Hello! and welcome to the OEGB thread.

[jockeyeba]

Thanks everyone

Owner of 5 TB racehorses, 1 QH, 1 Longhorn cross heifer, 2 goats, 10 Painted Desert sheep, 1 housedog, 2 housecats, several outside cats, 1 Japanese Bantam pullet, 24 American Games & 2- 5 month old OEGB roos......​

 

[RedBugPoultry]

Here's my dumb question of the week--I hear you talking Hen Line with roosters. Does this mean that a particular rooster was bred to improve a person's hens? If so then once you get a hen from that breeding do you have to have a different quality rooster to breed to it to improve your Rooster Line or is that a totally different project? Will you ever get really nice marked roosters from a Hen Line rooster or just improve your hens? I am trying to follow this stuff!

 

[GotGame]

Ok, I will attempt to explain this. A hen line is a line of birds that have been bred specifically to proudce excellent hens. A henline rooster will likely have few color defects, that helps to accentuate color in the hens. Same goes for a cockline, the hens would be allowed to have a few color defects, as they will accentuate certain color qualities you want to see in your males. On a strong henline, you will see the rooster having a little shorter leg, shorter in the back and a broader breast. Using this kind of bird will produce a better percentage of hens that are the type judges like to see. While the roosters like this are useless normally for showing, they are priceless to folks who want to produce superior hens. It is possible to breed for both sexes to come out excellent from the same brood pen but it takes a little longer to get there if you are making your own brood pen. Jarvis can probably explain it better.

 

[sjarvis00]

Quote:
OK, it would be ver helpfull if you would pick a color I can explain more that way.

But in short,
male line birds. Breed for exhibition males only. The hens / pullets are either breeders or culled they have no other purpose.
Female line birds are bred solely for exhibition hens / pullets and teh males other than breeding have no purpose.

Male Line males are closest to the standard of Perfection in color for the variety and Type.
The females will be larger, longer backed slighty more upright in body carriage with a wider flatter breast.
Wing carriage should be high with wings moderately longer in length that you would like a good hen.
Tail primaries shoud be longer, broader and somewhat disproportional to body size, with top feather being slightly concave and providing the appearance of short male sickle feather.

Female Line: females closest to standard and bred solely for exhibition females
Males are short legged, short backed, very broad and heavy breasted almost pidgeon breasted. Most will have the body size slightly larger than a mature hen, tails will be short, carried high, short sickle and very heavy broad head. Combs should not be dubbed as you want to use males showing less than 1 inch of total comb height, 4 points and a blade. with comb points very evenly placed on the comb.

The above descibes double mated lines, (Male line and Female line). You should never cross the two lines as you will get 100% culls and nothing you will want to be seen.

Single Mated lines are quite common and actually when carefully planned produce fewer culls. from a single mated line you can expect good females and good males from a single brood pen. This is more common with varieties that the male and female are teh same color and pattern, such as all your self colored birds (Black, Blue, white) and birds where the male and female share the same color placement and pattern such as birchen, brown red, columbian. You can single mate duckwing varieties but it is very difficult to get show quality specimens of Parti-colored birds that way.

Hope that explantion helps.

 

[RedBugPoultry]

Quote:
OK, it would be ver helpfull if you would pick a color I can explain more that way.

But in short,
male line birds. Breed for exhibition males only. The hens / pullets are either breeders or culled they have no other purpose.
Female line birds are bred solely for exhibition hens / pullets and teh males other than breeding have no purpose.

Male Line males are closest to the standard of Perfection in color for the variety and Type.
The females will be larger, longer backed slighty more upright in body carriage with a wider flatter breast.
Wing carriage should be high with wings moderately longer in length that you would like a good hen.
Tail primaries shoud be longer, broader and somewhat disproportional to body size, with top feather being slightly concave and providing the appearance of short male sickle feather.

