***Crevecoeur Thread***

[333113]

I would be interested to see what published standard you are quoting as the "German/European" standard. I don't find a German poultry association on the internet.

Both the French and the British poultry breed standards call for Crevecoeurs to have white earlobes.

Edited to add, the American Standard for Polish does indeed call for V-combs. Perhaps the standard you are quoting addresses the V-comb for Polish in a different way. I am not familiar with a "Paduaner" breed.

Hello there. Info from Europe: The European / german Standard does NOT call for any kind of earlobes Color. "We" determined that for the earlobes the Color is frivolous because it is hidden and not seen anyway.
If your Polish correspond to the german "Paduaner" then they are quite close to the Crevecoeur. But the Crevecoeur are bigger, heavier, lay some more eggs, the Crests are a bit smaler and the most obvious thing is that the Paduaner / Polish are missing the V-comb of the Crevecoeur.

 

[333113]

I hope you don't mind my asking, but in what way do you mean that they were "not hardy"?

I wish you good luck with them. Mine were really not hardy.

 

[333113]

Dinosaur,

After reviewing the video you shared, I have to share a couple of notes.

First, it's a well-known phenomenon, though not common, that a hen can visibly change sex to become a rooster--sort of. Some good pictorial examples on Feathersite.com:
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/BRKChange.html
and a good explanation on the land grant universities site:
https://articles.extension.org/page...in-chickens-kept-in-small-and-backyard-flocks
I have raised Crevecoeurs since 1997, and have never seen this sex-reversal in a Crevecoeur, so you might be the first to document it!

Second, I think I understand better why you are saying you see smaller crests on your Crevecoeurs than on your Polish. There is a naturally-occurring sport for the Black Crevecoeurs that produces a nearly-white Crevecoeur. I have one of these white Crevecoeurs from Jeannette Beranger at the Livestock Conservancy. It seems likely to me that the white and other related blue and splash Crevecoeurs could have been bred out of natural sports. These sports would be Crevecoeurs in every way, except that they would be a different color than the usual black.

However, if you cross out your Crevecoeur with a chicken of a different breed to pick up that breed's color, then the birds you get as a result of that cross would have smaller crests, especially if the birds you crossed to, as in the lavender Ameraucana in your photo, have no crest. (In other words, crested bird crossed with non-crested bird results in smaller-crested bird.) And those birds would be Crevecoeur mixes, not Crevecoeurs.

The Crevecoeurs are rare. Most people breeding exhibition birds are not really interested in maintaining the breed standard; their goal is to create a bird they can show and win with. People who are maintaining the breed for its heritage values may also show, to get confirmation that their birds are true to the standard. However, they are not outcrossing their flock to another breed in order to achieve a rare color, or even to maintain a characteristic of the breed using a different breed.

To give an example, runner ducks were originally white. Now the colors include gray, fawn and white, black, trout, etc. These colors were achieved by crossing a white runner duck with a duck of another breed who had the desired color. Years down the road, my gray runners look a lot like the original white runners, but they are smaller, and have some characteristics (not the erect runner stance) of the other parent breed that lent them their color. When you see runner ducks compete at a show, the champion is usually a white. Why? Because the colored runners do not have all of the runner characteristics of a white runner duck, especially the stance, face shape, and size.

So, you could, for example, decide to breed for a Crevecoeur mille fleur. You would want to select the chicken breed that is closest to the Crevecoeur but already has mille fleur colored individuals to use for breeding. Once you are successful in crossbreeding to produce individuals that look like Crevecoeurs and also have mille fleur coloring, you will want to breed back to Crevecoeurs, to get as close as possible to a Crevecoeur while retaining a mille fleur coloring. Then you will have a Crevecoeur mille fleur.

But wait, will you really have a Crevecoeur mille fleur? You may have all the characteristics that make the bird look enough like a Crevecoeur mille fleur for this generation, but there will be hidden characteristics that may pop out in future generations.

Every good breeder, and especially the good breeders of heritage birds, worry about the long-term intrusion of non-breed characteristics due to mixes from amateur breeders who don't take their responsibilities seriously.

Hello! I m a breeder of the Crèvecoeur from Europe, Germany. I just come up with my YouTube Channel where I presend topics for breeding and keeping chicken. Today I released my first english Video. You can see every color breed of mine in pictures and videos. If you like me to make more of it in english, please let me know.
You can search for it with: Crowing hen Dinosauer
https://youtu.be/moEeb-jPMzI

 

[seminolewind]

I hope you don't mind my asking, but in what way do you mean that they were "not hardy"?

