Bob Blosl's Heritage Large Fowl Thread

[fowlman01]

No special feeds here either. Off the shelf good quality pellets and sometimes scratch..

w.

 

[Robert Blosl]

Culling Barred Rock Large Fowl



Yesterday afternoon I did something that many of you have asked me to do for you How to go through 60 chicks and help you pick five good males and ten good females and you will get rid of the culls. Feed bill is over the top got to many young chicks to compare to the older ones What and how do you do it?
I sat down on a lawn chair and my friend Anthony P. or Peach Tree on this board when he posts and I started to look. I said Anthony lets go with the oldest birds and the three that look so nice. We caught each one and put a tie their right leg and then I saw a chick that looked like half bantam caught him off to the cull pen then saw one with a horrible comb off he went. Did this for a hour. When we got done we had 12 male in the pen with leg ties on them and we can come back in a month and cull again for extended keels and if they are worthy of making the final five in October.

Females: This was harder must of been 35 of them. Found the oldest and started on them. What we did on these is put them in the pen with the 12 males as we banded them. Then saw one that had a wedge no chest body she went to the cull pen then saw two that had Cornish box shape they left. On and on we went ad we ended up with about 20 females left to cull next time. Harder to see combs on these girls as they are so small at this age. The whole bunch where hatched each week for say thre months to get the numbers. Makes it hard to cull so next year Anthony plans to have four to six nice female in a pen with a male or three in one pen and with a good male and three females in another pen with a good male hatch say only in three to four weeks get 40 or 50 chicks and its over. He will have extra chicks to share with others of course but this will make culling next year a easy process and down here in this hot climate the older early hatched chicks will mature and grow out so much faster for barred rocks.

These barred rocks came from eggs he got from Kraig Shaffer of Ohio last year so this is the second batch to look and study and how they mature in our climate. These are birds that Kraig has been breeding hard for about18 years with his keen eye for type and color . They came from Ralph Sturgeons Nephew befor he died. The strain must be about 80 years old as Ralph got them from E B Thompson in the 1920s. The nice thing about this strain is the males tails look good and mature out like a Barred Rock should not all blown to pieces like most barred rock male look at ten months of age.

So that is how we did it. Maybe this will help you on your efforts down the road. Head points are paramount so we would not keep a poor combed male yesterday. Had to have their legs dead center and not knocked kneed and they had to have length of body. The lifts in the top line will have to be looked at in month on the middle aged birds but should be there. Color is not a issue for at least three years. Got to have good heads if you are breeding a low number as if you get a good bird with a poor comb you got to siz zag in mating with a good female for three years to get the dream bird. If you fix this trait first you will save hundreds of dollars in feed over a five year period not wasting your time on inferior looking birds. Anthony you did a great job on these Barred Rocks and glad to have them in the Pensacola Florida area.

However the site to see on his farm was 20 young Rouen Ducks from a strain from Indiana. My God what a site and we got to get rid of 15 of them next. Want world class H heavy ducks he has them. bob

 

[galanie]

Me too. Fermenting would only work part of the year for me any way. It is too hot here to ferment in the summer.

The Kale or greens for the chickens is old. It was in one of those 100 year old free books about raising chickens in California.

Gizzards grind the grains and the digestive system already ferments the feed.

Its' never too hot to ferment! Course the trouble is, in 100 degree heat it ferments too fast. Anyone doing that this far south needs to be sure the bucket or whatever is in a coolest place they can get it, or even indoors. Sounds nasty but it really isn't. Fermenting my feed cleared up any runny butts I had and made those really fluffy ones with a "racing stripe" down the back clear up.

But alas I'm not doing that now having just moved and still setting things up. Too busy.

 

[galanie]

I've been way behind in this thread but I ran across something on my local craigslist that could be of interest.

I think someone at some time was looking for silver penciled Rocks? Here's a screen capture of the ad:

 

[cbnovick]

CULLING ADVICE?

I have those 11 almost 7 week old LF Buff Rocks...8 are coming along very nicely...good frames, good color etc. ...BUT I have 3 that are not even half the size of the others...they have been slower to feather in as well...very sinewy/lanky...overall not pleasing to my eye as the others are....can't really sex them yet either...however, no real comb or wattle prominent or even pink at this point, so may all be female...

MY QUESTION:

I don't really want to continue feeding them and they are occupying precious space in my grow out pen...I don't want to give them away really either, since they are of questionable vigor...wondering if I should just out and out cull/dispose them and be done with it??? i realize that to breed one must have a 'hammer' hand of sorts to really get serious quality. I suppose I am looking for some 'hand holding' here for my first cold hard cull

Cindy

 

[Fred's Hens]

Cindy, You need a partner.

There are too few of these quality birds to do any culling at this point. Thus, a partner comes into play. This distributes the burden off of just one person.

These birds take so long to fill out and grow out. I'd wait, wait, wait. If you cannot and must have the space, you pick 5 or 6 and send the other 5 or 6 over to your partner. When you first got these birds, this board lit up with jealous people. Now would be a good time to choose your partner, do-si-do.

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

How in the world did a Sussex ever get up to a 5ft perch?

w.