Female Line: females closest to standard and bred solely for exhibition females
Males are short legged, short backed, very broad and heavy breasted almost pidgeon breasted. Most will have the body size slightly larger than a mature hen, tails will be short, carried high, short sickle and very heavy broad head. Combs should not be dubbed as you want to use males showing less than 1 inch of total comb height, 4 points and a blade. with comb points very evenly placed on the comb.

The above descibes double mated lines, (Male line and Female line). You should never cross the two lines as you will get 100% culls and nothing you will want to be seen.

Single Mated lines are quite common and actually when carefully planned produce fewer culls. from a single mated line you can expect good females and good males from a single brood pen. This is more common with varieties that the male and female are teh same color and pattern, such as all your self colored birds (Black, Blue, white) and birds where the male and female share the same color placement and pattern such as birchen, brown red, columbian. You can single mate duckwing varieties but it is very difficult to get show quality specimens of Parti-colored birds that way.

Hope that explantion helps.

Thank you both for your time on that and yes, it does help! This is what led to my question(that and watching this thread for a while)--I purchased these birds below as a trio and showed this picture on here not long ago. I believe you made the comment that my rooster looked to be a hen line bird. Can you tell from these picture if these are going to be good hens for this rooster and what should I be looking at? I really love the BB Red colors and want to understand what to look for!

I was just looking and you can not see the bays of his wings--not sure if that is important for this subject. I now understand he has a good deal of black in his saddle and wing bows(not sure if all that is correct). He does have short legs....

 

[milliefleur]

i have a some OEGB that i'm have, they aren't show quality but they are freindly and nice to have around. i'm planning to work on getting some show quality in the mille fleur coloring at some point in time, but they aren't laying yet and they are just pets for know. i also have a hen the 2nd pic not shore her color thought maybe lemon blue, but legs aren't black, beak has a little black. then i also have a rooster and 2 hens not shore if they are oegb or what they are. i think they are but not shore on color need a little help.

 

[GotGame]

Quote:
Well, that second pic does look to be a lemon blue, but it has a muff, so a lemon blue d'anver? Not sure if thats a recognized color or not. The third pic, you have a blue red, or blue wheaten sport rooster, the hen on the left looks to be a wheaten, and the hen on the right maybe a silver ginger? Would need better pictures on the two hens to be sure.

 

[milliefleur]

thanks i will get some better pics tomorrow and post them, i did have a d'uccle rooster free ranging for a little while and i hatched her out of a hen that was free ranging as well.
Quote:
Well, that second pic does look to be a lemon blue, but it has a muff, so a lemon blue d'anver? Not sure if thats a recognized color or not. The third pic, you have a blue red, or blue wheaten sport rooster, the hen on the left looks to be a wheaten, and the hen on the right maybe a silver ginger? Would need better pictures on the two hens to be sure.

 

[sjarvis00]

Quote:
Well, that second pic does look to be a lemon blue, but it has a muff, so a lemon blue d'anver? Not sure if thats a recognized color or not. The third pic, you have a blue red, or blue wheaten sport rooster, the hen on the left looks to be a wheaten, and the hen on the right maybe a silver ginger? Would need better pictures on the two hens to be sure.

I would have guessed Blue Quial D'anver. It is very doubtfull she is from a D'uccle as the feather legged gene is dominant and would have produced some leg feathering even of one parent was not feather legged.
Gotgame, I believe you are correct on the two other hens.

 

[GotGame]

Quote:
Well, that second pic does look to be a lemon blue, but it has a muff, so a lemon blue d'anver? Not sure if thats a recognized color or not. The third pic, you have a blue red, or blue wheaten sport rooster, the hen on the left looks to be a wheaten, and the hen on the right maybe a silver ginger? Would need better pictures on the two hens to be sure.

I would have guessed Blue Quial D'anver. It is very doubtfull she is from a D'uccle as the feather legged gene is dominant and would have produced some leg feathering even of one parent was not feather legged.
Gotgame, I believe you are correct on the two other hens.

I am not sure she is all danver, but she doesnt look to be a blue quail d'anver. I am guessing maybe an oegb/danver cross, maybe off a lemon blue cock? Here is a blue quail danver.