Farming and Homesteading Heritage Poultry

[Yellow House Farm]

Bob, you're so cool! I had never thought to look at toenail length, but it makes perfect sense.

 

[X2Farm]

So in talking about all this as it relates to farming and homesteading, Bob had mentioned SemiMonitor houses. I searched, found a couple of old books on Google and have been doing some reading.

Fresh-air poultry housing. Whats not to love about it? It makes perfect sense to me. Based on my very limited experience with poultry, and having so far used a few different types of housing, I do see how fresh air is better. It relates the same to humans, and even horses (with which I've got plenty of experience with).

We are all talking about vigor. Healthy flocks who can produce, be able to meet the demands of farm life, while still being healthy, productive and fertile. Fresh air, night and day, is an absolute must have.

I can see where I've gone wrong, in our large housing design that we currently have. We're going to remedy that, and will be revamping the large quarters into a more open, fresh air style coop, as we can.

So, pardon the late night ramblings. I just felt like sharing

 

[Robert Blosl]

Quote:
The fellow who inveneted the semi monitor was a pulmonologist named Dr. Woods. He is also the one who took a picture of the early 1850 rhode island reds that where stuffed at the Peapody Instatue in Mass. His new design really worked well as the front section and the upper windows would keep the back section of the builiding dry even in the north and in the snow. He learned that some of the big problems was respiratory with the chickens and being a M.D. who took care of people who had lung problems he figured out this neet building.

I was told that E B Thompson the famous Barred Rock Breeder from New York had many of these buildings on his farm. So did the late Ralph Sturegeon of Ohio. One person told me they went to Ralphs home or farm and snow might be two feet deep up in the front of the building but in the back it was nice and dry and warmer. The buildings where something like ten feet long in the back part and eight feet long with a slated front in the front half of the building. Most of the open monitor part was windows say about two and half feet square that could be opened in the winter to give a draft. I never saw one but the felt this was a great chicken house for the north coutnry.

Down here I have a wall facing the north the sides have a wall on the bottom and a wire opeing about three by eight feet. Then the front is open to the south. All wire is one inch mess and this keeps the coons from sticking thier paws thorough the wire and grabing the necks of the birds. Some dum birdsl like to lay on the floor near the front of the building and the coon or possum will reach in and pull off their heads. These kind of birds who do not learn how to roost when young and dont make very good breeders. bob

 

[RareBreedFancier]

Quote:
Hmmm... I have one of these. Not only stupid but aggressive too. Of course it's the one DH likes "Because he's pretty".

I was actually telling the roo the other day if he was too dumb to work out how to get out of the pen with everyone else he probably should be put in the pot because he'd be dead if left out free ranging. I also told him he's on thin ice when he pecks at or chases the girls away from food. Will have to discuss his future with DH who wants to breed him. I sure don't want more like him.

On a different note, I have a question. I wondered what people think would be the minimum number of males and females to ensure diversity in a closed flock?

I plan to breed lots and cull hard so I'm not carrying large numbers over winter and I'm currently planing my coops to build so I'd love to hear your opinions. Obviously record keeping is going to be strict so I know who is related to who and how much.

I really like those fresh air coops, I need something like that with our extreme summer heat.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Ha! It's always the pretty ones. OK, I don't mean this to play production vs. looks (truthfully), but I have on several occasions found that some of our inferior hatchlings will excell in the more superficial fancy points. I'm not meaning type and weight, etc...; rather, it's things like the perfect comb or the perfect mottling or speckling--something fantastic, but man-oh-man what off type. It's like my own personal "the spirit is willing but the body is weak."


So, does the semi-monitor coop function then like a cupola?

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Quote:
Hmmm... I have one of these. Not only stupid but aggressive too. Of course it's the one DH likes "Because he's pretty".

I was actually telling the roo the other day if he was too dumb to work out how to get out of the pen with everyone else he probably should be put in the pot because he'd be dead if left out free ranging. I also told him he's on thin ice when he pecks at or chases the girls away from food. Will have to discuss his future with DH who wants to breed him. I sure don't want more like him.

On a different note, I have a question. I wondered what people think would be the minimum number of males and females to ensure diversity in a closed flock?
I plan to breed lots and cull hard so I'm not carrying large numbers over winter and I'm currently planing my coops to build so I'd love to hear your opinions. Obviously record keeping is going to be strict so I know who is related to who and how much.

I really like those fresh air coops, I need something like that with our extreme summer heat.

Well, I guess it all depends on how "closed" you want to be. If you mean totally closed and self-reliant with birds that are truly vigorous. active, and productive...I pause. First, it depends on how you're going to breed, meaning what will be your breeding pattern. There are several patterns of line breeding. There's rolling breeding, which to stay closed would probably require two distinct families of rolling breeding that could swap cockerels once or twice a decade or so. Saladin, a SPPA member and knowledgeable breeder, reccntly referred to something called "hound-dog breeding" (I think I got that right), which is something that we do here.

