Developing My Own Breed Of Large Gamefowl For Free Range Survival (Junglefowl x Liege)

[Dogmanphil]

Oh okay. Yea that’s pretty normal, as long as there’s a broodcock a they should be fine till about a year or so

Facebook is a very toxic place lol I don’t bother with it.

Sounds like a solid brood cock

I think your right, that’s how you condition a betta fish to fight is isolation, they can get real mean from a young age if you isolate them. I imagine it’s the same for a lot of animals… come to think of it rabbits are like that too.

Idk I see no reason to tie up a bird younger than 6 months, they need to be out living like happy chickens to get to there full potential not tied up imo

Gameness is the drive to keep fighting through pain and injury in an animal, a “game” animal usually just means it will fight, “pit game” means it’ll fight even if it’s not actually “game” and dead game is an animal that will fight to its death from exhaustion and injury

All that really matters to us is that the bird will attack tho right? I don’t care if the birds dead game myself cuzz I don’t expect my birds to get in any hour long fights with anything, so as long as that broodcock comes running when a hens squawking and he’s not all bark then I think that’s a good bird

I 100% agree on the hot cold thing, it just depends what you cross and how they interact.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how this project turns out in a couple of generations!

I’m doing something similar up here in Northern California but I went a slightly different route.

I’m breeding my Thai gamefowl (5-7 pounds) for big carcasses, predator aggression, hardiness, and calmness/friendliness around humans and being handled

They already have all those traits so I’m just going to try to maintain a free range flock and select towards birds that check all the boxes while also improving theyre production (carcass qualities, clutch size etc) then adjust when I have a few generations under the belt if needed.

Also got liege from green fire, flarrys, Clemons grey, radio, and Indio gigante that I’m gunna be using in some crosses and experiments

Yea turkeys are cool but them big wings give u that other issue we both hate, the wanderlust. They can go wherever they want , I think that’s the main advantage of the chicken tbh

I’ll definitely be tuned in

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Its hard to get good pics of the 3/4 Liege 1/4 aseel flock in the ground brooder. I am considering free ranging them this weekend and if I do I can get some better pics.

They have the look of the 1/2 Liege 1/2 aseel, but are much larger for the age. They’re a little over 60 days old.

A free range 1/2 Cracker, 1/4 aseel, 1/4 Liege cockerel slipped in while I was taking pictures and it turned into a rumble with the dominant 3/4 Liege cockerel.

The 3/4 Liege is on top. You can see his wings are huge. It puzzles me that the 3/4 Liege seem to have larger wings than either Liege or aseel. If the wings remain large for their body size, that will be a plus.

The half-Cracker stood his ground for a while but finally exited.

Lanky, the 1/2 Cracker 1/2 American, posed for a pic. I think his plumage will look much better after his next molt. He was rained on this evening.

 

[Bigtom Turkey]

They look really good, love the action shots. What is the temperment of the blue face/cracker?

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

They look really good, love the action shots. What is the temperment of the blue face/cracker?

Right now he’s flighty and lives on the periphery of the flock. I expect him to be that way until he matures, but I’m expecting to pull him off of free range in another month or two. Isolated with hens he’ll probably go through a transformation.

 

[Shadrach]

I find it interesting that there are a number of people using the Liege breed in projects such as this.
The breeding has me a bit confused as does the project goal.
For feral flocks smart is always better than large. There really aren't any benefits in have a rooster that is aggressive to the point of initiating fighting with predators. They're called predators because they're adept at killing chickens among other creatures and that includes roosters, no matter how tough they think they are.

My thinking is unless one is breeding fighting cocks one important quality one wants in a breed is the ability to work around other groups and at least initially, around other breeds. Having roosters constantly fighting can get old very fast.


A few chicken keepers I know in other parts of the world have gone in the opposite direction having tried keeping bigger breeds. Assuming one has the chickens fully free ranging trying to have a replacement rooster each time the senior rooster in a tribe gets killed is a logistics nightmare. Yes, one gets smaller and fewer eggs and the meat is less, but they stay alive and breed well

Chickens that don't even get seen by the predator do a lot better than chickens that think they can take the predator on.

