Iowa Blues - Breed thread and discussion

[IowaBlueCurt]

Dan- We too wish you were here for the meeting! If you have any thoughts or ideas about the breed, the club, or the direction you'd like to see the breed take, do reach out to Jim or Kari and they can represent your thoughts at the meeting.

FYI- There is a site called DIYSeattle.com that just posted a long breed focus about the Iowa Blue. The gentleman who runs the site contacted me about the breed and mentioned that his website gets over 30,000 visits per month!!! What a fantastic opportunity for free publicity for the Iowa Blue. This breed is starting to gain some traction and I think we'll be in good shape to release chicks and stock next spring as many breeders are putting together great flocks this year! Keep up the good work everyone. If you have a moment, feel free to check out his article. Mostly it's pulled from the book I wrote and Connie edited, so if you've read that book there isn't anything "new" as far as information goes. But it will be new to many people who still haven't heard about the Iowa Blue!!!! Very exciting stuff!!

 

[Hurley]

Well done, Curt! The Iowa Blue is certainly getting some press this year.

Next year should be huge for disseminating the breed to interested parties, judging by the nice flocks being "planted" this year. We should be in wonderful shape to make some serious numbers to choose from and I personally can't WAIT! Looking forward to firing up the big incubator and hatcher next spring. Will likely be hatching out later this summer to have more birds ready to go next spring.

 

[karimw]

Well, for better or worse baths are done. 5 birds and 3 cats (why waste the rinse water?) The birds seemed to like it, the cats not so much

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

hahahahaha Would have loved to see the cats after that ordeal!!! hahahaha

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Quoting Sigrid Van Dort from his/her(?) book called Genetics of Chicken Colours concerning sheen color on chickens -

"For the Standard colour, black with beetle green sheen is desired. This sheen is affected by the presence of additional black enhancers, and the structure of the feather. The presence of Autosomal Red can give a violet lustre on the shoulders, its absence is a green lustre. An overdose of melanotic may give a blue sheen."

It's been obvious as time goes on, that there are a lot of melanotic genes in play on the Iowa Blue. This new bit of information not only confirms what we are experiencing, but at the same time gives us a challenge. Too much melanotic influences and we've got a bird that is WAY too dark, not enough and we loose our blue sheen. The trick appears to be thus, that we'll have to find that perfect balance between too much and too little melanizers..........

A word of caution - As I understand it, a blacker bird doesn't necessarily mean that it has more melanizers than a lighter bird. Usually this is the case, but not always. Don't be surpized if you find in your flock a young cockerel who is lighter with a blue sheen while his pen mates are dark with green sheens. This is an important note as one begins to build their flock and are finally at the stage where they can select for sheen color as well as some of the other "finer" points.

 

[Jake Levi]

Thanks for this book Curt, her writing does shed a lot of light on whats going on. Where did you find it ?

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

We had to order it online and have it shipped from overseas. When ordering be careful, it was origianlly written in Dutch I think, and then translated into English, so make sure you get the English version. It has to be shipped overseas and so that cost isn't cheep. We paid around $120.00 for the book when all was said and done! But worth EVERY PENNY!

 

[karimw]

We had to order it online and have it shipped from overseas. When ordering be careful, it was origianlly written in Dutch I think, and then translated into English, so make sure you get the English version. It has to be shipped overseas and so that cost isn't cheep. We paid around $120.00 for the book when all was said and done! But worth EVERY PENNY!

It is a great book! The terms are different, but the pictures are fabulous!

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

It is a great book! The terms are different, but the pictures are fabulous!

Everything I know and understand about chicken color genetics I learned from this book. Without the aid of this book I don't know if we (as breeders) would have been able to figure out as much as we know concerning the Iowa Blue's coloration, as well as how to develop and reproduce the effects we are looking for.

Any breeder of any breed would benefit from this book!!! And I totally agree with Kari, the pictures are fabulous!

 

[debs_flock]

We had to order it online and have it shipped from overseas. When ordering be careful, it was origianlly written in Dutch I think, and then translated into English, so make sure you get the English version. It has to be shipped overseas and so that cost isn't cheep. We paid around $120.00 for the book when all was said and done! But worth EVERY PENNY!

I have had a chance to thumb through someone else's copy and I covet one of my own. I couldn't figure out how to abscond with theirs