I have a chicken-friend, whom I admire very much, who breeds old-school SC RIR. He maintains a closed flock with 12 divided into four families. He keeps track of who is kin to whom, and off they go. If you envision it, four family units, which is what we have here, allow you the space needed to keep from putting siblings on sibling, or even too much parent on young. Ideally, 20 to 30 birds including 4 cocks, divided into four groups, depending on the breed, even more hens/pullets. What I like about this is that it gives you selection room. As the season and winter progress, you can remove birds for poor egg-production or a lack of hardiness or moulting issues, or what have you, while still maintaining the given family group. If you only have 12 birds in the whole breeding program, there's a chance you're going to become more gun-shy about culling because you can't be sure if you're going to restrict your bloodlines too agressively. The aforementioned breeders lovely birds are not actively culled for reasons of production.

Here, our breeders and our layers are usually the same thing. We have barn with rafters and a laying unit. As birds are culled out of the laying/breeding coops, I loose them into the barn until I have enough to make me want to set up the slughtering equipment (or until the weather's right).

As to numbers of cocks/cockerels, I often hear/read about people wanting to keep one rooster. IMO, that's a short trip to nowhere.

 

[Robert Blosl]

http://bloslspoutlryfarm.tripod.com/id60.html

Getting Started With Black Javas.

Here is a simple method I started over twenty years ago with Rhode Island Reds and White Plymouth Rocks that can be used on any breed of large fowl and today we are going to focus on getting started with Black Java’s a great old breed that was used by early poultry farmers and used to make many of our American Breeds we have today. You don’t have to have four breeding pens, but three will do. You can even do it this way if you have a partner. You have pen of two to four females which we will call pen one and the chicken house is painted red. All eggs from this hen house have a number two pencil number one on it and the date. Then you have chicken house number two it’s painted white. All eggs from this pen are written number two and the date. All eggs are hatched in separate incubators or you have a wire pen with one of the sets of eggs in them and once you remove the chicks from the incubator you punch a hole in tier toe to ID them the pen you want. You friend who lives two hundred miles away has pen three his building is painted blue. He writes number three on his egg and the date and the last pen is painted green for pen four. The same thing goes egg has a number four on it. He puts his eggs in a genesis Hatcher incubator and toe punches each chick for pen three and pen four. You all raise your chicks up let’s say thirty chicks per breeding pen. You keep the best females for shape and color and vigor. You keep the best of these females for who starts laying first. If you have say eight pullets per pen and you get two or three that start laying two to three weeks before the rest. You breed from them. You may have two or three or four you like. Put them back in the same colored coop that they egg came out of. You order large fowl leg bands from a poultry supply house and you have red white blue and green and they are on the legs of the chicks that you raise up during their adult rearing period.

So you have two pullets in pen one three in pen two four in pen three and for in pen four. You are ready to go for the following year of breeding. Now for the males. You have four males in separate pens that are mature and each have a leg band on them for the breeding pen they came out of. You go to the pen where the four males that have red band on their legs and you look them over and you see a fellow who is big and fully feathered and crowing up a storm and he is the boss of the pen. You go and grab him and take him to pen number two and drop him on the floor. Then you go to pen number two and look over the males on this pen. You pick out two nice males that are a tossup each one could be in the breeding pen. You put the two males in box and put them in the back of your car and drive up to your friend’s house and put them in separate coops to look over. Your friend says I like ckl number ten I don’t know why but he just has want I would like to have in my flock. So you put this male in pen number three and leave the second male in the conditioning coop for a spare in case something happens to male number one. Next you go to his pen of four nice ckls that have blue bands on them pen number three. You look them over and you see a male with band number six and another with band number twelve and you both grab these males and look them over in the conditioning pens and you say to your selves lets go with number six and then you go to pen number four the green pen and drop him on the floor and you are done with his matings for the year. Next thing you got to do is go to the pen with the green leg bands and look over the males in it. You see a male with number one and number three on their legs and you grab them out and put them in the conditioning pens. After looking hard you decide I think I will go with male number ten and male number fourteen. I cannot make up my mind which one I will go with at first but I think I will put one in my Red Pen one when I get home and keep the other and put him in the pen about five weeks after the first male is in and see if one male does better than the other.

So you take the two males put them in the box put them in the car and head home. You get home and your put male number ten that has a green band from pen four in your red chicken coop with your pen one females. The other male is kept in your conditioning coop to use latter as a spare and two shares half the mating season with the other male. You will give the pen one females a rest of about ten days after you pull out the first male to make sure his semen is free but remember they are mating a clutch of eggs and once the clutch of eggs are mated the other males semen cannot cross in a mess things up. It’s not a big deal in this method you are not going to hurt yourself as this is a family mating. Do you know hatcheries will flock mate with twenty females and two to three males in a pen. So don’t get head strong over this issue.

