But the photos are nice to view...yes? And photos are = to 1,000 words! LOL
Tables turned, I would fail miserably with any other language other than English and a wee bit of French. Benny, you are the winner compared to me...being able to read these few sentences of mine!
The pictures...for the photos and images??
Tara
D) in general, but because I love very much to chat with you I will manage the longevity of your posts!
Yes I can get the "pictur "() in general, but because I love very much to chat with you I will manage the longevity of your posts!
If that isn't long, what is long pist then?
My mental faculties have been diminishing fast over the past few years - I am here for the pictures & the DOGS.
Day olds...female on bottom right and male on top middle...and NO, did not know gender of these at the timeI was getting close but no cigar...I knew the selfwhite was not too far off by tracking this pair and having the luxurious HINDSIGHT to know the day olds to select for. The birds taught ME...the birds never lie and it is my job to listen and understand what they tell me...
Male left, female right - about then I knew their genders...dealing with a pair
Girl and boy
Female - her buff tinge became more a buffy laced
His miscolour was merely a phaeomelanin patch on his wing...
By studying day old self whites...the F4 generation netted me this
She is white...no miscolours...
And size wise...she is a bantam compared to my standard
White standard cock then partridge wip, the self-white hen, then self-buff and golden laced
All females are not real blooded bantams in the various stages of varieties
2008, day old in buff, partridge and white in the Chanteclers
I photo'd the beginnings at the beginning
but HEY...how cutester are baby birds for you not
to capture the cuteness factors!
These F2's were a good start on partridge (golden laced is close), self-buff and self-white
Bantam Chantecler project birds
The F4's ARE still rainbows of colours but I also have learned myself up
To listen to what the birds have to tell me
Partridge, Red, and self Buff...day olds
Listen to your birds...that's a ding dang ORDER...and I expect you to salute and turn on your heel and get her done woman!
F4 as day olds...partridge on left, self buff right top and self white on bottom right
As DAY OLDS my birds have taught ME...the unteachable ijit
To know them as adults
Even if they scream so loud other cockerels cannot BEAR the sound!
Heh heh heh...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OK...to clarify the 214...that is when you think hatching eggs are a good way to go if you want a good start. Might work, might not. Shipped hatching eggs are notorious for not hatching like the ones produced at home by the breeder. Half the shipped hatching eggs usually (not always mind you but usually) hatch live day olds...so if you are like me and retain only the top 3% for potential breeding prospects, if you wanted a trio or two pairs (thereabouts), you need to order 200 eggs (half don't hatch) for 100 live day olds and at a regularly accepted seven percent mortality (7% x double since half only hatch--chickens are simplistic creatures and in some cases, ones that should have never hatched DO), add in 14 eggs for a total of 214 hatching eggs to get one trio or two pairs worth breeding forward from.
We ordered our bantam Brahmas from a breeder in the fall for next fall's delivery of adult birds. Murray bred up 250 chicks to send us three pairs. Our bantam Wyandottes were the breeders from a man that retired after years, decades of breeding 300 day olds to retain nine breeders back each year. We need to hatch out 107 day olds to retain three to four prospective breeders we may use as adult (one year of age) for breeding.
If I am asked how many birds do I require to begin breeding...yes, one pair would be simplistically correct (boy + girl = babies...) but if you want a good start with healthy diversity and potential breeders that contain all the components (not ever any perfect birds) you can add to your breeding pen to have even a slim to none chance of producing a bird with class, one that is as near to perfection as one could hope for. You should begin with three pairs of birds in the variety you want to make more from.
I say six birds because one male in with three females, means the two males not with the girls, may keep each other company. Six birds to begin with means you could spend one whole season breeding one male to the three females...then next season, breed one of the other two males, use the third male later on...or do three pair matings the first year...what three males and three females does is gives you options because you are branching out at the relatedness of the three pairs (pending you did not receive three brothers and three sisters--and often that is the case when you approach the ONE breeder for young stocks all at once) ...the widest point of diversity in a healthy sense is where those that keep closed flocks begin with a good start. Just because one bird has some trait you want to capture, does not mean it will reveal itself in the first generation...recessive characteristics must be doubled up on and purified to appear so you can see them. Quite often I will tell persons that breed birds that they will begin to know their finesse as a "breeder" in the third generation of birds they create. By then any noxious recessives if you inbreed, should have revealed themselves to you.
If you do not have a good start from a breeder, then I would expect that you should look at as many birds as able (knowing full well each addition threatens your home flock with bringing in diseases and disorders that could wipe out everything) and select from those the best of the best and then hatch like no tomorrow and then select down from those...keeping in mind, you need to grow those birds out to adults where you may select from those birds the qualities YOU figure you want to make more of. Like pin the tail on the donkey...some will have this, some that, the combination and real test of a breeder is the ability to combine many to make some that are near as a reflection as per your vision for that breed and variety. Each to their own...what I deem a good bird could well be deemed utter garbage by the next person. I like to hope against hope that the good points I want combined with the bad points I don't will result in progeny more good than bad. I fear one day to make a breeding pen up with some good points I want more of and then only produce all the things I wanted gone in the next generations.
