Farming and Homesteading Heritage Poultry

[shadetech]

Thank you all for the wonderful information. It has been a long time since I last had chickens with many things between then and now. Look forward to getting back into it again for food and fun. Bob, you are amazing, and I look forward to learning much reading your posts.
I understand the reason for concentrating on the improvement of the breed one picks. Economy as it is I look to feed my family and myself and learn as much as possible doing it. Any recommendations on breeds would be appreciated. Partridge or GL Wyandotes are looking good to me right now for a starting breed. I would hate to disappoint a real breeder, so recommendations for source stock would also be helpful. I know none of you like hatchery stock, but it would probably be my best bet for initial source stock to learn on. With Bob's post on improving stock through proper breeding techniques, I may even learn to improve hatchery stock.
Again, thanks to all
henry

 

[Robert Blosl]

Quote:
Some where on this site is a tread that takes you to the book on google or somewhere. I read the book a couple of times(The Call of the Hen by Walter Hogan ) for what I want out of it. It was written to help teach the new farmers in the Heritage days how to breed up white leghorns to lay 300 eggs per year. They did not do that out of a hundred females but it sold books.

http://www.archive.org/stream/callhenscience00hogarich#page/n3/mode/2up



Do you replace the females not if you got a killer strain but you take the breeds that many of you want they are muts today. They have to be breed up. They have lost all thier genetic base from when they once where once a good breed of chickens. I dont think the average person on this web site understands the state of Poutlry that you all wish to own. Its in the toilet. No good breeds left anymore and no buddy will stick with them long enough to learn how to breed them so we can share with others who want them. You cant count on the hatcheries to do it. They want to make eggs and hatch chicks. They dont breed by a stanard they no the average person who buys thier chicks are going to get ride of them or they will die from varmints or poor treatment. But all of us have to start some where.

I have a breeding pen of a white rock pullet which is the best type female I have seen in years. I have her and her mother in a breeding pen. Thats two females. I have her mated to a young cockerl and then when it warms up I am putting in the ckls father a cock bird and he has type that wont quite. So I plan to hatch about 25 to 30 chicks from this pair. I have two other females that are ok but nothing like these two queens. I will then put togeather a family of two from this matting. I will only have two trios per year and breed them and raise about 50 chicks cull very hard and only keep the females and males that have the type that I am looking for. My goal more pullets like the little girl I hatched and raised this year. I hope in two to three years all my females will have the low top line and lift like she has.

I have kept my best hens for up to 7 years. If they are a franchise type female why get rid of them. I am talking about a 95 point female and if you mate her in three years to her grandson or great grandson you may hit the jackpot. In large white rocks I had a hen 7 years old we mated her to her son who was three years old. We got two killer ckls and three pullets from this mating. She died from the extream heat this past summer. But her germ plasma lives on.

When I wrote this article its like getting started with so so chickens like black javas or buff rocks that score about 92 points. You must breed them up to get better birds remember most of these muts cant hardly lay many eggs. They are loose feathered just not good chickens.

Now if you get some Light Brahmas from Charlie Voda from Minn. You might breed them differently. There are other methods to line breeding. If I get a killer pullet like I got this year and I get a ckl that is a nock out I will mate this ckl back to this pullet next year. Then I will hatch another ckl from that matting and cros that ckl back to his mother again. This is inbreeding but I dont worry about lack of egg production or hatchability a I breed first for vigor. I do this for say three to four years then I find me anothe killer bird from a different family and do it all over again. Always breeding them up. bob

 

[Robert Blosl]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/u … 010008.jpg

http://www.albc-usa.org/documents/ALBCchicken_assessment-3.pdf
http://www.crainsrunranch.com/Buckeye_Chickens.php
http://www.archive.org/stream/callhenscience00hogarich/callhenscience00hogarich_djvu.txt

http://www.archive.org/stream/callhenscience00hogarich#page/n3/mode/2up

The book is called the call of the hen by Walter Hogan. 1912 or there abouts.