Now you repeat this over again as I stated in the beginning of the article. Put the pen number on the egg hatch those in separate incubators or in pedigree wire baskets. Toes punch your chicks and ID them as soon as they hatch and watch the chicks in the brooder box for the first two to three weeks and ID these chicks for fast feather and early development. Watch your roosters when they start to crow and put down on a 5x7 card their band number and the day they start to crow. Cull out all slow growing and maturing birds as you want vigor and your number one trait, then breed type or shape then egg production then color. \\

Summary: This is a very easy system for the beginner. I use it with my bantams and I only have pair or trio matings hatch about 20 chicks per female and only keep the best chicks that are better than their parents. This way you are breeding them up each season and improving them as if you where scoring them under the old point scoring system used in the 1920. You need to get you an APA standard of perfection and read the good points and bad points for your breed. You need to take the pictures of the standard and make copies of them and put them in a frame and put them in our chicken house so you can look at the pictures in contrast to your birds and one day your mind’s eye in your brain will be able to spot a bird with a trait or a type you are looking for. This is the way to become a master breeder of your favorite breed. You go slowly at first don’t hatch too many chicks that you can’t afford to raise. You must cull hard as you are only keeping two to four females per mating and you are only keeping two males per mating. Go small stay with pairs or trios if you want. Large fowl cost a lot of money to raise and maintain per year. Stay down the middle of the road. Don’t get caught up in fads like leg color or points on a comb. Don’t get caught up in color as your first three to five years you are breeding genes for breed type and high egg production. Also, in doing this you will see improved feather quality and your birds will have tight webbing in their back feathers the shirts on some of the breeds will not drop down to the floor but will be cared high as the picture in the standard of perfection shows you. You can share your surplus birds with others and maybe if you can trust them you can get birds from them later to cross into your closed flock of families but don’t count on it as most people you share your birds with will sin and outcross other strains onto your strain thinking they will hit the jackpot and get a good bird to win with. This is Russian Rullet breeding and it won’t work and before you know it these folks are out of the breed or out of chickens in no time. You alone or a good partner can take a flock of say Black Java large fowl and in three to five years have these birds improved using this method. If you wish to learn how to even speed up this method of super typed Java’s you can use a method called the Hogan Method of breeding which a book was written in the 1920s on the subject. It works as the Buck Eye movement ten years ago was based on this and they took near hatchery typed birds and turned them into wonderful fowl true to the Heritage Breed that they were without crossing and trying to reinvent the breed.

I hope you will take this old method of Rotational Line Breeding which I have used for over twenty years which I learned from a commercial Turkey farmer in Wisconsin. They use it in their farming methods and they can go on forever without crossing new germ plasma into their strain. May the gods in poultry heaven watch over you and keep you from straying away from the successes that they passed onto us during their day on earth into his glory days of Heritage Poultry Farming. Robert Blosl



I killed two birds with one stone. I told you how to breed any breed of large fowl that even a eight grader could undertand and I wrote a article for the Java Clubs first newsletter which they asked me how to do. I could take a scoll bus and grap four of you and we could go across the county and pick out what ever breed you want in the fall and put the birds in the box and use this method to line breed your strain and in five years you will have improved breed up birds and you will have a flock of Heritage Fowl that any one would be proud to own.

Just dont get caught up in one phase like eggs or meat. These chickens you want are dual purpose chickens just like a Short Horn Cow. You have to breed them for meat, eggs and looks and then you have done every one a good job while you where her working on the breed. No buddy wants to get a breed that you say you worked on for ten years and they look like muts. They want something that looks like the breed did thirty to fifty years ago. I hope I painted the picture for you. Now I can go to Wally World and buy something to reward myself.

bob

 

[NotAFarm]

Quote:
Bob, Do you ALWAYS trade the breeders? If you noticed that a particular pen's prodigy were exceptional, would you ever leave that pen together for multiple years? For what reasons would you or wouldn't you? Thanks for some more great information.

 

[KenK]

On the ALBC breed comparison chart, linked to above, I was interested in some of the notes in the "Special "Characteristics" column.

Buckeye - Extra meaty.
Chantecler - Can be eaten at any age.
Deleware - Can be eaten at any age.
Sussex - Good all around table bird, famous for flavor.
Cornish - Superb table qualities, famous for flavor.

It seems fairly evident that any chicken can be eaten at any age but I assume they mean that the Chantecler and Deleware should be "meatier" even when smaller/younger ?

I'm tempted to buy a dozen each hatching eggs from four different breeds/breeders and just see which ones seem better or I like better. Hopefully would have at least a trio to keep and tasty chicken dinners with the rest.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Thank you, Bob! This is exactly what I intended by working four pens. A couple of questions:

1> Do you remember the title of the book that contained the Hogan Method?

2> Do you propose replacing all the females every year with new pullets?

3> What do you think is the minimum stock required to begin this plan? If one's plan is to maintain 4 pens, how does one build up to four pens if one does begin with four separate breding groups?

Thank you for all of your imput.