My Hero built me over 30 buildings...many are empty right now awaiting when I begin to hatch again. We have places to quarantine, places to segregate, do pair breedings, etc. Places to grow them out in, etc. etc....
I suggest people begin with a minimum of four areas for a beginner into breeding poultry; 1 pen to quarantine new birds or ones injured or being hen pecked on--usually best located well away from the main bird area, 1 pen for the regular flock (males versus females but peaceful balance), 1 pen for setting hens and hens brooding chicks or for brooding & growing out chicks artificially incubated, and 1 pen for extra males that would unside the peaceful balance in the main pen--can also be a grow out pen for birds destined for meat consumption.
Often if the birds cannot see each other, they don't fight...so you can balance out being in tighter confines with tenplast partitions...no see, no get upset...sometimes that is! Some are more particular and even hearing or smelling a competitor unsettles the apple carts.
We keep at least a dozen individual breeder birds for each variety we have...
Storey's Guide to Poultry, by Glenn Drowns, 2012; Pages 318 & 319:
Some rooles to live by regarding Poultry breeding ...hatch as many chicks as you are able from the good start, the more you have to choose from, the better likelihood that your selection will succeed. Ensure you only hatch from adult birds that have proven to you that you like them and want to make more of them. Aspects I look for before I care about what the birds even look like...longevity, temperament, vigour, production of meat/eggs, fertility, disease resistance....even things like egg quality...never EVER set bad eggs because a bad one only ensures you get plenty more of the bads than the goods. Just like keeping a mean bird to breed more...they taste awful good and who wants one mean times 30 or more? Not I!
When it boils down to a good bird versus unrelated...keep mindful that to set type, you have to walk that balance between inbred and so inbred you cannot make more and too much unrelatedness where there is no reliable predictability to what you are producing. Try to keep the previous breeders available so you have a back out plan...if one more breeding results in disaster, go back at least two generations and start all over again. If you cannot, source out a somewhat related line before the screw up...if able. You did begin there because they had something you figured was worth making more of, right?
The gift of creating a strain is to have someone tell you, that your birds l00k like YOU created them. Peas in a pod that mirror your interpretation of the SOP directives...requires that you breed like to like. There is inbreeding depression just like there is outcrossing depression. Remember the most perfect fit to live against all odds are the birds that are the wild ones...so Mother Nature prefers the Mallard duck, the Junglefowl, the Greylag goose and we humans with our selections from wild type...will always be battling the fittest to survive. Just because you want 365 eggs in a year, a cockerel that dresses out to ten pounds of readiness for the oven, and what you deem is pretty in feathers, don't mean it comes naturally. You got to work for it. Celebrate your successes, learn from your mistakes and never get lazy and rest on your laurels. For every win you take, there are several losses you sustain and need to go back & fix up again. To grab something you wanted, you had to let slide something you already had in place.
If something is missing from your breeding pen, it is very unlikely to appear out of thin air to correct your expectations of perfection in the next generation.
turkey poults hatching
I have felt pens clipped to various pen doors, marking eggs as gathered. No pencils, as I am more likely to knife that wanted egg and ruin any chance of it making a live bird. I am kind to myself though and often figure, if the birds survive me, they gotta be strong right from the start. I don't need to be surrounded by weaklings, so it best the weaklings expire so I can focus on the hardy, live ones despite all my misguided and ill ways.
Natural hatching - wip bantam Chantecler hen hatching & brooding various chicken breeds
Many a Fancier prefers natural hatched birds...nothing replaces a tentative hen clucking her teachings to her brood
Even some believe the hen talk to the unhatched eggs is far better than the insane whirl of a force air incubator
Up until 2006, we only ever natural hatched...after showing for the first time at a sanctioned show went well for our birds, we decided we needed to get more serious and productive in hatching future generations, so we bought a new high velocity fanned Sportsman (nfi). To me this is the beginner's version for the ijit hatcher...keep the water topped up to maintain proper humidity, zit the hatching eggs with distilled water when hatching...after day 10, begin to candle eggs and remove any that are not progressing and good to go.
Buster is my bator...he be THE MAN that takes care of my incubations...
Auto turner...my job, make sure the eggs are still viable and fill up that water container on the top shelf...
Zit the eggs when hatching (when I remember)
And show up to remove the lives when they hatch...good deal!
Buster he's great at doing what I cannot be bothered to be hovering over. Then there is my other main MAN...Stan...
Stanley the manly is my stainless brooder and he broods my babes and that be that. He is a therapeutic stainless steel tub we use that use to be a sports therapy water tub.
Stan and Buster, they do the real work which then leaves me to attend to more important aspects of the Fancy--like admiring the finer points in the poultry, eh.
Different poultry species segregated by size and ages
I also use grocery store bins to segregate the different sizes in species...bantam ducks, heavy ducks, etc. brooding.
