Heritage Large Fowl - Phase II

[Yellow House Farm]

I was going to let this go but this type of comment, along with a lot of others on this thread, is just mean spirited. Now I remember why I stayed away from this site for several years.

No, it is not mean-spirited. It is a statement that approaches natural things in a way different than you do apparently. It's a very country view, one that I understand completely because I come from a country-view. People say the silliest things on here sometimes with their anthropomorphized views regarding their cocks' abilities to defend, but, as clearly stated, a raccoon is an extremely tenacious and capable killing machine, and no chicken is going to take one out or even drive one off.

If what you're saying is that you like to have a mental dialogue in which you pretend things about animals to suit your imagination, that's great. However, one could argue that it is mean-spirited to come here and pass judgment on people who, raised on a farm with a rather natural bent have no need to mix stories or sweeten it up for bambi.

A coon when it catches a chicken, pins it down and starts chewing at its crop, pulling out bits and shredding it as it goes. The bird is still quite alive through the process. Thank goodness 1) that they're in shock and 2) that they're not very sentient. People who like to tell themselves stories about how their chickens love them, etc. are ignoring that the very gift of nature is that their chickens actually do not love them, that they are actually not that bright, that they are actually adapted to die fast and well so that the can feed quite a few things on the food chain.

Coons are coons; they do what coons do.

If this type of dialogue is offensive to you. That is fine; we are all permitted our idiosyncrasies. You're certainly not "right", though. If this dialogue is not to your liking simply absent yourself from the thread; it is, however, not acceptable for you to come here and name call for the benefit of your own point of view.

 

[Vamvakas]

You're just not familiar with the kind of chickens BYCers own. Why people here have "ROOS" that fight off hawks, foxes, eagles, dogs, coons, bears, tigers, T rexes,alien invaders & communists. Granted, the ordinary sort of chickens you're used to can't do any of that but we're talking about BYC chickens.

You forgot to mention Godzilla..

 

[3riverschick]

You forgot to mention Godzilla..

I wanna go see that movie! I wonder if Godzilla will destroy the Chrysler Building again ?!?!

 

[NYREDS]

You forgot to mention Godzilla..

That's just crazy. No chicken can fight off Godzilla. I was being realistic but you're just being ridiculous.

 

[gjensen]

LOL. Fight off the bears, but the roo better be gentle with the girls. And be quiet.

 

[NYREDS]

LOL. Fight off the bears, but the roo better be gentle with the girls. And be quiet.

That goes without saying.

 

[Baybrio]

Have you read the thread which preceded that post? The gentleman about whose poultry the question arose posted on another BYC thread
that he had a rooster who he used for predator protection. The question arose how big of a predator could a rooster protect the farm from?
Hellbender has a lot of experience hunting 'coons in the West Virginia wilds. The post you object to was his weigh-in on the subject.
He has the experience to make that statement. Nothing mean spirited about it.
Best Regards,
Karen

Hey Karen,

You are right, I reread the post I quoted, there was nothing in Hellbenders post that was mean spirited. It just seemed like I read about five posts making fun of the women with the Legacy chickens. I like her chickens. I can see a chicken chasing a not too determined raccoon away. Heck, I've seen a chicken chase a full grown man around a yard.

NyReds, I did just see my smallest hen peck my heifers nose when the heifer got a little too close, now my ROO wouldn't do that, but my hens, that's another story.

So apologies all. I'll go back under my rock and learn to read more carefully before I post.

 

[Beekissed]

Not necessarily making fun, but skeptical of a chicken with a 6 ft. wing span? You bet I am. Seems we would have seen or heard of that and I see nothing on the web about such a breed or chicken at all. Combine that with the rigged pics and stories of predators fought off and I smell a rat..don't like to see impressionable folks get taken in by such pish posh. If she's on the up and up, some good, clear pics and breed history would be appropriate, with some history on what breeds have been used to produce this type of chicken, how many years have went into developing it and more believable stories of their capabilities.

