Iowa Blues - Breed thread and discussion

[karimw]

Another thing that is very interesting about Iowa Blues. I have never had an Iowa Blue pullet or hen that has tolerated the behavior of the cockerels. The hens of other breeds, hunker down and allow themselves to be abused, but not the IB hens. No way, they'll chase the cockerels around and let them have it for even thinking of making an attempt on them! haha The IB hens will also keep those cockerels in place.

That is so true! The only time I have naked Iowa Blues is during molt! The Iowacanas and SP rock crosses are pretty docile in comparison.

 

[ottbjumper06]

Glad to hear the show went well! I am looking for more SP pullets to add to my coop. I now have more boys than girls and that isn't going over well with the feed bill, LOL.
My girls should start laying in about a month. I'm getting excited!

Also, I just noticed one of the girls has white earlobes. I'm obviously not going to take her out of the breeding program for this because she has so many other things going for her, but in the future when I have more stock to choose from how picky should I be with this?

 

[karimw]

Glad to hear the show went well! I am looking for more SP pullets to add to my coop. I now have more boys than girls and that isn't going over well with the feed bill, LOL.
My girls should start laying in about a month. I'm getting excited!

Also, I just noticed one of the girls has white earlobes. I'm obviously not going to take her out of the breeding program for this because she has so many other things going for her, but in the future when I have more stock to choose from how picky should I be with this?

I try to cull them out when I can. It isn't something we want to perpetuate if we can help it, though I find it to be a lesser fault than some of the others we have going on. That said, if you feel you need to use her, you could try her for one or two hatches until you have some young pullets growing up, then take her out.

I did talk to Denny about it when I was there and he was in the same situation. His best hen has white spots on her earlobes. He can't pull her out of the pen until he has something better to replace her.

What are other thoughts on the white in the earlobe? Should we be taking this more seriously? I don't know enough about showing to know how serious a fault it is.

 

[WVDan44]

A major set back and I'm feeling a bit discouraged right now. I finally have an sp cockerel out of the eggs I've hatched which I guess is the good news. So now the bad news, it has a wry tail. I'm pretty aggravated over it. He is a handsome fella and I hate that this has happened. I need to think hard about what I want to do at this point.

 

[Hurley]

How old is he?

I've had some I look at one day and they're are suddenly "wry tailed", then a week later they aren't. I've also noticed certain individuals that will hold their tails to the side when being submissive, or in certain situations, where they are perfectly fine other times. They're so expressive with their tails.

I hope it's a "behavioral wry tail" and not a true wry tail.



To Eric:

So far he's doing well. Course, he's in a shed with heat at one end for the juveniles to cuddle under if they choose. Half the time they're on the other side, but at least the water doesn't freeze. He's getting along well with his buddies.




Been working on the website today, major overhaul getting a members only section started and moving around content and adding to it.
Just popped a chat room into the site, need a couple people to try it out if you get time. See if it would be something useful for people to chat live.

http://www.iowabluechickenclub.com/ibcc-live-chat.html

I've opened it to the public for a bit here, give it a try, let me know if it works or if I need to find a different chunk of code.

Seems to work for me. It's a simple little chat room, no frills, but it's easy enough to use and is always available without needing someone sitting it it holding the room open, as far as I can tell.

 

[ottbjumper06]

I try to cull them out when I can. It isn't something we want to perpetuate if we can help it, though I find it to be a lesser fault than some of the others we have going on. That said, if you feel you need to use her, you could try her for one or two hatches until you have some young pullets growing up, then take her out.

I did talk to Denny about it when I was there and he was in the same situation. His best hen has white spots on her earlobes. He can't pull her out of the pen until he has something better to replace her.

What are other thoughts on the white in the earlobe? Should we be taking this more seriously? I don't know enough about showing to know how serious a fault it is.

Being she is one of only 4 Silver girls I have, I'll give her a go . I did keep back one Birchen pullet. She looks okay to me as far as Birchens go... would it be okay to test her out for a couple hatchings or should I play it safe and keep her in the egg layers pen?

My guy I got from Denny is looking better and better every day. I'm still battling a bit with his loose wings but his tail set is sooo nice, and so is his personality. Some of the boys I have growing out from Connie have light legs and eyes. How harshly should I fault them? I believe I have three like this.

One more questions to pick all of your brains for the day- If someone will please jog my memory I'd appreciate it. We are calling the SP Silvers now correct? And SDW is now Smoky? What is Birchen? I really should have written it down..... Still wishing I could have made it to EIPA show!

 

[Hurley]

The first Silver cockerel I had from Kari has yellow legs (although when we were shooting for "willow", one of the judges actually said his legs were technically "willow", yellow with a cast of black pigment), and I've been trying to hold back my darkest eyed/legged chicks, however, he had some good qualities I wished to bring forward. If I have two birds of equal quality and one has lighter legs, I'd dump them. However, if I have light legs with very little other fault and the others I have have autosomal red, squirrel tail, are puny, etc., I'd keep yellow and move forward. You can eliminate it pretty easily through culling in future generations if need be.

As for the colors, check the IBCC website's photo gallery. I've changed out the names and have examples of all 4 of the color varieties we are dealing with so far: (with opinions below being mine, not representing everyone's opinion)

Silver - what we called silver penciled - the birds are not a true penciled and the name would lead to some issues in the future, so we elected to simply call them Silvers. The hens are the lighter variety and imho the prettiest and closest to what seemed to be the ideal coloration for IB hens. The males have white wing tips, the breast at this point appears to come in two variations, either mottled to varying degrees or with patches of white on the breast.