Well, I bought 5 mailed from a hatchery. One was DOA. Another was almost dead. A year later I found another just dead on the ground . Then a year or two later I found one dead under the perch. The last one had a very distended crop and I made her a bra. But she started to lose weight and I had to euthanize her. So that was 5. I think they were just poor immune system. I have no idea why they died-there were no symptoms in the 4 that died. Maybe you'll have better luck with them.

 

[Dinosauer]

A lot of Points in a short time:
--> the german poultry association is the "BDRG = Bund deutscher Rassegeflügelzüchter" https://www.bdrg.de/
the Website is not so brilliant and there are no Standards to look at. But I m a member of the club for rare and crested breeds in Germany. There we are giving our german Standard for our supervised breeds:
http://haubenhuehner-seltene-huehnerrassen.blogspot.com/p/creve-coeur.html

Sorry I confused me and you with the polish and Paduaner. I m just starting to figure out whats going on in other contries. Dont care about that then.

ConnieA:
In my Video I said I will mate a Crevecoeur rooster in dark barred to a crevecoeur hen in blue-laced. This will hopefully result in a 25% chance to get lavender Crevecoeur. I only showed a Picture of the english Araucana to show how the Color profile of Lavender looks like. So at this point I m NOT planning to cross with another races.
But still with only 70 animals of Crevecoeur left in Germany this breed would die out of incest if we dont cross in other races from time to time. Every breed resulted form crossing other breeds to elaborate a special look or perfomance (maybe in laying eggs). So if we dont want to let them extinct we have to cross in other breeds - let s say every 10 years or so.
For now I managed to get hatching eggs of France crevecoeur 2 times (with A LOT of efford!) to get new blood of crevecoeur and I mixed the colors of the Crevecoeur to make them more robust, healty and bigger/heavier again. That work very good for now….

Sorry I dont get the meaning of "sport" as you used it.

Concerning the good breeders and the amateurs: This breed it over 500 years old. Right now we are at the end of this timescale but from a greater view we are not. In the last 500 years for sure there was a lot "Intrusion from other breeds" that made the Crevecoeur the way they are (or should be) right now. For example 150 year ago for sure the english breeders put in Dorkings into the French Crevecoeur, and somehow they put on a beard to them, too. And we are totally fine with that. A friend told me he had some Crevecoeur chicks with 5 toes… We can easiely select that out with only a little efford. After the alien breed-in the number of strange DNA goes rapidly down 50%, 25%, 12,5% 6,25%, 3,17%.... Sure it s inside but a "good breeder" will work with this and dont fear it. Just my opinion of a "good" breeder.
Looking foreward to the reply

 

[alexisrambles]

Take a look at Jeannette Beranger's Crevecoeur Project for the Livestock Conservancy on Facebook for a serious discussion of the Crevecoeur standard. I have had Crevecoeurs since 1997, derived from Murray McMurray stock, which was a lot closer then to the real Crevecoeur type than they are now. I agree that they are now smaller and more like Polish type.

A lot of people think that Crevecoeurs and black Polish look alike and have mixed them accordingly. Crevecoeurs are large, big-breasted birds who were originally raised for their fine meat qualities (short fibers = tender meat). Even the APA (American Poultry Association) acknowledges this difference: the Crevecoeur roo should be 8 pounds, hen 6-1/2 pounds; the Polish (including black) roo should be 6 pounds, the hen 4-1/2 pounds.

A standard for Crevecoeurs was established by the American Poultry Association (APA) in 1874. HOWEVER, it does NOT match the French or other European standards for Crevecoeurs, in that the APA standard calls for red earlobes, as opposed to white earlobes for the European standards. Note that most APA breeds that have red earlobes have brown eggs, and most APA breeds with white earlobes have white eggs. The Crevecoeurs have always had white eggs, so logic would suggest that they would have white earlobes.

Let me say, too, that Crevecoeurs have tender meat and white skin. Marketing in the early part of the 20th century led people to believe that yellow skin was healthier. So, Americans were cheated out of better-tasting, more tender chicken by marketers who sold the yellow-skinned chicken as a better choice. On the meat side, the marketing focused on having yellow skin, something not readily achieved by Crevecoeur breeders. So, unfortunately, the American public was denied the tender, flavorful meat of the Crevecoeurs, and instead had to make do with chicken that was surrounded by yellow skin, and fat.

Sadly, the APA does not share their standard openly, and as a life member of the APA I want to honor that commitment. But, as I have told several past APA presidents, I think this is a mistake. The ABA (American Bantam Association) shares their standard with the world. I strongly believe that this has been a main cause of the commitment of new breeders to the ABA standards. I wish that the APA would see things the same way.

