My only comment is I have yet to know of anyone that has cured scaly leg past ringing a bird's neck...sure, you can collect up hatching eggs from infected birds (the chicks if contained properly and not exposed, should turn out uninfected--not an egg to bird transfer like the chronic respiratory condition is) but from all the heresay I have seen, any bird that has this parasite, it seems whatever fix is found for birds, it comes back in spades. I too ponder, what kind of show allows birds to be there with this condition, but perhaps that was not what the birds have? Dunno, not there so cannot say.
OK...to clarify the 214...that is when you think hatching eggs are a good way to go if you want a good start. Might work, might not. Shipped hatching eggs are notorious for not hatching like the ones produced at home by the breeder. Half the shipped hatching eggs usually (not always mind you but usually) hatch live day olds...so if you are like me and retain only the top 3% for potential breeding prospects, if you wanted a trio or two pairs (thereabouts), you need to order 200 eggs (half don't hatch) for 100 live day olds and at a regularly accepted seven percent mortality (7% x double since half only hatch--chickens are simplistic creatures and in some cases, ones that should have never hatched DO), add in 14 eggs for a total of 214 hatching eggs to get one trio or two pairs worth breeding forward from.
We ordered our bantam Brahmas from a breeder in the fall for next fall's delivery of adult birds. Murray bred up 250 chicks to send us three pairs. Our bantam Wyandottes were the breeders from a man that retired after years, decades of breeding 300 day olds to retain nine breeders back each year. We need to hatch out 107 day olds to retain three to four prospective breeders we may use as adult (one year of age) for breeding.
If I am asked how many birds do I require to begin breeding...yes, one pair would be simplistically correct (boy + girl = babies...) but if you want a good start with healthy diversity and potential breeders that contain all the components (not ever any perfect birds) you can add to your breeding pen to have even a slim to none chance of producing a bird with class, one that is as near to perfection as one could hope for. You should begin with three pairs of birds in the variety you want to make more from.
I say six birds because one male in with three females, means the two males not with the girls, may keep each other company. Six birds to begin with means you could spend one whole season breeding one male to the three females...then next season, breed one of the other two males, use the third male later on...or do three pair matings the first year...what three males and three females does is gives you options because you are branching out at the relatedness of the three pairs (pending you did not receive three brothers and three sisters--and often that is the case when you approach the ONE breeder for young stocks all at once) ...the widest point of diversity in a healthy sense is where those that keep closed flocks begin with a good start. Just because one bird has some trait you want to capture, does not mean it will reveal itself in the first generation...recessive characteristics must be doubled up on and purified to appear so you can see them. Quite often I will tell persons that breed birds that they will begin to know their finesse as a "breeder" in the third generation of birds they create. By then any noxious recessives if you inbreed, should have revealed themselves to you.
If you do not have a good start from a breeder, then I would expect that you should look at as many birds as able (knowing full well each addition threatens your home flock with bringing in diseases and disorders that could wipe out everything) and select from those the best of the best and then hatch like no tomorrow and then select down from those...keeping in mind, you need to grow those birds out to adults where you may select from those birds the qualities YOU figure you want to make more of. Like pin the tail on the donkey...some will have this, some that, the combination and real test of a breeder is the ability to combine many to make some that are near as a reflection as per your vision for that breed and variety. Each to their own...what I deem a good bird could well be deemed utter garbage by the next person. I like to hope against hope that the good points I want combined with the bad points I don't will result in progeny more good than bad. I fear one day to make a breeding pen up with some good points I want more of and then only produce all the things I wanted gone in the next generations.
My Hero built me over 30 buildings...many are empty right now awaiting when I begin to hatch again. We have places to quarantine, places to segregate, do pair breedings, etc. Places to grow them out in, etc. etc....
I suggest people begin with a minimum of four areas for a beginner into breeding poultry; 1 pen to quarantine new birds or ones injured or being hen pecked on--usually best located well away from the main bird area, 1 pen for the regular flock (males versus females but peaceful balance), 1 pen for setting hens and hens brooding chicks or for brooding & growing out chicks artificially incubated, and 1 pen for extra males that would unside the peaceful balance in the main pen--can also be a grow out pen for birds destined for meat consumption.
Often if the birds cannot see each other, they don't fight...so you can balance out being in tighter confines with tenplast partitions...no see, no get upset...sometimes that is! Some are more particular and even hearing or smelling a competitor unsettles the apple carts.
We keep at least a dozen individual breeder birds for each variety we have...