 

[Appalachian homestead]

I find it interesting that there are a number of people using the Liege breed in projects such as this.
The breeding has me a bit confused as does the project goal.
For feral flocks smart is always better than large. There really aren't any benefits in have a rooster that is aggressive to the point of initiating fighting with predators. They're called predators because they're adept at killing chickens among other creatures and that includes roosters, no matter how tough they think they are.

My thinking is unless one is breeding fighting cocks one important quality one wants in a breed is the ability to work around other groups and at least initially, around other breeds. Having roosters constantly fighting can get old very fast.


A few chicken keepers I know in other parts of the world have gone in the opposite direction having tried keeping bigger breeds. Assuming one has the chickens fully free ranging trying to have a replacement rooster each time the senior rooster in a tribe gets killed is a logistics nightmare. Yes, one gets smaller and fewer eggs and the meat is less, but they stay alive and breed well

Chickens that don't even get seen by the predator do a lot better than chickens that think they can take the predator on.

I think it depends on the predator. You're right that it wouldn't be good for a rooster to attack everything he sees as a predator or threat. On the other hand , roosters can sometimes kill hawks and snakes. I would think there needs to be a balance.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I find it interesting that there are a number of people using the Liege breed in projects such as this.
The breeding has me a bit confused as does the project goal.
For feral flocks smart is always better than large.

Feral isn’t necessarily the same as no/low-maintenance free range farm birds. Usually I refer to free range gamefowl around a farm to be “semi-feral.” They are finding their own food, avoiding predators, roosting up in the trees, and raising their own young. But they are also enjoying the benefits of being close to a human settlement, which often means a limited degree of predator protection for no other reason that the birds cling close to the humans and the humans’ dogs. For example, I have a very large tom bobcat that dens somewhere on the north end of my farm on the woodline and patrols my 40 acre perimeter as his primary territory. He is my farm’s apex predator. He’s the height of one of my coon hounds. I don’t expect any chicken no matter the size or temperament to fight him off. But he fears me and he fears my dogs. Therefore he avoids the immediate farmyard and within the farmyard, my chickens enjoy a bubble of protection from him. However, hawks recognize no such boundary or fear of my dogs and uses to hit my little Cracker birds regularly. Hawks were rarely fast enough to catch adults but could wreak havoc on entire broods of chicks. I would lose good momma hens when they’d fight the hawks and get killed in the process. The primary hawks that attack my chickens are sharp-shinned and rarely Cooper’s. When I introduced larger birds or birds well equipped with long spurs and bad attitudes, the hawk raids stopped and now hawk predation is no longer a major factor in free range chick survival.

Some predators can be successfully and consistently fought off given both sufficient attitude and physical build. I consider accipiters and bird snakes (ie what rat snakes ought to be called) to fall into the catagory of major chick predators that good roosters and momma hens can and will fight off if given the proper armaments.

I don’t expect my final product to regularly fight off coyotes and bobcats, but I do expect them to whip hawks, snakes, feral domestic cats (which are common here), and maybe the occasional fox.

There has to be a balance between survivability and human usefulness. I agree that the absolute best survivors in a totally wild setting will be those that revert to junglefowl builds and behavior and that’s what often happens in true feral flocks that live in wild places. I am aware of 2 flocks within driving distance of me. One is in the deep woods, one in the city. I can clearly see when I observe them that the deep woods flock is totally bankivoid in build. Light and agile. The city flock is mostly gamefowl but with strong layer influence. There’s plenty of predators in the city but its not the same as the deep woods. I would argue the traits of the city flock would be more useful to a farmer and that farm conditions, even a farm in the deep woods, are more like city conditions. There is an anti-predator bubble that deters at least some predation wherever humans are presuming the humans do at least some things to haze the predators.

I find it interesting that there are a number of people using the Liege breed in projects such as this.
The breeding has me a bit confused as does the project goal.
For feral flocks smart is always better than large. There really aren't any benefits in have a rooster that is aggressive to the point of initiating fighting with predators. They're called predators because they're adept at killing chickens among other creatures and that includes roosters, no matter how tough they think they are.

