Iowa Blue breeders

[jakobvanschagen]

I have checked Egg Bay, Ideal, and Sandhill and it looks like they are all sold out for this year. Looking to get an order of "true" Iowa Blues. I have heard Ideal got their original stock from Sandhill and crossed some outside blood into them. Does anyone know if there is any truth to this? Thanks for any info you can provide me.

 

[chickenCrazies]

the post before yours was from 2011...

yah.... just saw that. still.. any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

[shearches]

Sounds like a great plan!! That way we can work on type to get it even!!

 

[shearches]

I didn’t know you were ordering from Ideal too! It will be very interesting to see the differences if you can get the Sandhill ones as well.

 

[jakobvanschagen]

Anyone? Help!

 

[sammileah]

i'm looking too if i find any i'll let you know

 

[sjcolorwing]

I purchased some Iowa blues from Brown Egg Layers in Calif.
11pullets and 3 roosters------ 'only one pullet is any good and she still needs some work. One of the 3 roosters was overly marked and green yellow instead of silver. Most of the pullets had poor silver necks, more yellow green and lots of mossy (brown pepper in the feathers, making them very dull black. Only one hen is silver and still has a few mossy feathers with to much brown peppering. If the breed as a whole is like this it needs some help.. I am going to do an outcross to try to clean the best of what I have up. Mossy is suppose to be caused by the columbian gene, maybe even Db causes this. Some as chicks were brownish, and showed that some were Extended black and some birchen. Sandhills post on them suggests they need some help with thier stock. Some serious efforts need to be done to clean up the feather color genetics on them , that should help the breed quite a bit. I am going to try to just get the columbian gene out and keep just the birchen that dont show brown as chicks and select against the extended black also. Its hard to tell the differance as the birchen pattern will show on the extended blacks. But the brown peppering is pretty ugly on the pullets. That is what probably caused the poor color on the one rooster. Well see what can be raised up next year or this fall. I have some chicks that should help next yr. not sure I have a option to cross in this fall.

 

[clacasse88]

Quote:
I'd be interested to know the answer to this as I ordered a standard assortment of breeds from Ideal & received 10 Iowa Blue S/R. They actually had the invoice itemized as to what was shipped, and it included all rare breeds. So any info. would be great to know.

 

[sjcolorwing]

Well the breed is unrecognized by the APA . So in many respects they are open game. The only thing to do is to find some well colored birchens and cross in and retain the best. Or hatch out a large number and cull heavy with the ones you have purchased. Try to find out what the original creation was about and try to make a standard out of that. The bottom line is they have just gotten mishandled and some effort needs to be made to get some good ones stableized to help promote them.
Contact who you got the bird from and see what the story is on thier stock.

 

[chickensducks&agoose]

Ideal has them available now.