This link should get you to read some of the meat and potatoes of the book.
Some cull and weigh their birds at age 16 weeks and measure the girth the skull ext.
Once you start raising your birds and learning how they look as young chicks you will be surprised how you will be able to see the super stars. I had a friend who raised dark Cornish and he could spot the leader of a pack of say 11 chicks. He would keep this chick and sell the other ten for $100 as started chicks he told me once a chick gets out in front most of the time the others can never catch up and this will be the super chick of the year. You will learn how to check for fast feathering and early development as time goes on. I have come to the conclusion every time I start a new breed it takes me about three years to get it down pat. I am now on my third year with white leghorns. I can spot them right away and I can spot the birds with that old fashion Schilling leghorn top line.
I have done the same with the call ducks. I have not been able to learn when they hatch by looking at their skulls but at about two months of age I can spot the ones I want with the bull necks. I am always trying each year to build the neck another quarter of a inch to where I can get the necks on the drakes to be about 4 inches. It is a slow process but it can be done. It took me three years of inbreeding my red bantams to get the females to have the top line like my old large fowl use to have. Remember it took me 20 years to shrink down a large fowl Rhode Island Red to a bantam. It took me three years to get my male line to turn into a female line. I just breed my best male back to his daughters for three years. I have a chart on this method and will post it if I have it in this lap top. It is the easiest way to fix a trait you are trying to improve. Again the secret is vigor. If you a skirmish about inbreeding and worried you are going to get poor this and poor that don’t do it. Go with something simpler. But if you have a outcross like I do you have vigor as you crossed bantam blood onto large fowl blood and when you have such a drastic cross you can do things that other breeds can’t do. Hope this helps the person who sent me a personal message. Now hatch what you have raised and then raise them up and worry about what you will keep this fall. You will learn a lot in this time period if you read these Heritage treads as we are really getting down to brass tacks on what it takes to be a good Heritage Breeder. There are some other threads that showed up on the subject of hogan and breeding on google. Get with some of the pioneers with Buckeyes these folks are great students of breeding. They get my award for the past ten years of taking a chicken that every buddy wished they had and now have such a bird.

My point to you Home Steaders who want to take a grand old breed is to use thier methods. If you want a dual purpose breed such as a Java or a Dominique or barred plymouth rock breed is to do what you suppose to be doing and not what you want it to be. You are no different than a judge who says I like a big big Rhode Island Red. He likes big Rhode Island Reds and will place these big muts first and the birds that are standard weight or a pound over that lay 190 eggs per year loose under his eye. If you judge you judge by the law or the words of the standard. If you are a Heritage Breeder you breed by the Standard and die by the Standard if you dont you will never be able to obtain the breed that you are trying to improve. I hope I make this clear if you dont many will not want your birds as they are not what they want and if they ask me where they can get a start I have to send them to the folks that I feel are breeding them the way they should be. We have a long way to go to get these old breeds half way to what they once where but we have to start where we are with what we have.

This is the chart and method I used to inbreed or line breed my Rhode Island Red Bantam females to get the top line I wanted.
This year I am going to breed the best two typed females with the sire of the male I have pictured below my name. He is five years old and
I hope to inbreed him to the best female for two or three years if he lives that long.


Here are some of the breeders I have pictures of for this years breeding pens that I will put togeather using my method of line breeding. All of them will be used in just two familys per breed.
TheBuff Brahma male is great bird that is a result of a great male from a cock bird that one big four or five years ago. This male just poped up and showed up as good as his sire. He is being breed to three of his daughters and then latter in the spring to two of my other pen two females. They are distant cousins from this great old cock bird from four years ago. I will only have about two males and two pullets for next years mating per breeding pen or about four males and eight females toal.
The white leghorns are four years of breeing and working on a female line will have again two males and two females per family or a total of eight birds.

The White Rock male is a picture taken about five years ago as a young ckl that I gave to a freind in Penn and then had him sent him back down here last year when I ran out of males and he was in with his aunts and the seven year old mother. He had a great head and the best tail I ever produced just a low top line. But as a three year old his top line is just about standard in degree lift. All ready as of Feb lst have 75 chicks hatched from this family from this male and his ckls and pulllets. A lesson learned by me is we are putting to much lift on our rocks today and getting them way off in the top line a ckl needs a lower top line than the standard calls for in this strain and then as a cock bird his tail will be right on the money. Of course Schiling said the pictures that he made are one and a half year old birds so a ckl and a pullet should look different.
Hope this helps you Mike. bob

 

[RareBreedFancier]

Thank you Bob!

That breeding pen info is brilliant! So simple too. I have read about similar systems but none I liked as much as that. The small numbers of females I think is good. Many things I've read talk about around a dozen females in a pen and it would really make sense to cull down to just the best. I had hoped to keep breeder numbers down to 20 - 30 birds and that would be easily achievable with that system even counting the bachelor pen of spare roos.

Smaller numbers also makes planning my pens so much easier. I want pens I can move around the paddock so smaller pens are much easier to deal with.

Now back to the problem of finding starter birds... Don't suppose you have a way to breed up from a pair or trio? I may have to wait for spring to buy in hatching eggs.

 

[Robert Blosl]

Quote:
Yes there is a way and I just got done reading Walter Hogans book on line and he talked about I K Feltch a old timer like him who started a method of line breeding with a pair or a trio.
In a way that is what I will do with the trio of White Rock Bantams I have. I have the mother and the super daughter. You will have say the mother in pen one and the daughter in pen two.
Then you have a male the ckl and the cock bird.

