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That's interesting, because others here have been saying 200+ eggs/year production is in "production" birds, not heritage birds.
My first interview with Ralph when he hit me with the famous quote at the end of the hour interview go slow go small and go down the middle of the road statement was because he had a ad in the poultry press for trap nests for sale. Many of you don't know what the heck these things are. I never really have touched one only seen pictures of them. But Ralph use to have a door in front of his nest for his big Orpingtons and when she went into the nest her back would rub the door a latch would release and when she sat down to lay her egg she was trapped until he came along latter in say two hours to let her out. He then would record her leg band number in a log book and record her egg for that day. He would average 200 eggs per pullet per year and then breed from such females.
One thing that this did was they had extrema feather quality and the females under fluff would be tight to her over all profile. She would not have what Schilling would call drooping their skirts. Many Orpington and Rocks that are fluffy feathered have this loose fluff like the English Orps have. When I saw the pictures of those birds on that thread it turned me so off I never went back to read it.
Of all the breeders I interviewed he is the only person I have ever heard who had egg laying that high. No buddy does this anymore and I was most likely the last one to push high egg production with my Mohawk Rhode Island Red large fowl and White Rock large fowl. I did it for feather quality not because I wanted a lot of eggs to eat. I am a breeder first and I hatch my eggs to raise chicks. In my climate its so hot if you leave eggs out in the chicken house for a few days they aren't worth eating. I just dispose of the eggs in the summer time.
Most large fowl that we talk about in this thread that are Heritage do not lay more than maybe 180 eggs per pullet year and many don't even hit that level because they have been breed down in overall quality for type and color. That is why I say you are going to have to breed them up. People contact me all the time wanting Partridge Plymouth Rocks. There are only about two breeders who have them. They need lots of work and this is the same for the bantams. They are a difficult color pattern to breed to the standard and that is why most people don't breed them.
One of the reasons I posted these breeds and names is to show you that after all the work they did and all the birds they shared there is none left anymore. In just ten to twenty years they strains Have gone down the toilet.
Yet people ask me where can they find such and such strain of birds.
I have seen strains of birds die in three years.
Dan talked about Oscar Winters and C.M. Lewis as great breeders. I knew these men from Oregon and saw there birds as a boy. When they died there birds dry-ed up in a heart beat.
There are however, a few of the lines still going. The hatcheries never got any of these birds if they did I could not see anything like what they had in the birds they share with us. Laying lots of eggs to hatch and forgetting about shape and color will not keep a classic line of fowl going
There is one fellow who has a old line of R I Reds from Calif Gary Ramey of So.Carolina who has kept his large fowl reds to look like the old classic line of Reds that I use to see as a kid. How he did it I will never know. Its something I want to look into. Look at all the New Hampshire's out there that are left. They hardly look like the ones we had twenty and thirty years ago.
Thanks for the new names. Vance Hammod wrote me one time Dan as a boy he was the King of Rose Comb Leghorns. Another great breeder who shared many of his birds with others but no one has his birds anymore. bob