Walt,

I have my roosts approx 6 ft off the ground and have "vent windows covering in hardware cloth" t hat run along the roosts (they get covered in winter) and my LF Rocks fight over the highest perch....maybe I'm doing this all wrong, IDK, but the roosts have been at that height ever since I built the coops.

They are a few lower ones in each coop, but it seems they use them only as a landing place to get to the higher perches, although this is typically where the younger birds begin to roost at first

Plenty of large flake pine shavings on the floors here and NO issues with bumblefoot

 

[cbnovick]

You need a partner.

There are too few of these quality birds to do any culling at this point. Thus, a partner comes into play. This distributes the burden off of just one person.

These birds take so long to fill out and grow out. I'd wait, wait, wait. If you cannot and must have the space, you pick 5 or 6 and send the other 5 or 6 over to your partner. When you first got these birds, this board lit up with jealous people. Now would be a good time to choose your partner, do-si-do.

Thanks, Fred.
I do have a 1-2 breeders locally here in AZ that are interested in a trio/quad for them to work with...so in essence, I have already planned to disseminate blood stock for these LF Buffs....I just don't want to breed from what I consider to be 'culls' seemingly evident this early on. I can afford to feed/worm them...and space is not an issue right here, right now...but I foresee that being an issue in a few months...so, I suppose I just am figuring 'why put off what I think will be inevitable?" I really am persnickety about how I grow out/raise birds....ultimate space, feed, worming and general care so they reach max potential etc...others may look at my facilities and say I have do have room...IMO, I do not-- relative to how I like to do it.

Decisions, decisions....lol

 

[Extra Java]

Culling Barred Rock Large Fowl



Yesterday afternoon I did something that many of you have asked me to do for you How to go through 60 chicks and help you pick five good males and ten good females and you will get rid of the culls. Feed bill is over the top got to many young chicks to compare to the older ones What and how do you do it?
I sat down on a lawn chair and my friend Anthony P. or Peach Tree on this board when he posts and I started to look. I said Anthony lets go with the oldest birds and the three that look so nice. We caught each one and put a tie their right leg and then I saw a chick that looked like half bantam caught him off to the cull pen then saw one with a horrible comb off he went. Did this for a hour. When we got done we had 12 male in the pen with leg ties on them and we can come back in a month and cull again for extended keels and if they are worthy of making the final five in October.

Females: This was harder must of been 35 of them. Found the oldest and started on them. What we did on these is put them in the pen with the 12 males as we banded them. Then saw one that had a wedge no chest body she went to the cull pen then saw two that had Cornish box shape they left. On and on we went ad we ended up with about 20 females left to cull next time. Harder to see combs on these girls as they are so small at this age. The whole bunch where hatched each week for say thre months to get the numbers. Makes it hard to cull so next year Anthony plans to have four to six nice female in a pen with a male or three in one pen and with a good male and three females in another pen with a good male hatch say only in three to four weeks get 40 or 50 chicks and its over. He will have extra chicks to share with others of course but this will make culling next year a easy process and down here in this hot climate the older early hatched chicks will mature and grow out so much faster for barred rocks.

These barred rocks came from eggs he got from Kraig Shaffer of Ohio last year so this is the second batch to look and study and how they mature in our climate. These are birds that Kraig has been breeding hard for about18 years with his keen eye for type and color . They came from Ralph Sturgeons Nephew befor he died. The strain must be about 80 years old as Ralph got them from E B Thompson in the 1920s. The nice thing about this strain is the males tails look good and mature out like a Barred Rock should not all blown to pieces like most barred rock male look at ten months of age.

So that is how we did it. Maybe this will help you on your efforts down the road. Head points are paramount so we would not keep a poor combed male yesterday. Had to have their legs dead center and not knocked kneed and they had to have length of body. The lifts in the top line will have to be looked at in month on the middle aged birds but should be there. Color is not a issue for at least three years. Got to have good heads if you are breeding a low number as if you get a good bird with a poor comb you got to siz zag in mating with a good female for three years to get the dream bird. If you fix this trait first you will save hundreds of dollars in feed over a five year period not wasting your time on inferior looking birds. Anthony you did a great job on these Barred Rocks and glad to have them in the Pensacola Florida area.

However the site to see on his farm was 20 young Rouen Ducks from a strain from Indiana. My God what a site and we got to get rid of 15 of them next. Want world class H heavy ducks he has them. bob

Thanks Bob,

This was very helpful...please expand on "extended keel" and "wedge chest" do you know of any photos or drawings of these faults?

 

[thedragonlady]

Walt,

I have my roosts approx 6 ft off the ground and have "vent windows covering in hardware cloth" t hat run along the roosts (they get covered in winter) and my LF Rocks fight over the highest perch....maybe I'm doing this all wrong, IDK, but the roosts have been at that height ever since I built the coops.

They are a few lower ones in each coop, but it seems they use them only as a landing place to get to the higher perches, although this is typically where the younger birds begin to roost at first

Plenty of large flake pine shavings on the floors here and NO issues with bumblefoot

I'll bet that your floors/ landing spots are clean too ! Clean and dry. Two key words for healthy chickens.