It's not mean spirited to call a spade a spade....the pics and the stories are not believable, nor are they probable. We have many, many years of chicken experience on this thread and they travel quite a bit to poultry shows, talk to other poultry fanciers, read extensively about poultry and are quite knowledgeable about breeds~I'm thinking if this were a known phenomenon, they would have heard something by now.

 

[Lacy Blues]

Hey Karen,

You are right, I reread the post I quoted, there was nothing in Hellbenders post that was mean spirited. It just seemed like I read about five posts making fun of the women with the Legacy chickens. I like her chickens. I can see a chicken chasing a not too determined raccoon away. Heck, I've seen a chicken chase a full grown man around a yard.

NyReds, I did just see my smallest hen peck my heifers nose when the heifer got a little too close, now my ROO wouldn't do that, but my hens, that's another story.

So apologies all. I'll go back under my rock and learn to read more carefully before I post.

There is no such thing as a "not too determined raccoon." If they cannot get to your bird to eat its crop out, they'll reach through the wire and pull its head off.

A man is not a raccoon. In fact, the only reason man is on the top of the food chain is because we have fashioned guns to defend ourselves with.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Hey Karen,

You are right, I reread the post I quoted, there was nothing in Hellbenders post that was mean spirited. It just seemed like I read about five posts making fun of the women with the Legacy chickens. I like her chickens. I can see a chicken chasing a not too determined raccoon away. Heck, I've seen a chicken chase a full grown man around a yard.

NyReds, I did just see my smallest hen peck my heifers nose when the heifer got a little too close, now my ROO wouldn't do that, but my hens, that's another story.

So apologies all. I'll go back under my rock and learn to read more carefully before I post.

So, Baybrio, in a nutshell, this thread is about APA/ABA poultry. In this culture, breed is defined by shape as put forth by the Standard of Perfection. Although we do recognize that there are some bona fide breeds not yet recognized by the APA/ABA for mere reasons that they have not been popularized sufficiently here and have yet to go through the necessary process for APA/ABA recognition, we also recognize that, along side the emergent culture of neo-chicken-philes, there is also a culture of introducing the "next best thing" that very frequently is naught but a scam. An easy half or more of the newly imported fads (which incidently are only popular among non-APA/ABA folks because you couldn't get one of us to fall for that bologna to save your life) are nothing more than early stage color projects, easily recreated here in one or two season with a little genetic knowledge: the silly "Orpingtons " and "Brahmas" for example. Others are regional landraces brought in from Europe that are more or less the "Barnyard Bantams" of my youth: Swedish Flower Hens, Icelandics, etc... one look at them shows them to be unrefined and genetically unstable--what we would consider certainly unworthy of being called a breed. Whatever these "Legacy" birds are, they're not a breed and they're certainly not old. Either they're the backyard project of a neophyte who's overly enthusiastic about their project, and posting them because of sheer, if under-informed, excitement, OR, in the event that they're trying to sell them and make money off of them, they're a scam, and folks should know that they're being duped.

One of the great advantages to this thread on BYC is that people can come here and get some fairly substantiated and defensible information; so that they don't fall into the trap of the newest fad that leads to nowhere and does nothing to advance poultry or the owners knowledge thereof. In short, if we laugh, it is so that we do not cry.

Edited to add: One of the several advantages to the Standard is that it protects buyers. Using the Standard, a buyer can guage quality of stock and know whether or not he/she is receiving stock of quality or if they're receiving junk. Incidentally, the entire hatchery industry is based on selling birds of a certain color as opposed to a certain shape. As a result, very little effort needs to be put into selecting for breed-typical qualities, because they've convinced an uninformed populace that it is "color" that makes the breed. Consequently, they make money with birds of ridiculously poor quality. If folks were more concerned with the "Orpington-ness" of their birds rather than their "Buff-ness" hatcheries would have to step up and produce something worth owning, but because people are content to buy a cheap bird of low breeding with an approximated pattern to run around their garden, the result is a boom of birds of pessimal quality all around the country that do absolutely nothing to preserve or promote real specimens of the breed.