Storey's Guide to Poultry, by Glenn Drowns, 2012; Pages 318 & 319:
turkey poults hatching
I have felt pens clipped to various pen doors, marking eggs as gathered. No pencils, as I am more likely to knife that wanted egg and ruin any chance of it making a live bird. I am kind to myself though and often figure, if the birds survive me, they gotta be strong right from the start. I don't need to be surrounded by weaklings, so it best the weaklings expire so I can focus on the hardy, live ones despite all my misguided and ill ways.
Natural hatching - wip bantam Chantecler hen hatching & brooding various chicken breeds
Many a Fancier prefers natural hatched birds...nothing replaces a tentative hen clucking her teachings to her brood
Even some believe the hen talk to the unhatched eggs is far better than the insane whirl of a force air incubator
Up until 2006, we only ever natural hatched...after showing for the first time at a sanctioned show went well for our birds, we decided we needed to get more serious and productive in hatching future generations, so we bought a new high velocity fanned Sportsman (nfi). To me this is the beginner's version for the ijit hatcher...keep the water topped up to maintain proper humidity, zit the hatching eggs with distilled water when hatching...after day 10, begin to candle eggs and remove any that are not progressing and good to go.
Buster is my bator...he be THE MAN that takes care of my incubations...
Auto turner...my job, make sure the eggs are still viable and fill up that water container on the top shelf...
Zit the eggs when hatching (when I remember)
And show up to remove the lives when they hatch...good deal!
Buster he's great at doing what I cannot be bothered to be hovering over. Then there is my other main MAN...Stan...
Stanley the manly is my stainless brooder and he broods my babes and that be that. He is a therapeutic stainless steel tub we use that use to be a sports therapy water tub.
Stan and Buster, they do the real work which then leaves me to attend to more important aspects of the Fancy--like admiring the finer points in the poultry, eh.
Different poultry species segregated by size and ages
I also use grocery store bins to segregate the different sizes in species...bantam ducks, heavy ducks, etc. brooding.
I set the hatching eggs daily for small hatches per day, I hold eggs laid over the weekend to the next week day because I go play off site then
I have had zero success with styra foam hatchers (tried a new one and could not keep the temperature steady...plus you cannot properly santiize it so hatches get progressively worse each hatch). To me, the big incubator is the ones you set 10,000 eggs in...the cabinet ones are where a Fancier starts at. Old reliable that allows us the luxury to pay attention else where. We never have bad hatches because these tools make it uncomplicated.
Day olds out on the new green grass
Zero predation since Earth Day 2007
Since I never show landfowl and do not need to schedule any timing for young birds being fit to be shown, I hatch when the wild birds hatch babies. Grass is great, weather is conducive to babies thriving...generally when spring is here, the production of baby birds coincides. Day length is proper, foods are at optimal peak, everything screams THRIVE and be ALIVE and grow up well.
July 14 - Day old Chantecler doing face plant in starter...just too plump to care...???
I begin hatching birds for middle of May, beginning of June up to about September or October but we have lots and lots of empty adequate buildings to grow them out in. I like to see my babies out on the grass as day olds.
Quote: ...
There are two colour varieties, gold and silver version of the 'ears of wheat' design well known on Friesians and Sicilian Buttercups.
David Scrivener's Rare Poultry Breeds, page 41:
The Pencilled pattern, 'Pel' in standard Dutch and 'Weiten' (Wheaten - meaning grains of wheat, not wheaten colour as OEG) if Friesian dialect, is similar to the Sicilian Buttercup pattern.
Some more related to the Campine breed...
David Scrivener's Rare Poultry Breeds, page 18: ...
in an 1884 issue of Avicultura magazine as the first effort to regard Brakels and Campines as two separate breeds, and that this was followed in 1888 by a more detailed monograph on the differences between them. At that time the fowls of both regions had the same plumage pattern, with fully cock feathered males, as only standardized for Brakels now. The hen feathered Campine males came later
David Scrivener's Rare Poultry Breeds, page 46: Although said to be related to Brakels and Campines, the rare Belgian Zottegems fowl seems to be a closer relation, as also might be 'Moorkop' Brabanters or Nederlandse Uilebaarden, or Black-Crested White Polish.
I am liking to see these sorta related breeds mentioned...something to think about should you ever need to veer way outta the strains you have in the Campines...you have some potential places to look for similar breeds if you ever need to, eh. Harvest the traits wanted and go back to breeding for purity in phenotype.
Unlike registered pedigreed show dogs, sheep or cattle...there are no pedigree police in poultry--one is not limited to a closed registry or stud book. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, eats like a duck, likely it is a duck and entered in the correct breed and variety at a sanctioned show, it will be judged to be a DUCK even if you bred a pig with a giraffe to make it.
Doggone & Chicken UP!
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