The next year you mate the best male to the hen and the best pullet to her sire.
Then in year three you have to use his chart. It is somewhat confusing and gives me vertigo when I read it.

I am lucky I am not starting with so so birds. All my white rocks score very high and I just got to try to keep getting them to that level I was reading Hogans book and I think one of the key words is prepotency can the parents pass on the good traits to the offspring. I have done it with the Rhode Island Red bantams. I have in breed them to the point that this year in three shows the females of this line beat the males. Three years ago these females had top lines like the current red bantams have today like a Plymouth rock or a new Hampshire bantam. I have got the prepontecy of the females to have flat top lines. My job is to fix these traits and try to keep them going down the middle of the road with not wondering to high or to low.

I enjoyed reading Hogans book again its been about 15 years since I read it. The computer is a wonderfully thing and so many of the books I read at Vet Library's or on library loan are now on the computer to read.

For the people who want to know about the book on open poultry houses goggle Dr. Prince Woods into your search engine. I found the book on Amazon for about $20.
I have patterned my buildings to a degree after his book which I read when living in Knoxville Tenn. The Vet Library there had about 500 books and I thought I had died and went to heaven. Not a journal in the building on R I Reds. Had to do some hard searching to read all of them which I ended up owing all of them at one time.

Read Mr. Hogans book and I think he gives me the same view why so many fail in Poultry in the past 30 years. It was the same in the early 1900 as people would not listen or learn. If any of you where in 4H judging like I was in Washington state this finger method for the vent and capacity was how we won the champion 4H judging team when I was a kid. The reasons that I was though by my 4H agent blew smoke out of the judges ears. What he taught us what to say or what they wanted to hear helped me in my 40 years career in the health care field. I use it even today as I try to get old senior citizens to take their meds at night. I have got so many closes to get them to say yes totaking thier pills when they dont want to its funny.

Thank god I had a 4H agent like I did as a boy. Off to bed and will count little sheep as I drift off to sleep. Thanks for the good messages you sent me tonight I hoped I helped some of you out there. You all are becoming such good students of the craft of breeding poultry. bob

http://holderreadfarm.com/photogallery/african_page/african_page.htm
http://holderreadfarm.com/photogallery/brown_chinese_page/brown_chinese_page.htm

http://openlibrary.org/search?publisher_facet=Reliable poultry journal publishing company
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/fp.php?pid=7240676
dr prince woods book open poultry houses
http://www.amazon.com/Fresh-Air-Pou...097217706X/ref=nosim?tag=robertplamondon#noop
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/fp.php?pid=7240676
https://www.backyardchickens.com/wi...dchickens.com/wiki/index.php?title=Black_Java


check out where I have been tonight.

 

[RareBreedFancier]

Thank you again Bob!

Can you link me to that chart you mentioned please? I would love to look at it.

Unfortunately my birds aren't super examples of their breed but I have to start somewhere.

I will keep trying to find better, especially a male, he has more faults than the females. I will certainly be breeding lots and culling hard.

EDIT: Hmmm I thought I found the right book but I can't find that chart.

 

[biomistake]

I saw the Mr woods reference and hit google hard and came up with the 1912 version which can be downloaded. Here is the link

http://books.google.com/books?id=o0...FAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=dr prince woods&f=false

I have been learning so much from this thread and the others. I am making my pens now to start up a 2 pen breeding system and should be able to have a 4 pen system by next year. I also recommend to everyone the old books on poultry. They have opened my mind and helped me see things in a different light on how to raise heritage fowl. I am talking about my chickens turkeys and ducks. Its amazing the things they did back then. Thank you again for sharing your expertise on this thread.

 

[Robert Blosl]

Isaac Kimbal Felche

The first book on this address has the chart. I cannot at this time print out the chart by its self but maybe some of you can do it and post it.
Isaac Felche wrote a book called Poultry Culture type this in your search engine or on the site that has these old poultry books on there. If you hit these address you should have hours of reading to enjoy. Feltch was the father of Poultry Husbandry in the late years of the 1880s. You should learn a few secrets from his books and articles to help you improve the breed you wish to improve. bob

http://books.google.com/books?id=h4...ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=I K Felch&f=false

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=bk...&aql=&oq=I+K+Feltch&pbx=1&fp=f495413a6954d123
http://books.google.com/books?id=_L...d=0CC4Q6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=I K Felch&f=false

 

[biomistake]

 

[biomistake]

Ok it worked... These books are saved as images in pdf format so they are not really txt. You have to use your picture editing program to save them as a .jpg and edit them down to size. I had to stop and go stupidvise a poultry pen being built so it took a little longer for me to get it up.