***Crevecoeur Thread***

[Sylvester017]

@One Lucky Momma

I love all crested chicken breeds -- they all mostly seem like the sweetest docile of breeds -- Polish, Silkies, Crevies, and I assume Sultans, Pavlovskayas and Houdans though I don't know much about those. Enjoy your girls!!!

 

[BurnsvilleChick]

New to chickens. The crevecouers description fascinated so here we are. Murray Mc sexed chicks. Hope we got 7 hens and a rooster.

 

[CreveChris]

New to chickens. The crevecouers description fascinated so here we are. Murray Mc sexed chicks. Hope we got 7 hens and a rooster.

Cuuuute!

 

[Sylvester017]

@exop Don't give up or be discouraged! With the Newcastles rearing its ugly head in the USA for a couple years and then Covid following afterwards there's been a great dent in people's priorities. I myself staved off 3 years of getting any new birds (different breed) from my regular sellers who also had to face a slowdown in their sales. We all have good times and bad times and neither lasts forever. Keep heart and don't give up on your dream. Circumstances do eventually turn around - Smiles.

 

[CreveChris]

I'm honestly a bit flabbergasted, I'm running my first ever Crevecoeur hatching egg auction on eBay and the bids aren't coming in. Title is exhibition Crevecoeur hatching eggs, you should check it out, there are still a couple hours to go. There is literally one other person in the U.S. with pure Urch line Crevecoeurs, it's literally just the two of us since the third breeder lost her entire flock to a dog attack last year. At this point, there are how many hundreds of people buying and reselling Greenfire's dubious imports, but no interest in preserving a very old line that traces back to Henry K. Miller?? And actually looks like the breed? If I sound disappointed it's because sometimes I don't understand people. Feel welcome to send a PM if you are interested in joining me in this preservation project.

Where can I learn more? I've read everything I've found and know some of the old line key breeders' names, but it still feels very much out of reach. I'm just over here breeding my personal flock to the 1800s drawings and whatever shows up in The Livestock Conservancy's education videos.

I was gifted a bleu chick with my starter Greenfire Farms day-olds, and subsequently hatched out a couple of mixed pullets. (This breed is easy to hatch in my incubator.) But these I have to separate and not allow to breed. I haven't really tried to find a bleu rooster.

Also, a respected member here informed me I'd need to hatch hundreds of chicks per year to "improve the breed," but this would have meant finding buyers in a pandemic. So I hatched a few for myself. A couple are of my hatchlings show promise, with crests and beards exactly the profile "I think" conforms.

I'd love to check out your hatching eggs. (Link?) But I don't buy eggs on Ebay. I want some sort of relationship with the breeder. (And I've got a Siberian Husky breeder half a country a way who can attest, I flew my two furry children in my lap and carried them in my arms through the Atlanta airport to come live with us. One is 5, the other 3. So I'm really into quality breeding and will go to a lot of trouble to preserve good lines.)

Point is, interested in your hatching eggs. Please tell me more.

Also, I found Crevecouers through the Livestock Conservancy where I sponsor fiber producers. Glad to find you after a year here. I've joined the Crevecoeur project on Facebook, too. Perhaps it's just being stuck on my own acreage for over a year, but I've not found any local interest in the breed. Education locally will have to be my first step if I am to sell more than eggs for breakfast someday.

 

[exop]

@exop Don't give up or be discouraged! With the Newcastles rearing its ugly head in the USA for a couple years and then Covid following afterwards there's been a great dent in people's priorities.

"Giving up" ...After 13 years with this line, you would be hard pressed to find a breeder more entrenched. No one's giving up anything here

 

[Silviaschicks]

Just curious- how do you tell the difference between crevecoeurs and sultans?

 

[exop]

Glad to find you after a year here. I've joined the Crevecoeur project on Facebook, too. Perhaps it's just being stuck on my own acreage for over a year, but I've not found any local interest in the breed. Education locally will have to be my first step if I am to sell more than eggs for breakfast someday.

Hi, if you will notice, I've been here since 2010... check out the very first post in this thread (page 1). Of the three Creve breeders listed, I'm the only one still going. I've posted various good pieces of info to this thread over the years, along with old illustrations, so you should check that out.

As for the blues, it was a wise decision to keep them separate. They are a fairly recent creation – even in France – and the pictures I've seen of GF birds look quite gangly and Andalusian in type. For breed preservation, it's not really much of a stretch to suggest that we stick to birds that do not have unambiguous visual evidence of being crossed with something else.

 

[exop]

Just curious- how do you tell the difference between crevecoeurs and sultans?

Sultans are a large bantam breed, similar in size to a Silkie. They have five toes (like a Silkie) and feathered legs (like a Silkie). They also have what is called "vulture hocks", stiff long feathers at their hock joint which project out and backward. True traditional Sultans are white.

Crevecoeurs are a standard sized chicken, with 4 toes, free of leg feathering, no vulture hocks, with delicate bone structure. True traditional Crevecoeurs are black. Those are just the most obvious differences. There are other subtle ones.

 

[Silviaschicks]

Ok, good to know!