Endangered breeds

[aveca]

This is my favorite subject and a great Idea, About the campines there is a guy in england who has nothing but them and thou they look like they might lay a tiny egg , they arnt bad sized and he has a loyal following of egg buyers and he designed his own cardboard egg boxes that I LOVE. they are not like the standard crushed pulp that we use , its regular cardboard with deviders and a picture of his champion roosters head on the lid with the farm name . I just loved that he took a heritage breed and made it succesful biz. He must have had the cartons made special for him for the size of eggs. I could not find anything like them anywhere. There was a story in practical poultry last summer.

I think when the big commercial farms moved to town, they dictated what we eat and how we eat and if any one of you have ever seen those closed up poultry houses , you would faint. The movie FOOD INC. tottaly turned us off to any grocery store factory farm product. If any of you saw how they handel pork , Im serious , I got physically sick and couldnt eat for days. Since there are little kids in here I wont say anymore bout it. But We raise all of our own eggs and have a cert organic butcher deal with them when its time. and they are pampered till then, ans we only buy from that butcher. to me the taste of the birds that are bred to grow so fast that they are doomed from the start are pretty bland tasting compared to a bird that is leaner and been out to pick his own diet with suplements.

I was literally breaking out in rashes they couldnt figure out why took 10 years but they finnaly determined I was reacting to whatever garbage they were feeding the animals plus antibiotics ect. The doc siad , well when you feed chickens and pig left over meats to a cow and top that off with growth hormones and antibiotics ...not good.

Several years ago these people suddenly showed up at my house threatening me with all of these citations for having a smokehouse on my property, that is how threatened the factory farm is of somone moving away from thier control...I said lets go have a look at this infamous smokehouse that you are so worried about...it has not been run since 1947 look for yourself and we have no intentions of opening it at this time, and if you ever threaten me again, I will use all of the cases of E-COLI, listeria, samonilla, and the millions of people sickened by your way of farming..including myself ect... ect..ect.... from your way of doing things in a lawsuit. So we will leave it at that and dont darken my doorway. If I am ready to start up a smokehouse, I will contact the appropriate people

Returning these heritage breeds are the most important idea to date, too bad some fell out of favor, some went extinct , and driven out of bussiness by giant commercial farms.

 

[patandchickens]

About Campines:

I'm not sure of the APA-type quality of the few I had a few yrs ago (still have one hen I kept, sold the rest) but for whatever it's worth, they are GORGEOUS birds, and the hens quite good layers of medium-to-large white eggs, and they are all certifiably INSANE

"Chicken little" of mother goose story fame was clearly a campine. You would have to enjoy the whackadoodle too-much-caffeine temperament to want to get campines

I bet they would survive fairly well free ranging, though.


About "helping save" endangered breeds, in general:

Remember that just owning a few does not really help the breed -- in fact, if there are a limited number of chicks available in the country each year, it might arguably be best to leave them to people who are going to breed them on effectively and take proper custodial care of the line. If you do want to be actually pitchin-in to help continue the breed, you have to be prepared to produce lots of chicks from which you can cull. (Culling needn't necessarily mean killing, although the kitchen is certainly one reasonable option - it just means getting rid of a bunch of chickens one way or another so that you are keeping only the very best, whose genes will produce the next generation).

I have seen it said by a variety of breeders, and from a general-breeding-of-livestock standpoint I think it is probably correct, that you want to be producing many dozens of chicks per year, out of at least several different pens (or at least from several different roos), and cull them down to a small number to keep for next year's breeding, in order to avoid weakening the line and avoid accidental drift away from the proper traits of the breed. (note that if a person wants to retire all your chickens at home, rather than get rid of any that are no longer producing so well, this becomes a particularly burdensome mathematical problem...)

Chickens are inconveniently not much like animals such as dogs, and not at all like things such as beanie babies or depression glass vases, in that you can't just "keep" them and expect them to stay the way they're supposed to be. The gene pool is too heterogeneous and too inclined to wander off in inappropriate (to the breed) directions. They need constant, fairly strong selecting back for what the breed is supposed to be, if the breed is really to be "preserved" in any meaningful sense of the word.

