Consolidated Kansas

[averytds]

I'm the same. My "flock" is a hodge podge of birds I just liked or created for my purposes only. The Olive Eggers I made were to add that color to my egg basket and I just happened to have the ingredients on hand to make them sex-links as well. I dabble for my pleasure.

My kids have show flocks. That's a whole different area and for the most part I don't meddle too much other than the occasional temporary borrowing of a roo. I make suggestions for my DD and help decide who to cull and why. My DS is older and mostly autonomous in his decisions.


Ivy pretty much nailed it. For show it's all about the standards, for breeding, you ignore the actual genetics at your own peril. One thing about the standards and breeds and why I say reputable and/or knowledgeable. It can really mess things up to toss in unknowns genetically into a "real" breeding program. Some of the olive eggers look like and could pass for black AMs. Well right up until they laid an egg. The color alone should scream "Not a purebred AM!" But lets say I have an EE that looks and passes the standards for an AM. I sell it as an AM to someone for their breeding program. I expect the first round of breeding they'll notice somethings not right with the offspring at some point and they'll only have wasted the time (what, a year maybe) and money on a handful of hatches. Wouldn't be nice, but good way to mess with your competition.

Whenever I buy or sell a bird, I have genetic expectations(buying) or guarantees(selling).

 

[lizzyGSR]

Good morning all!
I just thought I'd stop in real quick to share a picture of a surprise visitor to our yard this morning. Despite our "guard dog", he stayed in the yard for about half an hour 'till our dog finally chased him away.





And here he is with my ducks

 

[chicken danz]

Thanks Ivy. You explained it very clearly. I realized the history of chickens and how the different breeds came about; I just wondered how they could still be considered pure bred once the standards had been set. I understand.
I have a lot of 'specialty' birds that are better than their parents as far as being stronger, better layers, and prettier than what they came from. But of course these aren't as valuable as some standard bird, even though they do a better job. It's a silly thing. Since I don't show at all I really don't care, but before investing lots of money into a specialized color of a breed I certainly would want to know it was an acceptable color. I am mostly referring to some of the more recent developments and imports of color. In example like lemon cuckoo orpingtons, Lavenders, Jubilee, etc. There are plenty of others.
I'm leaving the color breeding up to the experts!

 

[Ivywoods]

I'm leaving the color breeding up to the experts!

Me too!

 

[averytds]

Me 3!


Something of note on the imports Danz is that different countries have different standards. I think it's the Marans that have lightly feathered legs in the French standards, but no feathering in the English and its causing a holdup in getting their American standards agreed upon & set. Or something to that effect. Anything you really want, wait long enough and prices tumble. My Cuckoo Marans and soon to add Black Copper & Wheaten Marans, I'm getting solely for the egg color. A couple of hens of each color will be going into my laying flock. I just wanted more dark egg layers and the Black Copper & Wheatens are just the most convenient and cheapest available to me right now. If it were another breed cheap and available, it would have been something else.

 

[Hawkeye95]

Hawkeye-I became a tester after we were informed just days before state that DS's paperwork got lost somewhere between state and county and his birds would need retested. The list of certified testers is pitiful. No one could do it. They were all too far, out of antigen, only handled their own, had other commitments, etc. By sheer luck, the super from the 1st fair located her show form and the state agreed to accept it. It costs me approx $55 a year for our birds when I can get the antigen for around $20 (license fee $30). Ehhh...maybe another $15-$20 in fees to do all the other local kids birds at fair. IMHO the sheer convenience is worth it to me. If you decide to do it, we could meet sometime for a real world demo. It's not at all complicated.

Road Trip this week for me=BBS AMs and Wheaton Marans

I'll think about it for next year. I hope I can get someone to test my birds this year before the fair. If not, perhaps I will do it soon! Bleah. Have fun on your road trip!!

I know that this is done over a period of years and breed backs to produce different colors and patterns but It still makes no sense to me how you can still call a widget a widget if it is crossed with a cog?

Gosh, everyone else answered this really well!! I'll tell you about a project color that the silkie people are working on-- it's the Paint. They need a dominant white based on silver for them to have any hope that these will breed true. Right now, if you breed two Paints together, you might still get anything except Paint. That is because american white silkies are based on the recessive white gene. You put two of them together and the only thing they do is breed white because there are two copies of both. So this is the really cool thing--- over in Europe, they changed their white silkies to Dominant!! They crossed them with white leghorns and then I believe it took 10 generations to breed true to silkie again. But they did it. This is something they are working on here, too. Isn't it amazing what they can do? That is waaaaay beyond my grasp of genetics.

Good morning all!
I just thought I'd stop in real quick to share a picture of a surprise visitor to our yard this morning. Despite our "guard dog", he stayed in the yard for about half an hour 'till our dog finally chased him away.





And here he is with my ducks

WOW-- this is so wonderful to see!! What a fantastic picture of that turkey you got!!!! So neat!!

 

[Hawkeye95]

OKay, so I am DEAD. I just planted four, 6ft trees in my back yard around the chicken run to help with shade. Well, they're going to have to grow an awful lot to be helpful, but eventually it will be really nice back there. I planted 2 Green Ash, one Silver Maple and one Globe Willow. Of course, once they are put in the ground, that whole "6ft tall" thing goes out the window. They are more like 5 foot.

But the smaller they are, the more I can afford! But after digging 4 holes, putting in humus and cow manure, and planting and getting them packed down and watered...

