Bob Blosl's Heritage Large Fowl Thread

[fowlman01]

Quote:
Bob,

I have never seen a gray Call female with mallard or Rouen coloring. I judged over 300 of them at Columbus a couple months ago. Maybe someone else has seen one, but I haven't.

Walt

 

[7961]

I do believe Holderread's sold their Buff's and Pilgrims's to Metzers.

 

[NotAFarm]

Quote:
I read this on their farm blog. They have the Holderread's Buffs and Pilgrims but will not be selling any goslings this year, as they will be building up their stock. They will possibly have stock in 2012 for sale.

 

[Jake Levi]

Hi

This is a great thread, slowly working through it, wish it was ina split section with separate threads,

I am a Wyandotte fan, my favorite is the Partridge, a friend wrote me about Pauls Poultry in Fla, anyone here dealt with them?

They seem pricey but the pictures on their site show some fabulous birds, I am thinking of getting a dozen or so from them this spring. I would like to hear from anyone who has bought from them,

Jake
Luzerne, MI
We are all in this together.
The best things in life are not things.

 

[HallFamilyFarm]

It was my understanding that Metzer will be offering their line of Buff geese, but not any from the Holderread's line. Metzer's website shows the Buff Geese will be available March 14, 2011. Their website is:

http://www.metzerfarms.com/BuffGeese.cfm?Breed=Buff Goose&BirdType=Goose&ID=BG&CustID=202190


Quote:
I read this on their farm blog. They have the Holderread's Buffs and Pilgrims but will not be selling any goslings this year, as they will be building up their stock. They will possibly have stock in 2012 for sale.

 

[NotAFarm]

Quote:
I read this on their farm blog. They have the Holderread's Buffs and Pilgrims but will not be selling any goslings this year, as they will be building up their stock. They will possibly have stock in 2012 for sale.


http://blog.metzerfarms.com/blog/?Tag=Buff+geese

Here is the farm blog posting I mentioned above.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Quote:
WOW y is this not more populer??? i tryied it earlyer today on 2 young black Orp roosters... i skined them instead of plucking but other than that followed the directions exactly... being as this was my first time doing it it probably took me the same amount of time... but i can see that with practice this would be way faster and easer to do... no need to get the lung pullers out... would save alot of time in the final clean up of the bird....

thanks so much for posting this

Excellent! I am so glad you tried. Yes, with a little practice, you save immense amounts of time. The only reason we do whole birds is if they are intended to be roasters. Otherwise, this preparation, i.e. spatchcocking, saves time and also gets you one step further to having your bird porperly cut up for recipes.

NB: This is great because it gives you a viable way to cull early and yet make proper use of your culls, if this is an aspect that causes you pause. In other words, certain traits are visible, or weight defficiencies are discoverable at an early age. The ALBC method is really quite good and is suited to all of our Heritage LF, especially those built for production, which is most.
Now, I"m not advocating culling all of one's stock too early. If you cull down to five cockerels at 8-weeks, you're probably cutting your chances significantly. However, if your growing-out capacity is 100 birds, per se, than why are you going to grow about a bunch of fowl you know are not worthy. If your growing arrangements permit (think space and sanitation) hatch out 150 or 200, at 8 weeks, in accord with the ALBC plan, weight out your birds, notice birds with aboslute defects, as well. Reduce down to that 100 number, which is your goal. Now, when you're growing out birds, you at least know they "made the cut", and you still are going to have your quota for watching type, early maturity, etc.... Then when you cull down to 10 +/-, you're choosing from birds that have reached a bare minimum from an early age.

Besides, broilers are truly yummy.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Buffalogal, good on you for the Anconas! We, too, work with RC Anconas, which are on their last leg. There's a small community of people working with them in the southern NH/ME area. They are far and away from top show winners, but with time these things will come. They are an example of a variety that has been decimated.

The RC Anconas are great because of their capacity to overwinter in NH without difficulty. We have found that they lay right through the winter, and the cocks suffer little.

Here are two FANTSTIC reference works replete with cool history and Ancona culture:

A Little Journey Among Anconas, by H. Cecil Sheppard, who was a master breeder of Ancoans in his day. I'll try to post a link, but if it doesn't work, just go to google books. You can read the whole book on-line, and there are some great old immages. NB: TO ALL BREEDERS, this book has as excellent discussion on line-breeding to anyone interested in coming to understand it better. I think it is one of the better discussions available.

Link: http://books.google.com/books?id=nU...C0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=a little ancona&f=false


Happy Reading!!! Maybe we can keep the RC Ancona alive

 

[Silver Spring Waterfowl]

I saw that, too. and talked to him about them. I can wait. I have heard that Murray McMurray doesn't breed their own Buff geese. I will wait on any frm Metzer Farms until they have the desired stock available. I would actually prefer stock from somewhere else right now, since I can't be sure where my original birds came from. That's a good idea splitting this up. Maybe there should be a separate category in the index fow heritage breeds and it can be split from there. I'm still really new to this and haven't had time to go trough the wholle index yet. For those of us who are American Buff fanciers: I haven't seen any search results for a breed club. Is anyone interested in forming one? Mind you, I was 30 years in the military, so I completely understands what usually happens when some new task is suggested: One may as well volunteer. If anyone knows of one, please advise me. If not, we might want to start one. Happy Saturday!

 

[Robert Blosl]

http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html

Looking for some articles on another subject today and found this web site. I was on it befor. Dont have names of people who breed these birds but some good inforamation. Something to look at on this cold day. bob