Chicken Breed Focus - Iowa Blue

[Blooie]

What a fascinating breed. I had no idea they were so unusual. I knew that they existed, but I never paid any attention to their status, I guess. Maybe once I have several more years of chicken raising experience under my belt, it would be a rewarding project to be involved with - playing a small part in keeping these beautiful birds around and growing in number while maintaining the quality. I'm sure not there yet, and well do I know it!

In the meantime, I think I'll give Daphne an extra treat tonight. She must be an Iowa Blue in disguise! If I didn't know she is an Easter Egger.......

 

[Kelsie2290]

Gandalf is one of two roosters we had in our flock. We have an EE rooster as well who decided to hide with the hens in the woods when all this was going on. The stray dog was estimated at about 80lbs size as well.  The dog tried to come back later that evening (we alerted all the neighbors)and another neighbor snapped a photo of him to show the man who shooed the dog out of our yard. Confirmed it was the same dog but he got away before they could catch him.  We have not seen the dog since, but we are very careful when allowing the flock to free range. We have 15 Iowas now.
Gandalf is made of tough stuff and the sweetest boy around!  JB is a lot like his grand daddy )

I love your girls!  I would LOVE to get some Iowa's as packing peanuts from Sandhill

Gandolf is a double lucky rooster, amazing he survived the encounter with a dog that size. He surely has the protective instincts they talk about the Iowa Blue having. Glad he is healthy enough to enjoy just being a chicken again.
Hope the dog is gone for good, dogs with that sort of tendency don't tend to roam long in the country.

Really like the SandHill birds, always interesting what you get these girls turned out to be very nice. Good luck with yours if you order some from them!

 

[Kelsie2290]

Kelse, this girl here is spot on for color and type. In 'theory' all of the variations should look like this hen in color. In practice this has not been the case since. Many reasons for this, however, with larger numbers now, and a good group of breeders working on restoring the breed to its original type, we're seeing marked improvement on the breed as a whole!

It was interesting that they are all slightly different, know it makes for a problem when writing a standard or for show, it does make them easier to tell apart without tagging them . Your birds are absolutely lovely, looking at the pictures you have in the threads you can see where they are getting more consistent over the years.

 

[Kelsie2290]

What a fascinating breed. I had no idea they were so unusual. I knew that they existed, but I never paid any attention to their status, I guess. Maybe once I have several more years of chicken raising experience under my belt, it would be a rewarding project to be involved with - playing a small part in keeping these beautiful birds around and growing in number while maintaining the quality. I'm sure not there yet, and well do I know it! In the meantime, I think I'll give Daphne an extra treat tonight. She must be an Iowa Blue in disguise! If I didn't know she is an Easter Egger.......

Pretty girl! She is an Iowa Blue wannabe! Funny how you get the color patterns sometimes that match other breeds.

 

[iamfivewire]

i love how polite she was to wipe off my windshield (winter 2013-14)

 

[N F C]

I'm glad to see this breed as the current focus!

I've only seen photos of them, never seen one in person. Always thought they were great looking birds (the roos are gorgeous!) and now I can learn more about the breed and see some wonderful photos too. Love the personal stories and the history info.

Good stuff!

 

[Candy442]

Curt,

My daughter received a trio of Dark Horse Acres Iowa Blues for a post Christmas present this ast year. She also got to hatch out about a dozen Smokey Iowa Blues as well. We're trying to determine how best to breed our flock for this next years breeding season. We have progeny from our original Silver trio, but have "siblings" in the Smokey line. Do you ever breed your Smokey's to your Silver's? Which would you recommend for more genetic diversity? I know we can get Silver chicks out of the Smokey line, so I don't know why we couldn't cross our two varieties, to increase diversity....Open to any and all suggestions. FYI....we just recently joined the Iowa Blue Chicken Club as well, so we're looking to help expand the breed here in Southern Illinois!

Welcome to Iowa's MHoock!
We started with four, a silver cockerel, what we thought was a silver hen, but since determined she is what is called a "clean" smokey girl (no red or salmon on her body to indicate red or AR leakage) and two mossy colored Birchen hens. With our first hatch, we had most smokey colored chicks with a couple of dark brown ones. We were perplexed to see so many of the yellow with "egyptian" eye paint chicks! With Curt's help, we discovered a lot about Iowa genetics, so he is definitely the expert!
Good luck with your breeding! We were told to just breed, breed, breed and see what pops out. Because of that, we discovered we are getting consistent charcoal color chicks It is so much fun having Iowas!

 

[iamfivewire]

They are definately awesome birds !

 

[MHoock]

We currently finished up our paperwork and blood testing for an NPIP certified flock as well. Just waiting on our Flock # from the State, so next Winter/Spring we should have plenty of chicks to sell here in Southern Illinois.

 

[Dirt Farmer]

I've had two IB for about 7 months, a cockerel and a pullet. They were extras thrown in to a Sand Hill order of Dorkings. I had never considered raising them, and as a rule they weren't the type of chicken I was interested in keeping. I tried to give them away but couldn't find a home for them. They won me over. These two have little or no human fear. The cockerel, that I've been calling "Iowa", is a leader. I don't mix him with the Dorking males because I think he would get into it with them. As far as humans go, he has never shown any aggression. He's relatively friendly and docile compared to the Dorkings when it comes to people. As a youngster I put him in with a bunch of hens for lack of space. In just a few weeks he was clearly managing the flock of older birds. The pullet "Little Iowa" (I'm a creative type), is frequently underfoot looking for a snack or following me around the yard. Currently she is trying to go broody. The IB Chicken Club is the most valuable of the three chicken clubs that I have joined. Its a very inclusive and encouraging group, with lots of interesting information.