Iowa Blues - Breed thread and discussion

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Hurley, nice photos and a very interesting group. I wish you well with this project.
WVDan
 
Here is my rooster I got,the hen is still in a pen she is in rough shape she looks like she had been over breed for a long time.
I have more chicks coming,I looked at the web site and from that I say he is birchen.Is that right?
I have chicks coming from privet at the end of may.
Ok tell me his faults and if he has any redeeming qualities.
He refused to let me get in front of him so I could get a chest shot.














 
pewterchick,

Thanks for sharing pictures of your cockbird. I'll start with what he has going for him and then we'll talk about areas of opportunity.

The first thing that sticks out to me is that he appears to be free of autosomal red and gold leakage. This is a huge advantage for you and will save you years of hard work! He has deep dark eyes and his comb is nice. Not too many points and of a medium size. His wattle size is right on too. He's got a really nice head shape on him.

Areas of opportunity. First, he's very dark overall. One of the areas the club is working on is focusing the Smokey, Silver, Charcoal, and Birchen birds to all conform to the Standard as written. The Birchens have a way to go, but I've seen some of Kari's and it's proof that they can fit within the Standard. (Some will say it's not possible. But I've seen it. Denny has some Birchen birds that are nearly perfect to the Standard with the exception of the males having stippling in the wing instead of a white duckwing. For more information on this, if you haven't joined the breed club, do so and you'll get the IBCC Bulletin with the club's movement on this. it'll come out the beginning of June.) He's a young male so he'll get lighter overall as he ages. His beak is dark black/brown and we'd like to see it a horn color (but that's getting picky at this point, we've got a lot of other things to get locked down genetically to realign this breed to its original form and traditional breeding patterns), and his skin is yellow. We like to see slate colored legs (white skinned birds), but willow will work for now. Lastly, his tail angle is higher than would be preferred, but again, that's where the breed is right now, and every breeder has a male or two in their breeding pens this way. It'll take some time to work that out, but we'll get there.

Overall, not a bad male, again, he would need to lighten up quite a bit and we'd like to see him lighter in ground color, but he's a 'clean' bird (meaning he's free of the ar+ and gold leakage) which is a win for you. If you compare him to the male in my avatar picture you can see the difference between a lighter birchen based male and your male. The male in my avatar is a charcoal (which in all reality is a light version of the birchen birds and much closer to the standard as written). You can see a lighter ground color on the breast and much more white in the hackles, shoulders, and back. The male in my avatar pic is about the same age as your male so it gives you a real good comparison.

Hope this was helpful. And thanks for sharing!
 
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Looks like they are enjoying it!


I've got eggs cooking in the incubator, should have a big batch hatched out next week. The girls are laying like crazy, need to cut back number of birds in the main flock to make room for the next generation. They certainly are glad it's spring and are doing their best to place eggs in every nook and cranny. LOL
 

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