Bob Blosl's Heritage Large Fowl Thread

[laurrie]

Hi Bob,
Found your post looking for heritage breed for meat and eggs! Which is a better meat bird a dorking or a light sussex. have found some local person
who has the light sussex chicks from greenfire farms. I read the def. of the heritage breed what exactly does most come from grandparent and parent
stock" mean? Heard dorking has better tasting meat? Having trouble finding dorking in Wa or Oregon. Also only hatchery bird we have liked was rhode
island red although roosters where so mean most of them!! done with hatchery birds! wanting eggs and meat bird. What is best heritage birds for this?
Like the rhode island red bantams too and the cream leg bars,What breeds do you raise.? Have you watched the Americas Godly Heritage dvd or vhs?
From Wall Builders. We like the book called Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States. Judging from your picture you may
also like this book it is by Benjamin F.Morris. Do you show chickens are there any shows in Wa or Oregon? I think breeders sometimes bring chickens they may have for sale that is why I ask. Need to supply chickens for a few large families. God Bless Laurrie

 

[Robert Blosl]

Hi Bob,
Found your post looking for heritage breed for meat and eggs! Which is a better meat bird a dorking or a light sussex. have found some local person
who has the light sussex chicks from greenfire farms. I read the def. of the heritage breed what exactly does most come from grandparent and parent
stock" mean? Heard dorking has better tasting meat? Having trouble finding dorking in Wa or Oregon. Also only hatchery bird we have liked was rhode
island red although roosters where so mean most of them!! done with hatchery birds! wanting eggs and meat bird. What is best heritage birds for this?
Like the rhode island red bantams too and the cream leg bars,What breeds do you raise.? Have you watched the Americas Godly Heritage dvd or vhs?
From Wall Builders. We like the book called Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States. Judging from your picture you may
also like this book it is by Benjamin F.Morris. Do you show chickens are there any shows in Wa or Oregon? I think breeders sometimes bring chickens they may have for sale that is why I ask. Need to supply chickens for a few large families. God Bless Laurrie

Boy you asked for some information. First there is some good shows left in Washington and Oregon. One in my home town of Centralia every spring and fall. There are still some good fairs left as well. Have to get you these. Next thing do you get or ever heard of the POULTRY PRESS. if not go ogle it and go to their web site. This has a list of all the shows in the USA.
I am not sure about Sussex chicks if they came from this farm they should be good. Dorkings are very rare I guess if you can find some they would be worth fooling with.

For a good dual purpose bird the White Plymouth Rock is a great bird to start with. My strain still lays good eggs per year not a ton but enough. They grow fast and have good flesh to put in the freezer and if you show them they are the easy est to win with if conditioned well. Then after a few years of breeding them you could try a different color. The Rhode Island Red is a good breed if you get your start from the right person there are about four good strains left in the USA none on the west coast that I know of. In Rhode Island Red bantams most of them have changed their looks they are now looking like a Plymouth Rock have elevated top lines. I have the classic Mohawk look in a bantam by shrinking down a large fowl to a bantam in 20 years. I have two friends in Washington that have shown for 50 years and if there is a breed they have a name and what show it will be at. Just dont go wild on a COLOR that is like your house and ask me to find this breed odds are they are gone. The pictures look good but they are to hard to breed and never ever reached that appearance in the first place. Also, their is a good line of New Hampshire's that have pop-ed up in the past two years They are so pretty and are on my dual purpose list. They have to be tough and dont need shots and vitamins ect to live. You do nothing to them and they give back to you what they where invented to do. Remember they are dual purpose so dont think they are going to lay 275 eggs a year.Tell us what you want we will find it for you..

 

[Lacy Blues]

Hi Bob,

I got my original stock from Sandhill Preservation about 6 or 7 years back and have been working very hard at it. It is VERY difficult but I absolutely LOVE the blue pattern and working for that lacing! I don't think I'll ever tire of the process!

I don't think I saw your article in the press on the Java bantams. Do you remember when it was published?

I only just started my bantam project this spring and I have 9 babies that I can work with. The problem I see right now will be breeding out the yellow legs and getting more lacing on them. I have only one of those 9 that I would call "laced" but it has yellow legs too! Ah well, I knew it would take a few years and I've only just begun. I have heard that there are NO Andalusian bantams out there that have Andalusian blood in them. I have some pretty nice birds (in my humble opinion) and I want my bantams to be actual Andalusians. So, I'm stubbornly refusing to use OEGB or Rosecombs or anything else of the sort. Leghorn is as close as I can get so I'm using them. I also picked up some blue Orpington bantams (cuter than blazes!) but the loose feather, I'm not sure I want to incorporate. I'll use them if I have to. If not, I think they're adorable as they are. I do have some offspring from them that I will probably be looking to sell.