Charcoal - these are the brown chicks without the mottling/striping. They resemble birchens as chicks except they are frosted with brown tips to the chick down, appearing a warm brown. Typically solid in coloration. Adults resemble the Silvers except a darker shade. They look somewhat intermediate between Silver and Birchen and are on the ER base. The cocks appear to be closer to the original Iowa Blue, with dark wing tips (though with varying degree of lacing/stippling) instead of white wing tips. I think they'll also have better lacing on the chest (vs. the more mottled pattern of silver cock birds).

Smoky - Silver Duckwings, coral breasted females at this time, lighter plumage, hoping to select these towards silver coloration without the robin's breast.

Birchen - still called Birchen (black chicks, black with white lacing as adult)


To be honest, with the above colorations and the variety reported to persist in the breed from the beginning, makes you think that they were wanting to create a breed with females like the silvers and males like the charcoals, which is likely why they never were able to resolve the mixed chick appearances.

Right now, we're moving towards Silvers and Charcoals to represent the breed, and working away from Birchens. The Smokys are a very lovely variety, and very likely will be worked with by interested breeders as well, and could be considered as another variety to pursue in the future. The Birchens are losing favor with many, as we try to move closer to the original image of the Iowa Blue.

I can't wait until we get to work on revising the standard to catch up with what we've learned, but we wanted to swap it out between show seasons to avoid confusion.

 

[Hurley]

Oh, and I changed out the chat code for another one with more features.

There is a link to the page on the IBCC website. Link to room has changed from my previous post. It is now: http://www.iowabluechickenclub.com/chat.html

Try it out! I think this will work well for IB chat. If anyone has any comments on the chat or suggestions, let me know.


Oh, and food for thought - if you bounce into the room, see no one's there, and bounce out, it's unlikely anyone will every meet up to chat. If people make a habit of leaving the window open for a while or while they are on the computer, others coming in will chat. The more time the room is occupied, the higher the numbers of people who will be drawn in to participate and it becomes self perpetuating. If no one ever sits in the room, no one will ever stay long enough to chat with anyone.

 

[ottbjumper06]

The first Silver cockerel I had from Kari has yellow legs (although when we were shooting for "willow", one of the judges actually said his legs were technically "willow", yellow with a cast of black pigment), and I've been trying to hold back my darkest eyed/legged chicks, however, he had some good qualities I wished to bring forward.  If I have two birds of equal quality and one has lighter legs, I'd dump them.  However, if I have light legs with very little other fault and the others I have have autosomal red, squirrel tail, are puny, etc., I'd keep yellow and move forward.  You can eliminate it pretty easily through culling in future generations if need be.

As for the colors, check the IBCC website's photo gallery.  I've changed out the names and have examples of all 4 of the color varieties we are dealing with so far:  (with opinions below being mine, not representing everyone's opinion)

Silver - what we called silver penciled - the birds are not a true penciled and the name would lead to some issues in the future, so we elected to simply call them Silvers.  The hens are the lighter variety and imho the prettiest and closest to what seemed to be the ideal coloration for IB hens.  The males have white wing tips, the breast at this point appears to come in two variations, either mottled to varying degrees or with patches of white on the breast.

Charcoal - these are the brown chicks without the mottling/striping.  They resemble birchens as chicks except they are frosted with brown tips to the chick down, appearing a warm brown.  Typically solid in coloration.  Adults resemble the Silvers except a darker shade.  They look somewhat intermediate between Silver and Birchen and are on the ER base.  The cocks appear to be closer to the original Iowa Blue, with dark wing tips (though with varying degree of lacing/stippling) instead of white wing tips.  I think they'll also have better lacing on the chest (vs. the more mottled pattern of silver cock birds).

Smoky - Silver Duckwings, coral breasted females at this time, lighter plumage, hoping to select these towards silver coloration without the robin's breast.

Birchen - still called Birchen (black chicks, black with white lacing as adult)


To be honest, with the above colorations and the variety reported to persist in the breed from the beginning, makes you think that they were wanting to create a breed with females like the silvers and males like the charcoals, which is likely why they never were able to resolve the mixed chick appearances.

Right now, we're moving towards Silvers and Charcoals to represent the breed, and working away from Birchens.  The Smokys are a very lovely variety, and very likely will be worked with by interested breeders as well, and could be considered as another variety to pursue in the future. The Birchens are losing favor with many, as we try to move closer to the original image of the Iowa Blue.

I can't wait until we get to work on revising the standard to catch up with what we've learned, but we wanted to swap it out between show seasons to avoid confusion.

Perfect. I'll go ahead and change the names on my website. Thanks!

Hopefully I'll get lucky and hatch out a couple charcoal chicks this spring... I'd love to have one of those good looking cockerels!

 

[karimw]

Hello all! I have a question for your consideration. There will be NO changes to the standard based on this discussion - that only happens on the IBCC website but we don't have too many folks over there yet, and I'm not sure I can post pictures. I ask these questions because I am working on a painting and I would very much appreciate input. The SOP currently reads:

TAIL: Moderately long, dense, carried high at an angle of 80* above horizontal.​

Now likely we will change the tail angle based on Judge feedback, but as you can see this is pretty broad description. In my flock I see a wide variety of shape. So, what do you visualize the prefect tail shape on a hen? Do we like a straight leading edge or a curve? I posted some samples below. If you have a picture, please share.