get alot of attention or not. Problem here is most just want yard birds. There are many here that do more than that and many of them have bantams and not large fowl. I can see why you get fustrated for you love what you are doing and it takes time to deal with folks that really might not go more than a year with it. But then there are those like myself and a few others that stick with it. So keep thinking positive. We do apprieciate all that you do.

X 2 big time!!!

 

[Kiniska]

I am one of the newbies and I stalk this thread a lot reading all the bits of experience piled here. It seems to me the people just getting into it that are going for the special colors are not doing any research. It took a year of reading and contemplating before I took the plunge. This is my first year, but I already have a couple thousand dollars tied up in predator proofing my yard. I bought the best chicks I could afford from what I believe is a good honest source and rely heavily on the support net work here to keep from messing up too badly. Oh, I chose to breed only black orpingtons. As a default I ended up with blues, but plan to cull enough down the line to be able to keep mainly blacks.This is a hobby to replace my horses and I can't imagine just dumping it after a few years. All of the information and help on this site is truly appreciated.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

I am one of the newbies and I stalk this thread a lot reading all the bits of experience piled here. It seems to me the people just getting into it that are going for the special colors are not doing any research. It took a year of reading and contemplating before I took the plunge. This is my first year, but I already have a couple thousand dollars tied up in predator proofing my yard. I bought the best chicks I could afford from what I believe is a good honest source and rely heavily on the support net work here to keep from messing up too badly. Oh, I chose to breed only black orpingtons. As a default I ended up with blues, but plan to cull enough down the line to be able to keep mainly blacks.This is a hobby to replace my horses and I can't imagine just dumping it after a few years. All of the information and help on this site is truly appreciated.

With chickens, as with ducks, the overwhelming tendency is not to get good blues from blacks or good blacks from blues. I think a lot of people gravitate to the blue/black/splash combo because it feels like more bang for the buck, but the blues one sees are often wither washed out or smutty with poor to inexistent lacing. If black Orpingtons are your thing, don't be afraid to cull out the blues; it will feel kind of like taking hold of the reigns. There's a lovely 20th century Indian theologian who reminds that "Saying 'no' is saying 'yes'".

Congrats on your choice with the blacks they are the original color Orpington and are an attainable goal.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

I believe it was on this thread, though it may have been on the Old and Rare Breeds thread... someone said something about master breeders on a site somewhere and the discussions they hold on feeding, etc. I thought it was in the last couple days and I meant to go and check it out when I first read it but for whatever reason forgot to. I remembered that I wanted to go see about it and have been scanning this thread over the last two weeks and can't find any mention of it.

Does anybody know who said it, where the conversation was being held or anything about it?

You might be thinking of the farming and homesteading thread

 

[aveca]

i am so glad we have this thread.! such great advice to everyone, beginner throu advanced breeder..

i just could not think of trying to start a new color..im sure there is a person here or there that could pull that off ..but things are a lot different today than a hundred years ago when people had lot more time and land to focus on something like that...

Bob, for a split second i thought your avatar was US version of white orp..

i talked to a german breeder a few times..he was very interesting..and my translations might not be the greatest..but he said something about in most of the bird world, the male will dictate the color much more and feathering than the female..the female will more dictate shape,size ect...but both contribute..this was about orpingtons..like i said, my translations arnt the best..here is something i still dont altogether understand and as befor might be lost in translation..but he said they used flat sided cohin..dont know what that is.they would do that once then get out..also he said when using blacks on whites, never put those blacks back into the blk breeding pens..it will destroy your blacks..and..

. "To secure feather color, in-and-in-breeding has been resorted to by some breeders, with such success that in many instances long backed and narrow chested types have been so fixed that their prepotency is very strong, and they will resist change accordingly and revert back in a most irritating manner.

 

[BGMatt]

Lot of good discussion here lately. Couple strong opinions I have that I wanted to share that came to mind when reading it.

1) No-one should ever put their Standard away, even if someone has no desire to show, if you plan on hatching any birds you should be looking to the standard. It is what defines the breed, it is the the description of the ideal conformation for the breeds original purpose, and the first 80 pages or so that everyone skips over is the most important 80 pages there are written on poultry.

2) If you really want a certain variety or breed, go for it. You will enjoy the hobby more and last longer. Don't get caught up in fads. Doesn't matter if it's rare or not, doesn't matter if you start with poor stock at least conformation wise (as long as you have the knowledge and are willing to put in the work to improve it, which is more likely if it's the exact breed and variety you want). That is the only advice of my mentor that I didn't take and I'm glad I didn't, he encouraged new comers to get something easy, no feathered legs, no big tails, single combs, so that they could have an easier path to success...I didn't listen and started with Langshans which violated 2 of those, because when I looked through the standard, those are the ones that stood out to me. That was 20 years ago and I'm still in poultry and will be for the rest of my life, only two other kids from those days in our club are still involved at all in poultry. This would not have happened if I had settled for something I didn't want...of course to be honest I still love that breed, but I have also grown an appreciation for many others.

3) When it comes to difficulty Blue, while far from easy, is simple to breed compared to Columbian (right amount of color in the right spots), any duckwing pattern (I am convinced this pattern is what invented the process of double mating separate male and female lines), crow wing (how much lacing should be on the breast and at what age? How do you best get that without losing the color in the hackle?), crele (all the problems of a duckwing pattern and add barring!), spangled, mottled, mille flour, the list goes on.