Farming and Homesteading Heritage Poultry

[junglebird]

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These things are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they go hand in hand.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions in animal husbandry today is that every generation requires completely unrelated pairings to continue to produce healthy, vigorous offspring.

Excellent! ... Would you explain more about producing vigor from a tighter selection? Or point us to a resource?

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

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I think it comes down to hatching numbers and how many you can keep. If you have the capability of keeping only 20 birds, you will make more progress and improvement if they are all a single breed because you will be able to hatch 100+ chicks to choose from instead of only 50 if you were keeping only 10 birds each of two breeds. Does that make sense?

It comes down to numbers and percentages and such. If you start with what you want, then you can keep lower numbers, but if you have a lot of improvement to make, you need to be able to hatch and raise as many as possible.

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

Quote:
These things are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they go hand in hand.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions in animal husbandry today is that every generation requires completely unrelated pairings to continue to produce healthy, vigorous offspring.

Excellent! ... Would you explain more about producing vigor from a tighter selection? Or point us to a resource?

Oh boy, there are definitely people that could explain that better here. My direct experience is more with rabbits at this point, and reading and studying on poultry. I'd rather you get the info direct from the horse's mouth!

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

Quote:
Excellent! ... Would you explain more about producing vigor from a tighter selection? Or point us to a resource?

Oh boy, there are definitely people that could explain that better here. My direct experience is more with rabbits at this point, and reading and studying on poultry. I'd rather you get the info direct from the horse's mouth!

Ok, as a introductory thing...I use a lot of half-sibling matings. As long as I switch it up a lot, I have had excellent results. You have to cull heavily for the things that you don't want, especially being tough on the ones that don't cut it in the hardiness and vigor areas. It places heavy responsibility on you to be vigilant and know your herd, but as long as you continually cull out the bad eggs, you can do well for many generations. Breeding like this "sets" hardiness and vigor just as it does the more easily assessed physical traits. If you look at the lines that everyone's buzzing about right now, these are all closed flocks that have had little to NO infusions of new blood since their inception many years ago.

We need to learn from those people and take a cue from them. I would much rather get all my stock from one good bloodline of a few birds that many different mediocre ones.

 

[buffalogal]

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Even if you don't start with what you want, you can still cull heavily, and you should if your standards are very high. This year, out of about 30 Buckeyes, I ended up with 7; two trios, and an extra cockerel. I had it down to 12 and went through them again after the show in Shawnee where I was able to put my hands on some fine birds for comparison and I got a bit more ruthless

. I have plenty of space, no neighbors, and the feed wasn't a problem. The problem was that while I can selectively breed up from carelessly bred stock, I don't really want to have to spend the next ten years working to fix things. I can obtain better birds, and I might eventually, but for now, my solution is to remove the most objectionable faults and work from there. It's been my experience that while it's always nice to be able to have dozens if not a hundred or more to select from, if you're careful about what you put together in the breeding pens, you won't need that many to produce good birds.

Then again, this will be my first year hatching my own eggs, so I should have some idea if I have an eye for the breed by October.

 

[Jake Levi]

I think that you can do a better job with a smaller number, in all breeds, I am keeping two breeds, LF Partridge Wyandottes and LF RC RIRs. First is growing out with proper conformation, and weights, and then once grown egg production, and from there pairing the best layers with the 3-4 best roos going from there in the next generation.

Its a matter of going from year to year selecting your best and building with them. I think the big operations can average well but arnt going to have the peaks that are possible in a small flock. By small I mean 18-30 hens.

 

[KenK]

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Somewhere, way up thread, you commented on raising Old English Games to try the taste. What was your impression? The mutt bred American Games I used to raise (about as wildly as a chicken can be raised) reminded me mostly of wild, hunted, Ringneck Pheasant. Not a bad thing IMO.

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

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I think qualifying what we mean by these relative "size" terms is a very good idea.

I'm curious as to how many birds people like Walt and the others prefer to keep?

I think my ideal for a single breed would be around 50ish breeding birds, or maybe a bit fewer, split into as many smaller flocks, pairs and trios as I could muster. More than that and I think I personally would have trouble keeping up with who is who and what is what.

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

On the topic of taste: what effects it?

Meat is meat, I have to assume that all chicken is genetically inclined to taste the same, so my THEORY is that it must come down to environmental factors that decide it. Feed and eating habits, obviously, and perhaps a propensity to be "fat" vs. a very flighty or spry bird. I've been told it is more likely to have more dark meat in these gamier-type birds because the blood flows more through the muscle tissue due to activity levels. (This is why wild ducks, for example, are almost all dark meat and domestic ones not as much, so the theory goes.)

Can anyone comment on these things?

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Quote:
Somewhere, way up thread, you commented on raising Old English Games to try the taste. What was your impression? The mutt bred American Games I used to raise (about as wildly as a chicken can be raised) reminded me mostly of wild, hunted, Ringneck Pheasant. Not a bad thing IMO.

They had an excellent flavor, and I was impressed with the breast meat on them. Their size combined with the breast meat made them look a bit like a pheasant. They were coarser grained that the Dorking, for sure. It had been a while since I had had anything but Dorking, and it came as a surprise. So, I'd say thumbs up on flavor with a coarser texture.