I also have some birds from John Hayes in New York and one I was able to obtain from Tom Roebuck a couple years back. John's birds had gotten pretty inbred and they're small but have good lacing. The one I got from Tom was half Hayes' line but he quickly developed white in his face! Great lacing though! I think I'll be replacing him this year. Hopefully one of his sons can take his place.

Thank you for your comment on my profile pic. She is from selective breeding with just the Sandhill stock. I still have her and another hen that won Reserve large fowl and Champion large fowl, respectively, at one show in California a couple years back, during their pullet year. Usually, the blues fade out with their first molt but these two girls came back their second year just as nice as their pullet year. Their second molt though, they faded! It's a start however, so I'm encouraged.

I have a friend in Ohio who breeds Andalusians as well and he's losing his blacks. I have one black rooster and several black females. I'm breeding blacks for him and hopefully will be able to deliver them this fall. He's not had good luck with shipping birds so I'm looking to drive half way and hopefully meet him at the show in Lincoln, Nebraska in early November. I have had black roosters before but not many worth keeping. One was absolutely stunning but he couldn't hold his tail straight. Made me so mad! I kept his brother though who was definitely inferior but had GREAT feather quality and width. He was the father of the male I still have... who is on the small side but a beautiful bird. I think he's still a bit too big to use in my bantam line though.

Alright, I've started just rambling and not really saying anything so I guess I'll get off here for now.

 

[Lacy Blues]

While I'm on here... the lady raising the Delawares...

We got some Delawares this year to raise as meat birds. They're growing like crazy and only about 2-1/2 months old. I'm wondering how soon I can butcher some of them. They're eating me out of house and home. Had to order 25 of them. I received 27. They're all still here. I only got 8 females in the lot too! I plan on saving one rooster and 2 or 3 of the girls to use as breeders for next year. We recently moved, in the last 12 months, and my SOP is still packed away so I'm almost at a loss as to which ones to choose for type etc and I didn't think to mark them for speedy development. There's one male in the lot that seems to be pretty aggressive and he aggravates me so he may be the first to go. I can't stand bullies! Nor can I stand whiners! It's a fine line. I don't intend to show them but once you're around show quality birds, hatchery quality is generally nauseating, I'm sure most of you agree. So, I would like to improve my birds if I can without sacrificing carcass quality. Any pointers?

... or advice as to butchering age, size, temperament?

 

[bnjrob]

I don't think I saw your article in the press on the Java bantams. Do you remember when it was published?

You can find the article on the Java Breeders site - http://www.javabreedersofamerica.com

 

[Lacy Blues]

You can find the article on the Java Breeders site - http://www.javabreedersofamerica.com

Thank you bnjrob

 

[Lacy Blues]

That was a good article regarding "The Call of the Hen" and those breeding methods. I have the book and am trying to utilize those methods as well. But Bob mentioned an article he had written about starting the Java bantams and that it would help me in my bantam project.

Bob, do you cull all your breeders every year after the breeding season? Perhaps I am working at this all wrong but I have several males, all with different qualities that I'm trying to breed into a larger percentage of the flock population. Is this erroneous? Should I be culling what I consider to be a great or at least above average bird and only use one male with a backup on stand-by to only 3 hens? I suppose if I am successful in getting all these traits compacted into one bird, it might be a little easier for me to take that step. It's difficult too, considering the Andalusian, that you need the black and the splash as well as the blue to make your colors work.

Now that I have finished collecting eggs (late, I know) I suppose I should be looking at my hen pen and figuring out who can go.

Still looking for the Poultry Press article on making bantams.

 

[Robert Blosl]

That was a good article regarding "The Call of the Hen" and those breeding methods. I have the book and am trying to utilize those methods as well. But Bob mentioned an article he had written about starting the Java bantams and that it would help me in my bantam project.

Bob, do you cull all your breeders every year after the breeding season? Perhaps I am working at this all wrong but I have several males, all with different qualities that I'm trying to breed into a larger percentage of the flock population. Is this erroneous? Should I be culling what I consider to be a great or at least above average bird and only use one male with a backup on stand-by to only 3 hens? I suppose if I am successful in getting all these traits compacted into one bird, it might be a little easier for me to take that step. It's difficult too, considering the Andalusian, that you need the black and the splash as well as the blue to make your colors work.

Now that I have finished collecting eggs (late, I know) I suppose I should be looking at my hen pen and figuring out who can go.

Still looking for the Poultry Press article on making bantams.

