Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[Aschenfire]

Here are my little splashes. The blues and my one lavender are a lot more skittish/not as malleable right now. But they LOOOOVE mealworms so it's mealworm training time!

The little pullet wanted to *crouch* a little. She stands much more upright out in the pen. And Dragon, the cockerel has a neck a mile long, but inside, he turned into a little turtle :/ evil birds.


You have super pretty birds! I love these guys...they are just gorgeous! But I am a fan of sighthounds too, so these little beasts remind me a lot of Greyhounds or Whippets. Just elegant and so much expression.

 

[Robert Blosl]

I work in rehabilitation center and take care of people who had knee or hip surgery and help them get back on their feet and get them home as soon as poss able. I have two residents this is a nice word for patient I guess who are English Teachers. They are going to work with me on better terms for me to use when I see a chicken. They tell me I am using to much slang or farm talk. One lady is trying to get me to use a term called Pet Quality like the duck people use when they sell their ducks on EBay when I see a production red for example.

I am working on it. Will try to be more correct in my choice of words.

One of these teachers is a PhD that taught literature in a big College up north.

 

[Arielle]

Here is a profile you can use to show you the ideal profile of a modern game. This is a trophy I made for the Modern Game Club way back in the day.



A pen of my young Red Pyle Moderns.



The Modern Game large fowl was admitted to the APA in 1874 so it should fit into the Heritage catagory.

Walt

Walt,

What A beautiful trophy!

The games are interesting. A very different body type than the dual purpose.

 

[HallFamilyFarm]

I work in rehabilitation center and take care of people who had knee or hip surgery and help them get back on their feet and get them home as soon as poss able. I have two residents this is a nice word for patient I guess who are English Teachers. They are going to work with me on better terms for me to use when I see a chicken. They tell me I am using to much slang or farm talk. One lady is trying to get me to use a term called Pet Quality like the duck people use when they sell their ducks on EBay when I see a production red for example.

I am working on it. Will try to be more correct in my choice of words.

One of these teachers is a PhD that taught literature in a big College up north.

Try being married to a wife with a Masters of Arts in English!

Seen, saw, whatever! I get corrected all the time.

 

[fowlman01]

Walt,

What A beautiful trophy!

The games are interesting. A very different body type than the dual purpose.

Thanks! I cut it with a plasma cutter out of 1/2" mild steel sanded it for days and then brass plated it. It is actual size of a male modern. Yes, the body type of these is quite different. They are really nice birds in terms of manners, etc.

Walt

 

[fowlman01]

Here are my little splashes. The blues and my one lavender are a lot more skittish/not as malleable right now. But they LOOOOVE mealworms so it's mealworm training time!

The little pullet wanted to *crouch* a little. She stands much more upright out in the pen. And Dragon, the cockerel has a neck a mile long, but inside, he turned into a little turtle :/ evil birds.


You have super pretty birds! I love these guys...they are just gorgeous! But I am a fan of sighthounds too, so these little beasts remind me a lot of Greyhounds or Whippets. Just elegant and so much expression.

They look good! Short bodies, long legs and necks and most importantly the wings do not go past the stern (butt). The tails don't stick up which is a common fault in these. They look like they are going to come out nice. As of just a short time ago the splash color is now recognized by the APA in bantams Modern Games.

Walt

 

[ChickiesInUtah]

Hey folks,

I don't post much on this thread, but I do lurl and glean info.

I was reading a copy of "The Poultry Tribune" from 1896 and ran across this article. Thought we may all enjoy it, as it is right in line with the topic of this thread...

Advice to Beginners.

Oliver L. Dosch, The Poultry Tribune, January 1896 page 120

WOW. Imo it deserves its own post. Beautifully written and still relevant 116 years later. Thank you so much for sharing!

 

[ChickiesInUtah]

They tell me I am using to much slang or farm talk.

Hey, don't change! I'm a former city mouse and love to hear the way my neighbors talk. They know so much about things I've never heard of.

I bought my first bale of straw on Saturday and yeah, I took a photo of it. It looked so cute in the back of the truck.

 

[Aschenfire]

"They look good! Short bodies, long legs and necks and most importantly the wings do not go past the stern (butt). The tails don't stick up which is a common fault in these. They look like they are going to come out nice. As of just a short time ago the splash color is now recognized by the APA in bantams Modern Games.

Walt"

Thanks! I am going to consider taking my Moderns to the Texas State Fair in October, so they have some time to mature in the meantime. I am glad they look pretty decent, since they are hard little things to get my paws on here in Austin. I have one tiny, two week old Silver in a brooder with a black Australorp roommate for company...hoping she is a pullet. I don't "need" more little boys. And dubbing is scary to me. I need to find someone to do it for me (maybe show me how, but I know I'm not going to be able to do it myself at least for a while LOL!)

 

[Fred's Hens]

Through the goodness of KathyinMO, I have a small flock of heritage Barred Rocks, that are descendants from the birds of 100 years ago. They look exactly like the pictures and photos from the magazine, handbills, artists paintings of the early 1900's. (see photo below) A few sincere people have kept that E.B. Thompson ringlet line going.
I also have "pure" Barred Rocks from a hatchery, but they cannot be, really. It's not that they simply fall a bit short of being "show birds". It's more than that. I don't have any idea what the hatchery "breeders" have done to the lines over the past 70-80 years. Are they mutts? Did other "stuff" get mixed in? Is this just the result of "mass production breeding"? I have no idea. All I know is what I see, side by side, looking at the two kinds of birds, observing the differences between them.




My hatchery BR don't look like the heritage birds,(nor the photos of birds from 100 years ago) don't mature anything like them, nor act like them. They are indeed healthy, good laying chickens. I'm not the least bit ashamed of them and enjoy the heck out of them. But obviously, as Bob said earlier, there had to have been "forks in the road" taken in the mid 1900's and then continued on for another 60 to 70 years. After that many generations of breeding different birds? It is obvious to me that my hatchery BR and the heritage BR, carefully preserved for 100 years, are simply two different birds.

I don't know of any hatchery from one can order RIR birds even close to resembling Bob's Mohawk Reds. I know of no hatchery from which one can order, nor have I seen in observing hundreds and hundreds of BYC photos of folks' Barred Rocks (hatchery/feed store/back yard breeders) that come close to Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch Barred Rocks. Just two examples.

To me, it isn't worth getting steamed up over. It is what it is. It's water over the dam. The past 80-90 years of breeding chickens by two different groups with two different goals and this is the result we have today.