Heritage Large Fowl - Phase II

[fowlman01]

Yes, it is! I have a notebook on each pen where I record fertility (egg count % based on candling), hatch rates (male/female and actual number that were successful), health and vigor of the birds in each pen, reasons for culling, and pictures of each breeder for that pen with a description of strengths and weaknesses according to the SOP. I also keep a diary of weather conditions which correlate with the impact on the individual pen records.
My sister's family is involved in genome research (Hunkapiller) so there have been long discussions on research and record keeping. ...but that's part of the fun for me...call me anal or crazy.

As long as you are having fun....that's all that really counts.

Walt

 

[Lacy Blues]

Yes, it is! I have a notebook on each pen where I record fertility (egg count % based on candling), hatch rates (male/female and actual number that were successful), health and vigor of the birds in each pen, reasons for culling, and pictures of each breeder for that pen with a description of strengths and weaknesses according to the SOP. I also keep a diary of weather conditions which correlate with the impact on the individual pen records.
My sister's family is involved in genome research (Hunkapiller) so there have been long discussions on research and record keeping. ...but that's part of the fun for me...call me anal or crazy.

A notebook for each pen... V8 moment! Why didn't I think of that?

Recording the weather in those booklets is also a good idea... you can tell how they are affected. I think I would probably only record the extremes. I have booklets but all the records are put in there together. Sometimes when I'm looking for a particular note I made, it can be pretty hard to find. This is a great idea! Thanks NanaKat.

One project is good enough for me right now. Whatever else I would do would subtract from the other. I picture adding back another once I feel established with what I have. (and have some personal challenges improved) It is kind of two projects in one anyways. I do not want to fail and it is a daunting task.

With quantity, I think I can make good quick progress in the next couple years. I think it will get more difficult after that. From what playing around that I have done, it seams that the initial progress is often easier than when you start looking more at the details. Looking at it like that, I may have to remain focused on one for some time. In other words, it takes as much or more effort to work on little things as it does the big things.

It is one thing to maintain something and another to rebuild something.

Guess it depends on priorities. If you are not making the progress that you think you should with your priority, maybe there is too much else going on. I think we should have some type of time consideration in this. It does matter. A lot of us are not especially young. We are not here forever. What do we want to have accomplished and leave behind? It would be nice to leave a positive contribution behind. That is what kicking the can down the road is. Leaving something behind that is worth continuing with.

Right now, I am excited about seeing what comes this year.

I'm with you George... racing the clock.

Got three more breed pens set up yesterday, including two large fowl pens and that will be the extent of my large fowl breeding project this year. I only have two males left that are past their first year. After last November, they aren't necessarily the ones I would have picked to cull down to, but it is what it is. Next year will tell whether I made the right mate choices for them. I'm focusing on size and feather quality. Of course type will be a first consideration and then color/strength of pattern too.

 

[RedRidge]

Yes, it is! I have a notebook on each pen where I record fertility (egg count % based on candling), hatch rates (male/female and actual number that were successful), health and vigor of the birds in each pen, reasons for culling, and pictures of each breeder for that pen with a description of strengths and weaknesses according to the SOP. I also keep a diary of weather conditions which correlate with the impact on the individual pen records.

My sister's family is involved in genome research (Hunkapiller) so there have been long discussions on research and record keeping. ...but that's part of the fun for me...call me anal or crazy.

As long as you are having fun....that's all that really counts.

Walt

Excel is your friend!
All breeding pens and egg collection cartons are color coordinated. Crayons in the same colors mark the eggs.
Then those same colors are used to track on the charts in excel which calculate automatically the laying & hatching rates for individual pens and each breed as a whole creating monthly and annual reports automatically.

Strips of vet wrap (yes in the same corresponding colors) mark the chicks according to pen (until toe punching is done) and special extra colors to represent various chick down colors and patterns on the F1s, F2s, Etc.

A complication arose this year with one trio when I discovered a consistent laying pattern in 2 different places in that pen. So I modified the spreadsheet for that pen to track the stats (and chicks) for those 2 hens separately. Apparently my animals feel the need to keep me on my toes.

 

[Lacy Blues]

Excel is your friend!
All breeding pens and egg collection cartons are color coordinated. Crayons in the same colors mark the eggs.
Then those same colors are used to track on the charts in excel which calculate automatically the laying & hatching rates for individual pens and each breed as a whole creating monthly and annual reports automatically.