My thinking is unless one is breeding fighting cocks one important quality one wants in a breed is the ability to work around other groups and at least initially, around other breeds. Having roosters constantly fighting can get old very fast.


A few chicken keepers I know in other parts of the world have gone in the opposite direction having tried keeping bigger breeds. Assuming one has the chickens fully free ranging trying to have a replacement rooster each time the senior rooster in a tribe gets killed is a logistics nightmare. Yes, one gets smaller and fewer eggs and the meat is less, but they stay alive and breed well

Chickens that don't even get seen by the predator do a lot better than chickens that think they can take the predator on.

I thought that too until I observed and confirmed that it is normal for mature gamefowl cocks to tolerate young stags to a point. As long as you have young stags running around, you have a replacement rooster should the brood cock die.

It is a pain to not be able to keep more than one mature brood cock free range to the extent I have several nice looking stags coming up and I’d like to keep them all as mature roosters because I like them all. But that’s because I’m a chicken hobbyist. If I just needed a survival flock for my farm, one mature rooster with several stags living on the periphery of the flock would keep my chickens reproducing into perpetuity.

I do agree that, now that I’ve seen the benefits of having a 3 year old rooster to a 1 or 2 year old and that older seems to be better for inspiring hen protection behavior, it would be aggravating to lose an old brood cock and have to wait for a replacement stag to fill in to reach that level of maturity.

I believe a rooster that will fight and kill his rivals is generally a more fit rooster and that’s nature’s way of having the strongest male do the breeding.

Chickens that don't even get seen by the predator do a lot better than chickens that think they can take the predator on.

To that point, my little Crackers are the most predator resistant chickens I’ve ever seen by simply outrunning and outflying most of what comes after them. But their small eggs and little bodies (albeit plump) simply don’t make for a practical farmer’s bird as they are. There needs to be a balance between survival traits and table use.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Also, I’d again point to the wild turkey as an example of a large bodied galliform that forages and survives fine in spite of its large size. A large body plan can work. The problem with applying it to chickens is that we don’t yet have a large bodied chicken that can fly like a wild turkey. Those chickens that have been produced that are turkey-like in height and form lack sufficient wings to launch into the treetops like a wild turkey can.

 

[Appalachian homestead]

Also, I’d again point to the wild turkey as an example of a large bodied galliform that forages and survives fine in spite of its large size. A large body plan can work. The problem with applying it to chickens is that we don’t yet have a large bodied chicken that can fly like a wild turkey. Those chickens that have been produced that are turkey-like in height and form lack sufficient wings to launch into the treetops like a wild turkey can.

A few years ago my boss mowed over a turkey nest while cutting hay.He gave me the eggs and I stuck them under a broody hen. They hatched out fine, but when threatened, the poults self defense response was scatter and hide instead of "run to mamma". This caused quit a bit of stress for the hen. Do you think this would help or hurt clutch survival? It obviously wouldn't work well in a neatly mowed lawn, but if they have cover, I wonder how it'd work.
I do enjoy watching a hen caring for chicks rather than "keep up or die" like wild turkeys tend do.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

A few years ago my boss mowed over a turkey nest while cutting hay.He gave me the eggs and I stuck them under a broody hen. They hatched out fine, but when threatened, the poults self defense response was scatter and hide instead of "run to mamma". This caused quit a bit of stress for the hen. Do you think this would help or hurt clutch survival? It obviously wouldn't work well in a neatly mowed lawn, but if they have cover, I wonder how it'd work.
I do enjoy watching a hen caring for chicks rather than "keep up or die" like wild turkeys tend do.

My opinion is that the best defensive strategy is for the bitties to run to momma and for momma to be large, strong, and mean. I’ve been able to watch that beat hawks this season on my farm.

Running and hiding will more than likely sacrifice one bitty to save the brood. It probably works for turkeys because wild turkeys are very mobile and over a larger territory there is no guarantee they’ll encounter the same predator more than once. Unlike in a farmyard where the same predator may keep returning and pick off the entire brood one at the time. The momma has to make it painful enough for the predator to make it think twice before doing it again. Severe negative reinforcement with little to no gain seems to deter average predators.