I am not trying to discourage anyone, just pointing out that if you really want to do something, you need to plan from the outset for a project of some reasonable size.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[CARS]

As promised, Uno, the one-winged roo!!

If you note in the picture, his comb got frostbite

This is why it is so important to pick a breed that is for your region.

I had a heck of a time getting him to stand still. He watches over my silkies and he gets rather defensive. When he was a teen, he would jump up on my lap though.

In case you're not familiar with Uno's story, he had a broken wing when he was just a few months old. He kept laying on it and had a heck of a time getting up. Eventually, he pulled it out of his socket

After consulting the good people here on BYC, it was determined that he would live but he had to be separated from the rest of his flock. They just picked on him too much. The silkies are a great group for him. They seem happy (even if they are just free-loading eye candy

)

 

[SPRING CREEK FARM]

patandchickens, I do appreciate your reply and all the good information and suggestions included. Gee, I hope that my campines will not all be certifiably crazy!

Well, we have peafowl, yellow golden pheasants along with some Japanese bantams, Bearded D'uccle mille fluers, OEG bantams, Dutch bantams, and quite a few Silkies. My peafowl and pheasants have their own separate two story coop and pen; I am only keeping some of the best of my Silkies so that I may get a proper start on the campines. It is my aim to have my own flock of campines, and the broody Silkie hens can help to raise the campine chicks, since the campine hen is rarely prone to broodiness. The rest of my stock will most likely be sold this spring; I belong to a local poultry club in my area. I am trying to figure out the best way that I can allow my stock to free range in the back pastures of the farm and still allow them to remain safe from predators. I have done research on the campines; love their beautiful colors and feathering, and the fact that they produce a good number of white medium size eggs is a big plus. I also love the look of the Sicilian Buttercups, but I have read that they do not produce as many eggs, and their eggs tend to be much smaller. Their combs make them extremely susceptible to frost bite, more so than the campines, and we sometimes have very cold temps here where I live. Luckily, I do have wonderful coops for all my existing stock.

Right now I am looking forward to building another large two story coop with penned runs just for the campines that I am planning to get. Anyone with good ideas for my free ranging ideas to keep predators at bay---please let me know what you think!

 

[DTchickens]

Quote:
I think your bird looks more like a single combed Hamburg, he doesn't have hen-feathers, nor does he have any penciling. I haven't really heard of any single combed hamburgs though? Maybe someone who has experience with them can enlighten us?

-Daniel.

 

[CARS]

Quote:
I'm basing Uno's breed by this: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=279203

 

[DTchickens]

Quote:
I'm basing Uno's breed by this: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=279203

Yeah and there, he does look like a golden campine. But now he's completely changed, never have seen one like him.

-Daniel.

 

[CTChickenMom]

Quote:
Actually Delawares are not concidered a heritage breed. They are a modern breed. They were made after the cut off date for Heritage breeds.

They are on ALBCs critically endanged list for 2009.

 

[patandchickens]

I agree, aside from the comb he looks more hamburg-y than campine-y, and definitely spangled (which hamburgs come in) not pencilled (which is all there is in campines, although there are also pencilled hamburgs)

Since he is from a hatchery, yes?, I am suspecting that they have been doing a bit of outcrossing in their golden-spangled hamburgs, or possibly just not culling carefully. I have heard it said a number of times that hatcheries intentionally keep a few single-combed individuals in their breeding flocks of rose-combed breeds to improve fertility, although I do not know what factual basis this may or may not have. Certainly it is not terribly uncommon to get single-combed wyandottes from hatcheries.

He is quite handsome even if he is not a campine

Pat, thinking of going out and taking a photo of the campine hen who is coincidentally easy to photograph at the moment on account of being in temporary 'chicken jail', but getting the pics off the camera will have to wait til my DH is home

 

[CARS]

When I compared all of my "rarest of the rare" birds to the "breed standards" they all fall very, very short. They make fine pets, but they are not what I would suggest for breeding stock.