What I am doing for the past two years is breed from hens and cock birds that have molted back as close to the standard as poss able. They may look good as young birds but the proof to me is when they are two to three years old. i may also have a male that I inbreed back his female pullets each year for three to four years to fix type. Then after four years I rotate to the second pen and get a new male and then inbreed the pullets back to the male again. I have three breeding pens or family's. I can get away with this for about 12 years. What do I do then? I have buddy's or partners who I can go to and get ten started chicks they live about five hundred miles from me so I got a good distance for climate, feed and water. I then mix this new blood into my line and hammer away in line breding for another ten years. Then I go to the guy east of me in South Carolina and get ten chicks from him. I call this networking line breeding.

Many times when you are making a new breed of bantams you have a male or female you like that have faults and you don't have the right mate for them so you hold the birds for up to three years or so then bam here comes the perfect mate to use and they can help you.

In my program of Shrinking down Rhode Island Red large fowl to bantams I only worried about size and shape. I did not worry about color. I have no clue what to do with your blue chickens. You have the most difficult color pattern in the chicken family to breed to start with. In a hundred years there has only been maybe ten good breeders of this breed. It takes termed-es skill and knowledge to breed this color pattern. I have a friend named Tim Bowles in Ohio that has a old strain and he is a smart breeder of this color pattern and a great judge. My Red bantams never lost a lick of color as they got smaller. They are as dark as I have seen in red bantams but they don't have the quill color of my Mohawk line that is in Florida right now.

In breeding Black Java bantams I chose a Black Rock female to cross onto a Black large fowl to start with. After I wrote the article for the Java Club I found out a breeder did just this ten years ago in Kansas. So he has a strain going they are still big but it can be done.

The main reason I think that their are no Blue Andalusian bantams is because of the difficulty of breeding for color. No one could get anything worth keeping and showing them. I have never seen a picture of one in the Poultry Press in forty years.

If you use a loose feathered bird to shrink down a large fowl as a Cochin or Orpington bantam you have to remember these genes will come back to haunt you ten to twenty years latter.

In the make up of most bantams they used old English and Cochin's to get the bantam gene into the large fowl. We still have these haunting genes fighting us each year in the breeding pen. That is why 25 years ago I set out to make my new strain of Red Bantams to get away from the Cochin and the Old English bantam genes. So far I have been able to keep the large fowl traits or brick shape and have bantams with level wings and flat top lines. Today so much fad ism is put on wide width of feather that the Cochin gene has come to the surface and we breed the backs off our Red Bantam females. Thus they have a cushion or a rise in the top line like a rock or a new Hampshire bantam. Once this is in your strain of Red Bantams you can only get rid of them as they can not be corrected. You could not even get say three males from me and cross onto to them it would take 10 to 15 years to get back to flat backs and brick shapes. The reason I tell you this is make sure you think way down the road what you use to make your crosses. You could come back to a fault and drive you nuts trying to get it out.

Making a bantam from a large fowl is a 20 year project. I had a good teacher in Ken Bowles who made the New Hampshire Bantams. Also Ralph Brazleton made Some day Orpington Bantams that where true to breed. I dont know anyone else who has made a bantam in the last 30 years like I did. I will try to find the article I wrote it may be in the other computer. The Sec of the Java Club should have it also. bob

 

[Lacy Blues]

Thank you so much for your reply Bob. Would Ken Bowles be the father of Tim Bowles? Tim is the friend in Ohio that I was referring to.

So if you didn't use any bantams to breed down your reds, what did you do? Did you choose the smallest and breed for that?

I'm not really worrying about color right now, in fact, most of the Andalusian bantam babies I have have pathetic coloring but its a start. I have that small black male I was telling you about... his parents were beautiful, and I have the little blue hen that I used with the Leghorn bantam. I also have one bird left from John Hayes' line who is small. I was thinking I might cull her because she'll start to lay and I'll bring a rooster to visit and she'll quit! So, once this little hen who decided to be broody is over her broodiness, I think I might take her and the black female from Hayes and put them with the black male that I have. When she lived with a rooster full time, her pullet year, she laid fine. I'll probably wait til fall to do this as its pretty hot right now and they really don't need the extra stress. Perhaps by then too, she'll be laying regularly.

I like to wait too, until their second year at least, before breeding from a bird. I think it takes that long to find out what you really have. You could have a great looking cockerel who measures up in every way and breed from him only to find that when he turns a year old, his face has turned white! By then it's too late... you've already bred his qualities, and faults, into your flock. I haven't gotten up the nerve yet to cull a chick if it didn't have serious defects. I've kept females from males with white faces and make sure to breed them to a male with no white in his face, rather than cull them because their father turned out to be disappointing. Perhaps I'm not hard enough.

I've heard other breeders talk about holding a bird from breeding because you didn't have the one that it needed. Could you talk a little bit about this... how to decide what your bird needs?

 

[Lacy Blues]

Silly me... I just rechecked the Java page and saw the tab for bantam Javas. Went there and just found the article Bob was referring to. So... Bob... don't bother looking. I found it, unless of course you have more tucked away just waiting to share with me.