About the idea of some old timer with a flock of Iowa Blues just hanging around waiting discovery.......I believe it's definately possible. Since January I've hunted down 11 leads but so far have not been successful in locating original stock. So, I keep digging. The cool thing is that everytime I find someone, although they don't have birds, they do have memories/stories/pictures, etc. So it hasn't been all for naught!
Thanks for the kind words Kari and Dan! For others on the site, here's a list of some of my projects.
Setting up a breed brochure with the SPPA
Connecting with Feathersite to update the Iowa Blue infor/pics.
Looks like we'll Backyard Poultry is planning on doing a breed focus on the Iowa Blue tentatively in July/August
Discussing the process details to get the Iowa Blue admitted into the Slow Food's Ark of Taste (this can prove quite difficult and may take some time to get all of our ducks in a row).
Just completed a 49 page document called History and Characteristics of the Iowa Blue to document in one locations everything we know about the Iowa Blue.
I wanted to get the process details for SOP admittance hammered out. Kari mentioned that she'd be willing to head that up and I'm hopeful she'll have those details for our upcoming meeting.
Got a lot of ideas brewing for breed promotion with a breed club booth at the Eastern Iowa Poultry Association show for next year's show.
Connecting with Glenn Drowns again the end of June begining of July to learn more about his extensive involvement with the breed and squeeze out as many details as I can out of him.
Last night our power went out from 3:50-6:40am. We were just completing a hatch of mixed old english game bantams, but we got 37 of the 40 eggs hatched before the power gave out.
However, my other incubator had a clutch of 12 IB eggs which are due in three days and 16 eggs I just picked up from Kari yesterday. But, both my incubators are dickeys and they are quite tall. So, I stuck an oil lamb without the chimney at the bottom of my incubator with the IB eggs, and I pleased to report that the eggs expereinced a simple cool down similar to an egg roll cool down. They maybe spend 15 minutes under the 99.5 degrees! I feel very confidant that the eggs had no idea the electricity was off for nearly THREE hours!!!! Whew! Time will tell as to how successful my efforts were. Humidity never dropped below 49% during that short 15 minutes. More storms tonight so, Lord willing, the electricity will stay on. However, I was suprized at how easy it was to stablize the temp and humidity with an oil lamb. after about 20 ish minutes to adjusting the wick, I was able to stablize the temp/humidity at an even 100.2/52% for over two ours straight! Intersting huh?
Ok, I've got some pics of my Sandhill chicks, I'll post them right away.