I still need to get out there and put the Root Stimulator in them. Bleah. Maybe this evening. Once I rest up, I'm going to get to work on the coop, too. At least I got a lot accomplished... just not the coop. What a mess I am! I start another project and not finish the others.

 

[Ivywoods]

Well I've been told that the Royal Palm turkeys are more fragile & hard to start than some of the others. Wouldn't you know since that's what I was wanting. Evidently this is a fairly common occurrence because I did find several entries when I did a search on it & it even has a name, flipping over syndrome. I did tell the woman I got the eggs from what is going on & she says it could have been trauma to the eggs from shipping even. IVY, this woman lives up your way, could she be the one you got your turkeys from? She lives in Powhattan, KS, which when I looked on google seemed fairly close to you. She is planning to send me some more eggs if she can get the turkey hen penned up soon with the tom. She says she has plenty of poults, but it's too far for me to drive to get them. Anyway, the little turkeys are holding their own so far today, but there are two still flipping over. I'm just dosing them with vitamin E by squirting it into their mouths, so we'll see if it helps or not. The little black spanish actually does seem better today, it was one that had the problem really bad, but two of the royal palms are still really bad. I try to go down & flip them back over if I happen to go down & see them like that. One of them is so off balance that it's even hard to flip it over because it just flips right back, I had to try to flip it opposite if that makes any sense, it seemed to correct it for a minute anyway. It's really a strange thing to see & I feel so sorry for them.

This is going back a ways. I think I missed it to begin with, but wanted to clear up a possible misconception. Yes, this is the lady that I got my RP's from. (SUPER nice person...same lady I gave a "therapy chicken" to for her handicapped daughter.) However, my murderous dachshund killed several of them, leaving me with one hen. Fortunately, I had several eggs from them, and these are the turkeys that I have hatched. They are pure royal palm and they are doing great. I haven't had any problem with flip over. Since then I've added a pair of blue slate turkeys and some RP's I got from south of Kansas City. I haven't hatched any of them yet.

From what I've read, it's only a very small percentage of cases of flip over that could be attributed to a possible genetic tendency, and these were birds that were specifically bred and picked for increased egg production. There was no evidence that any of the flip over could be attributed to neurological problems such as a disturbance in neurotransmitters. The vast majority of the cases of flip over were caused by incubation, and most specifically late hatches. I've found this to be true in my own experience, and so did my DH back when he lived in MN before we met. He said he had problems with it when he first got his GQF incubator. They had it in an area that the temp varied considerably from day to night. Once he moved it and put it in an area where the temp was more constant and insulated it better they had no more problem with it.

When I lived in Solomon I had quite a bit of problems with flip over and poult death. I'd get them hatched, then they would die in the first few days. I'm sure some of the ones that I lost had flipped over when I wasn't there and either dehydrated or got squashed by the other poults. Once they got to be a week old they seemed to be very hardy. Thinking back, at that time I had my incubator in a breezeway. The temp there varied quite a bit from day to night. I honestly couldn't say if the ones that flipped over were late hatches or not. I never kept track of that back then, but I am certainly thinking now that was probably the cause.

 

[Ivywoods]

Lizzy-LOVE the picture of the wild turkey. I love it when my turkeys call the wild ones in!

Hawkeye-I love planting trees. I'm a tree nut. Digging hoes with this new knee isn't going to happen for a while yet! Paint silkies? Wow... I hadn't heard about that project.

Avery- The BCM's have now been accpeted as a recognized variety by the APA. Yes, you are right. There was a lot of discussion concerning the leg feathering. The American standard now specifies that BCM's have feathered legs, as does the French standard. SO... you could refer to BCM's with feathered legs as meeting the French or American standard, but the English version is for a clean legged bird.

 

[HEChicken]

Hawkeye - congrats on the trees. Now you have to hope you get to stay in that house and enjoy the shade. We may have to do some tree planting of our own. Our new front yard has a LOT of trees, but they are all Osage Orange (Hedge Apple) and we'd rather have trees that produce something WE can eat. We're certainly not going to cut them all down as I love the shade they produce (and have my chicken area planned to include a couple so they'll have shade right away in the summer) but we'd like to replace some of them with fruit trees. Will have to research what types grow best in this area. I'll add that to the now very long to-do list.

Well, anyone who knows me knows how much I've always wanted broodies. I got orpingtons and sat back and waited. After 3 years I figured they were never gonna brood. Back to the drawing board. Got a speckled sussex because the breeds database referred to them as "frequently broody". She died mysteriously at 9 months having never gone broody. Got a silkie mix. She's 16 months old. Never broody. Got two pure silkies that looked "girly" when they were 10 weeks old. They're both now crowing at 20 weeks of age. Picked a cochin out of the straight run bin this Spring. He joined the silkies crowing when he was 9 weeks old.

The ONLY hen I've ever had brood was a BSL last summer - a hybrid less likely to brood (although she was a wonderful broody and mama). And now I think my Sultan is broody. Of all the breeds I have and it is the Ornamental, light laying, seldom-goes-broody breed hen that decides to brood???? I'm going to give her a day or two but she was on her nest when I checked first thing this morning, and she's been sitting all day today except when she was kicked out of the nest by my Cuckoo Marans and made a big stink about it until she got the nest back.

My next problem will be getting her some eggs to sit on since all of the above-mentioned crowers are not yet with the adult hens and doing the deed. That little Sultan girl is so tiny I'm thinking she can't possibly sit on more than about 4 eggs. So I'm wondering if any of the Wichita-area folk might be able to help a gal out with some fertile eggs?