Strips of vet wrap (yes in the same corresponding colors) mark the chicks according to pen (until toe punching is done) and special extra colors to represent various chick down colors and patterns on the F1s, F2s, Etc.

A complication arose this year with one trio when I discovered a consistent laying pattern in 2 different places in that pen. So I modified the spreadsheet for that pen to track the stats (and chicks) for those 2 hens separately. Apparently my animals feel the need to keep me on my toes.

Holy smokes! Knowing me, I'd get going with one color and forget to change it! Those are some good ideas though.

 

[MagicChicken]

This has been my first season attempting to breed anything, other than random hatching. I started last January with 25 chicks. It has been an eye-opening learning experience and I am reorganizing my breeding priorities for next year.

The first issue was humidity problems in the incubator. In my test runs the incubator had been half full, and humidity was within bounds. Hatch rates of fertile test eggs were around 90% so I thought all was good. Once I had the incubator full it was a different story. The humidity spiked, and it stayed high. It took two weeks to straighten out my full-incubator technique and the high humidity adversely affected two batches of eggs. Finally got the humidity stable when the latch broke on the incubator door. Sigh. The bungee cord closure I've got on it now is working fairly well but it took another couple of weeks to tweak the system and stabilize things again. Now my hatching season is winding down, because I need to have the chicks out of the brooder before the heat hits in April. The 100 degree heat seems to come earlier every year. I've managed to hatch out only 16 chicks (not counting two culls), and have two more sets of eggs in the incubator. Next year I will try again with a different incubator.

I had set up individual breeding pens so I could breed complementary pairs and keep close track of who was producing what.

The hen I most wanted to breed from because of her size and her long, straight back turns out to lay one egg a week if I'm lucky. Plus her eggs are so small I have to put a narrow collar around them to keep them from slipping through the holes in the turner. And 3/4 of her eggs were clear. The eggs that did develop have not succeeded in hatching. She is no longer considered my "best" hen. Unless she starts laying more soon she will be on the cull list.

My next-best hen in terms of conformation to Standard lays reasonably well. 4-5 eggs/week in winter with no lights. Her eggs develop and some of them have hatched. Her chicks are large and some have had trouble getting out of the shell. A couple of them got themselves mostly unzipped but stayed in the egg. They were clearly struggling to get out. After several hours I broke my own rule and peeled them out. Those two chicks seem fine. I've got them tagged and will keep an eye on them. I don't want birds that have to be helped out of the shell, so these will be back-up birds at best if I don't cull them before next breeding season.

One hen went broody last fall and raised a random batch of eggs I gave her. She was a great mom. She started laying again when her chicks were about 8 weeks old. She is a sturdy bird and lays 5-6 eggs/week in the winter with no lights. I had not originally intended to breed her because she does not conform as well to the Standard as some of the other hens, but after the trouble I was having getting eggs from former Hen #1 I decided to breed this bird anyway. She is a vigorous, productive chicken and I want to maintain those production and broody characteristics in the flock. Her eggs have had the highest hatch rate of any of the hens I've had in the breeding pens. Most of the chicks that successfully hatched were from this hen, regardless of which cock she was paired with. Her bloodline will continue. Type may go backwards for a while. I hope the two cocks I paired her with this season will help correct some of those type issues in her offspring. Only time will tell.

Now I am hoping that some of these chicks turn out to be pullets. Most are clearly cockerels, which makes it hard to improve the flock. I have yet to cull a hen because I only got 8 hens out of the original 25 chicks. The five I haven't tried to breed are in the layer flock as backups.

Just discovered a loose dog - looks like a young Rottweiler - who must be the varmint that removed my main rooster's tail the other day. Today it killed a mourning dove inside my hoop coop. I caught it inside the coop with a face full of feathers. I threw rocks at it and it left the yard - THROUGH the fence. Not over, not under. The fence is made of remesh and that dog went through one of the holes, which are six or seven inches wide. Am now in the market for a pellet gun after I reinforce the fence with smaller wire and plant a bunch of cactus along the fence line. Grrrr....

Sarah

 

[gjensen]

Some thoughts to add.

Single mating. Not a practical option for everyone, but you can track more specifically. Record keeping becomes more about individuals than it does pens. It also adds emphasis to the female side of the mating. In a pen of females, an individual female has less influence. When a superior hen is discovered, it allow to put more emphasis on that female.

