Breeding Buff Leghorns

[Birch Run Farm]

No problem Arie, I was planning to post that I have eggs after I set some and candled. Sorry to hear about your hatch troubles.... I don't enjoy incubators, I prefer to hatch and snatch chicks from under a hen.

 

[jake mashburn]

I candled eggs last night and I had 180 fertile in the incubator and am setting more from 3 pens my largest pen has to many females for the male ratio but I have pens 2 and 3 that I put females that I want special matings from I have strains from Fred Zillich ,Curtis Oakes
Dan Honour, and my own line , and Paul Hardy the first batch of chicks from Paul was real nice , but the 2 batch of chicks I have not been real happy with
light buff with a lot of white into it I sold off all the males from the 2nd. batch and kept 4 females as they had pretty good type, and a straw buff or lemon buff but it was even, I some how got a nice white rock hen but gave her to a friend of mine that is a member of the Pacific Northwest poultry club who raises whit rocks.
and now I have 75 hens and pullets and 7 roosters I have one rooster that is half bantam and half large fowl he is almost as big as a hen but he is real nice color and type and feather width but his only fault is he is on the small side so I am playing around with him and mating him up with my best larger hens to see what happens . all the Buff Leghorns I got from Ideal Poultry I took to the auction sale as I did not like any of them, I wonder what Sandhills Buff Leghorns are like and which strain they came from. I remember back in the early 50-60s Murray McMurray Hatchery use to sell the Buff leghorns in there catalog . does any one know if Sandhills chicks are any good as I do not know. Keith

 

[ghulst]

Thanks for all the info. I see in the Poultry Press that Paul Hardy has Buff Leghorns.His website doesn't list buffs. Anybody have and info about his Buffs? He sure has had very nice SS Hambergs in the past.

 

[jake mashburn]

He has very nice buffs it just depends on how his pens are mated up and witch birds he uses the 1 st batch that I got were real nice but the 2nd batch I did not like there color they were light colored with a lot of white in them and light under color he said that his main pens had quit laying so I got birds that were not as good as the first ones , nice leghorn heads on them give him a call he ships eggs, chicks, and adults when he has them.

 

[danhonour]

Thanks Keith for all the good information.I recall Curtis Oakes saying his first birds 50 years ago were Murray McMurray Buff Leghorns.I used to get Murray McMurray catalogs about 1970,but they had long stopped selling Buff Leghorns.I had an email today from one of Paul Hardy's customers saying the birds were small and very light colored and they wanted some of my breeding to correct them. I understand Paul got his current Buff Leghorns from Curtis Oakes and Curtis has light buff birds a bit on the small side too.Paul Hardy is a good breeder so I would expect that he is working on improving his strain each year.I tried to contact Sandhill but they will not respond at all,someone out in their area suggested Fred Zillich as the source as he is close by.Perhaps a good guess?

 

[jake mashburn]

Last time that I spoke to Fred Zillich on the phone he sold his whole flock , due to heart problems, but he might have kept a few buffs but I just do not know. Keith

 

[ghulst]

In 1964 I got buff leghorns from Murry Mc Murrey plus alot of other breeds. At that time I liked Buff Orpintons.

 

[ArieBLB]

Quote:
This is the site from Fred Zillich of 2007 http://grm.net/~zpf/chickcat.old
There you can find a picture of his Buff Leghorns

 

[seabass327]

Paul Hardy doesn't have any buffs as of two weeks ago. I had placed an order a while back for chicks, but they were slow inlaying and he wasn't getting good enough hatches for him to ship chicks. He mentioned that due to health reasons he was looking to scale back and offered the birds to me. I bought what he had, 1 cock, 4 hens, 1 cockerel, and 2 pullets. I've been meaning to get some pictures out to ask opinions, but have a million projects going, will make sure to get them this weekend. I'm very embarrassed about the males tails. I didn't bring big enough carrying cages and the tails were beat up badly. The birds do look light compared to most of the other nice birds in this thread. The hens haven't laid in a few days, and they all seem a bit out of sorts here, so I don't know how many chicks I'll get from them this spring.

Rich Lehnert

 

[ArieBLB]

Quote:
The hens look good. The rooster is not earned my preference. He has a rounded back, as far as I can tell from the photo, which is usually the result of skeletal abnormality. Also the comb of the rooster is not pretty pointed what I see in the picture. The color of the animals I find good.
Cute animals to start with, then carefully breeding for variety characteristics.