CSU - Chicken State University- Large Fowl SOP

[flocknfoal]

Pysankigirl - the greenfire line is listed as blues but these seem to be partly blue and partly standard black double laced. I'm a bit confused on that too.

I also have two blue roosters from the GF chicks. Although I didn't pay near the current listed price, from the feedback received I'd say the value is well below what I paid. Sad. I'm glad I also have some younger barnies from other lines - and I plan to add more. I'll wait to see how that all look in the spring before deciding whether to breed any of the GF line.

 

[pysankigirl]

I think that the blues in alot of cases arent as cleanly laced yet as the standards that have been bred for many generations. and blue genetics will give you blacks, too. so if I were you I would breed them back to your nicer blacks and think about them more as a project.

 

[sherpagirl]

Here are some feathers from young cockerels (around 3 months old). I just grabbed at random 3 and took juvenile feathers from their shoulder and wing bow area. They are too young to evaluate hackle, saddle, and wing feathers. But, I find you can get some good hints at this age as to quality of lacing. The pictures show shoulder feathers top row and bottom row wing bow area.

Left: incomplete and irregular lacing....Middle: not bad, but not great.... Right: best of the 3, but I have had better marked.



The cockerel with the feathers on the far left may have the worst pattern, but he is showing great vigor, size and type. Feather quality and width is excellent too. So, I might keep him and breed him to my best marked females IF he turns out exceptional in type and size. Color and pattern isn't everything, but if you get too far out of balance it is hard to get back.


Trisha

 

[faykokoWV]

Quote:
EEK! that statement is like nails on a chalk board to me. You have to preserve egg color! I think one of the reasons the egg color is so much lighter than it should be is this exact issue. If you have several birds with good lacing and one with fair lacing but a dark egg - I would keep that dark egg layer in the breeding program. Hen lacing is just one aspect of the breed.

 

[mountainvieworchards]

The lacing on those GF hens looks double laced in places such as on the shoulders and fronts but there seems to be more going on there. The lacing is not sharp as on the better laced feathers on Barnevelders in Trisha's photos above. Also the ground color is segregating and is very spotty, it produces some interesting patterns which are not standard. The feathers on two of them are shafted as mentioned before.

Now I am not saying that this scenario did or did not happen, BUT when you buy stock from Great Britain, where double mating is needed to meet the standard you may be buying from a cockerel pen and trying to get decent looking pullets and its not happening. Also its important to ask what happened to the imported blues after they were imported to USA. Where they crossed with another line to multiply the blues? Crossing lines can produce a lot of variability and not all good.
Not enough information about them to know what to think about what is going on there.

On the two blue roosters you show, are they GF? The top one has a little lacing with red on the side of the breast, but the second looks like a clear dark breasted type male.

Andy

 

[tls_ranch]

I wouldn't cull a hen that lays dark eggs just because of color/ pattern issues without trying to utilize her dark egg genes first. How you keep those genes is up to you and you might have to play around with different matings to get what you want. Do avoid using birds with major faults and defects that are really hard to breed out.

If a hen or rooster has traits you really want in your flock then go ahead an use them. Just be prepared to back track and cull more if it doesn't work out. I personally don't want pretty Barnevelders that are worthless utility wise and darker eggs are a special part of the breeds history.

Trisha

 

[Apdeb]

Trisha what are your "major faults"

 

[tls_ranch]

It is really up to each breeder to decide what to cull for. The disqualifying faults are pretty serious as those are usually genetic faults that are hard to breed out. I made a list a while back of over 40 faults that I have culled for and most were type/ utility issues .....not counting color/ pattern issues. I can afford to be critical and cull for even " silly" reasons because I hatch out a lot of chicks. If you only have 5 chicks from hatching eggs..you can't really be that picky. I have a decent looking splash cockerel that is really annoying me because he has an awful crow. Like nails on chalk board crossed with dying cat awful and his crow is not getting better with age...just louder. I keep thinking something is dying not crowing. I don't really need him, so he might end up as dinner.

Trisha

 

[tls_ranch]

Oh, one thing I have zero tolerance for is mean roosters.

Trisha

 

[flocknfoal]

Andy, yes the blues are from the same batch of chicks I got from GF. I bought six chicks and received eight - five boys and three girls. So, there aren't a lot of pictures of what the blues are supposed to look like and with no American standard for blues... Is the red bad for a blue? It seems like the darker one may be better for breeding but I'm not sure.

I agree that egg color is a huge part of what makes the breed special and unique. If the GF hens have nice dark eggs I'll probably try breeding them with a good standard Barnie Roo (if I have one out of the others that are still too young) and, if possible, have another pen and breed them with a blue roo just to see what I can do with them. As indicated, I'll consider them project birds. If the eggs are light and the color patterns don't improve as they mature then, well - they may end up being an expensive dinner.