I do not believe in the old adage that the female sets type or contributes the size, and the male color. It just does not make genetic sense other than in sex linked genes. The part that I do like about it is the idea gives more value back to the hen. Such as the saying "the secret is in the dam". Well, I believe there is no secret in the dam. I do believe however, that the female side of the equation is devalued when she is one of many. I want to trim my flock down to superior performing hens as much as I do superior performing males. I need to see what a hen has to offer. Not the results getting lost in the shuffle or based on my impressions, which I do not trust.

So when it comes to record keeping, I want it all based on individuals. The offspring and the parents.

I also want values considered for individual characteristics. Something that can add a better sense of the overall value of a bird. Certainly on any given year or in an individual family certain traits would be more valuable than another. I want to be flexible enough to shift, but I want to establish priorities. What I am trying to do is organize the process.
I got this idea re emphasized from someone else, and I intend to follow it to some degree. What I want is my results, process, and assessment to a bit more scientific. I get the intuition and art ideas. At least if intuition is used in a way that is based on knowledge or pass experiences. That is really what is intuition is. Knowledge of evidence that is necessarily on the surface.
Still at the end of the day it is genetics, and genetics is science. None of the results are by chance unless the process is random.

Pictures. I intend to take a lot of pictures. I want to identify tendencies. I want to see what I can cull for early. I want to hatch as many as I can, so I need to clean out as many as I can as soon as I can. I am guessing that after a couple years this will be a handy reference.
I want the pictures to be specific enough to include sections. Both type and color.

I am not suggesting these things. This is a bit more than keeping it simple. Just ideas that I have had. This is a project for me. I have an ideal in mind, and want to figure out how to get there.

So when we discuss records, these are some of the things that I am thinking of.

 

[gjensen]

Sarah, I do not know about the laws out there, but I would have thrown something a bit more convincing that rocks. And something that shot pellets (plural).

 

[hellbender]

I hate to do such things but if I didn't have my protectors, the laws of my state allows lethal action to protect one's self and property. Even if that were not the case, I feel I would be on the moral high ground and would not tolerate any such assault.

 

[MagicChicken]

Sarah, I do not know about the laws out there, but I would have thrown something a bit more convincing that rocks. And something that shot pellets (plural).

I didn't know it was there until I walked into the hoop coop and saw it staring at me from the pop door across the way. I grabbed what was handy. Don't own a gun. Guess I could have thrown eggs, but I didn't think that would help much ;-)

It looked like a big goofy puppy. A happy goofy puppy with dove feathers on its snout. I reinforced the fence with smaller-opening wire to keep it from going through. Tomorrow I will lay a bunch of cactus joints along that fence line to discourage it from digging under. That should keep him at bay for a while. He looks well fed and out for a good time. If he were truly hungry he would have been more determined and he would not have been satisfied with a mouthful of rooster tail feathers the other day. The dog doesn't belong to my immediate neighbors. I think it is coming through their yard into mine.

Maybe I'll get a paintball gun. If the dog goes home splashed with neon pink paint the owners might get the hint. At least they will be annoyed at having to wash paint off the dog. And I won't get arrested for shooting a firearm too close to other houses. They frown on that here, whether you're defending your property or not.

Sarah

 

[ocap]

I didn't know it was there until I walked into the hoop coop and saw it staring at me from the pop door across the way. I grabbed what was handy. Don't own a gun. Guess I could have thrown eggs, but I didn't think that would help much ;-)

It looked like a big goofy puppy. A happy goofy puppy with dove feathers on its snout. I reinforced the fence with smaller-opening wire to keep it from going through. Tomorrow I will lay a bunch of cactus joints along that fence line to discourage it from digging under. That should keep him at bay for a while. He looks well fed and out for a good time. If he were truly hungry he would have been more determined and he would not have been satisfied with a mouthful of rooster tail feathers the other day. The dog doesn't belong to my immediate neighbors. I think it is coming through their yard into mine.

Maybe I'll get a paintball gun. If the dog goes home splashed with neon pink paint the owners might get the hint. At least they will be annoyed at having to wash paint off the dog. And I won't get arrested for shooting a firearm too close to other houses. They frown on that here, whether you're defending your property or not.

Sarah

since you don't own a gun, since it seems to b a puppy, try and call it see if it will come to you and transport it to animal control.