So I've had a bit of time to let my birds mature. They've definitely thickened up a bit, and one girl is far more to type than the other (ironically the one with the flighty temperament is the one with good type! The sweet girl is skinny). My rooster is much deeper in the chest now too, but I'll definitely have to get some larger birds to breed that in. The Creves are much slower to mature than most of my other birds surprisingly. At this rate they may reach that ideal weight but they still feel a bit spindly by comparison.

My roo has almost opalescent ears! I think they're gorgeous.

 

[333113]

That is so sad! I am sorry that you had such a bad experience with the Crevecoeurs.

I have to wonder what hatchery those birds came from.

I started raising Crevecoeurs about 1997, starting with Murray Murray hatchery chicks. My flock now includes descendants from that original flock, plus some descendants of another batch of Murray McMurray chicks a few years later, plus some breeding stock from Jeannette Beranger's Crevecoeur project and several roosters from France, also from Jeannette.

My current breeding flock is 28. I have some individuals who are older and no longer laying, and some who are younger, still showing, prepping for new homes, or too young to evaluate for breeding/show at this time. My oldest ever roo lived to 18, and my oldest ever hen to 15.

I have other chickens, too, and the Crevecoeurs are just as hardy as my flocks of Delawares, Rocks, Ameraucanas, etc. They live in cages with roost protection from rain and wind, but they are basically outside birds. I don't see any difference between the breeds in health, and most reach a fairly old age of 10-12.

My flock is NPIP/AI tested. I take some of my birds to shows, so they are potentially exposed to diseases. I see other Crevecoeurs at the shows, and I don't know of anyone that has any kind of health problems with their birds, so I don't know what to think when you say the breed itself is not hardy.

As Dinosauer noted in his post, this breed has been around for over 500 years. I don't think so many breeders would have kept Crevecoeurs if they weren't reasonably healthy. It's always possible to get a bad first sample, as I did with my first Delawares, but I don't think that should lead me to condemn Delawares as "not hardy."

Well, I bought 5 mailed from a hatchery. One was DOA. Another was almost dead. A year later I found another just dead on the ground . Then a year or two later I found one dead under the perch. The last one had a very distended crop and I made her a bra. But she started to lose weight and I had to euthanize her. So that was 5. I think they were just poor immune system. I have no idea why they died-there were no symptoms in the 4 that died. Maybe you'll have better luck with them.

 

[alexisrambles]

Well I will say, I'm in Louisiana, also known as heaven for poultry lice and mites.
It's been wet, nasty, and almost never dry over here. And so far the Creves are doing better than my Cochins. If I could shave a chicken to keep it cool I would, poor darlin's.
I did hear a lot about Crested breeds not doing well where it's really wet, but so far they're doing really really well. My only problem is that one of my birds can't really see due to an overly full crest. I don't plan on showing her, so is there any harm in trimming her bouffant?

 

[333113]

I have trimmed the crests, so they can see better. I didn't notice any problems with that.

Well I will say, I'm in Louisiana, also known as heaven for poultry lice and mites.
It's been wet, nasty, and almost never dry over here. And so far the Creves are doing better than my Cochins. If I could shave a chicken to keep it cool I would, poor darlin's.
I did hear a lot about Crested breeds not doing well where it's really wet, but so far they're doing really really well. My only problem is that one of my birds can't really see due to an overly full crest. I don't plan on showing her, so is there any harm in trimming her bouffant?

 

[Dinosauer]

Well I will say, I'm in Louisiana, also known as heaven for poultry lice and mites.
It's been wet, nasty, and almost never dry over here. And so far the Creves are doing better than my Cochins. If I could shave a chicken to keep it cool I would, poor darlin's.
I did hear a lot about Crested breeds not doing well where it's really wet, but so far they're doing really really well. My only problem is that one of my birds can't really see due to an overly full crest. I don't plan on showing her, so is there any harm in trimming her bouffant?

Hi Alexis,
yes. Germany is sometimes cold and wet, too. And my Crevecoeur go out with every weather, even rain and snow. I and they had no Problems with that the last 4 years.
I would really recommend to carefully take away the small feathers from the eyes. The fist ones very short and then step by step a bit longer. Then they will support the other feathers. I made a YouTube Video about that. Right now it s only in german. But if you like I could translate it. But you can see anyway how I did it:
https://youtu.be/Hcq8V5FWg3U

When you hold them in front of you: The chicken s eyes on the same level than your eyes. Then you should be able to see the Creves eyes. If not, please cut some feathers carefully. I try to select that out but its a task on the long term...