I set the hatching eggs daily for small hatches per day, I hold eggs laid over the weekend to the next week day because I go play off site then
I have had zero success with styra foam hatchers (tried a new one and could not keep the temperature steady...plus you cannot properly santiize it so hatches get progressively worse each hatch). To me, the big incubator is the ones you set 10,000 eggs in...the cabinet ones are where a Fancier starts at. Old reliable that allows us the luxury to pay attention else where. We never have bad hatches because these tools make it uncomplicated.
Day olds out on the new green grass
Zero predation since Earth Day 2007
Since I never show landfowl and do not need to schedule any timing for young birds being fit to be shown, I hatch when the wild birds hatch babies. Grass is great, weather is conducive to babies thriving...generally when spring is here, the production of baby birds coincides. Day length is proper, foods are at optimal peak, everything screams THRIVE and be ALIVE and grow up well.
July 14 - Day old Chantecler doing face plant in starter...just too plump to care...???
I begin hatching birds for middle of May, beginning of June up to about September or October but we have lots and lots of empty adequate buildings to grow them out in. I like to see my babies out on the grass as day olds.
Day olds are the place to start letting the birds teach you ...then you note and track what the day old down TELLS you about the adult plumage. This will have to be your homework because I cannot tell if the Campines you guys want are based on eb Brown or ER Birchen. I DO NOT have ER only eb that I know of...why I posted the clicks of my chicks in the MDF Booteds with e"+" beside the eb.
http://www.edelras.nl/chickengenetics/mutations1.html:
...
There are two colour varieties, gold and silver version of the 'ears of wheat' design well known on Friesians and Sicilian Buttercups.
David Scrivener's Rare Poultry Breeds, page 41:
The Pencilled pattern, 'Pel' in standard Dutch and 'Weiten' (Wheaten - meaning grains of wheat, not wheaten colour as OEG) if Friesian dialect, is similar to the Sicilian Buttercup pattern.
Some more related to the Campine breed...
David Scrivener's Rare Poultry Breeds, page 18: ...
in an 1884 issue of Avicultura magazine as the first effort to regard Brakels and Campines as two separate breeds, and that this was followed in 1888 by a more detailed monograph on the differences between them. At that time the fowls of both regions had the same plumage pattern, with fully cock feathered males, as only standardized for Brakels now. The hen feathered Campine males came later
David Scrivener's Rare Poultry Breeds, page 46: Although said to be related to Brakels and Campines, the rare Belgian Zottegems fowl seems to be a closer relation, as also might be 'Moorkop' Brabanters or Nederlandse Uilebaarden, or Black-Crested White Polish.
I am liking to see these sorta related breeds mentioned...something to think about should you ever need to veer way outta the strains you have in the Campines...you have some potential places to look for similar breeds if you ever need to, eh. Harvest the traits wanted and go back to breeding for purity in phenotype.
Unlike registered pedigreed show dogs, sheep or cattle...there are no pedigree police in poultry--one is not limited to a closed registry or stud book. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, eats like a duck, likely it is a duck and entered in the correct breed and variety at a sanctioned show, it will be judged to be a DUCK even if you bred a pig with a giraffe to make it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Doggone & Chicken UP!
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
Umm, Tara? That's a Bactrian camel. They are native to central Asia, where they regularly deal with extremely cold conditions. I know snow in the desert seems crazy to contemplate, but in some parts of their natural range, that is often the only form of water available.
This is Alice husband!
And that is what he thinks about the alice song!
Anyway, scene is set and now to the main attraction...the article by a Canuck on how Campines are regarding making money!
The Campines - Silver and Golden
Their History: Their Practical Qualities: How to Mate and Breed Them: How to Judge Them: The Campine Standards of America, England and Belgium
Copyright by Reliable Poultry Journal Publishing Company, Quincy, Illinois, 1914 By F. L. Platt
Fully Illustrated - Price, seventy-five cents
Page 34
The Campines as Money Makers
By J. Fred N. Kennedy, Birch Cliff, ON, Canada:
Wow...the notation of 20,000 letters makes you ponder if there is any exaggerations, but I remember my conversations with the dearly departed Gordon Ridler and he would get letters and reply, hand written back then...where his arms, he said, wanted to drop off his body (recalling he did the letter thingy after a full day of taking care of chores on his farm) because there was an etiquette about if someone took the time to write you a letter, you WROTE them back as a common courtesy. Nothing like spam e-mails of today..."Got eggs? Gimmeall of them!"
Now Campines were called the "every day layer" by some but when you crunch the numbers he has mentioned for nine months in 1913...300 females producing 38,651 (eggs sold at 3 cents each) equals 128.83 eggs per female in 9 months, and 14.315 eggs per month per bird. That is not too good in my opinion for even the modern day dual purpose birds...for I get one egg per day per female from October through to March in my standard sized Chanteclers...time between moultings when the hens shed summer clothes and get back to laying in winter for us. Six month period getting 180 eggs, double the output BUT Brother Wilfrid was round about developing the Chantecler for the Canadians in that time period.
Here is what the author means when he says bred scientifically for egg production...Bro W was very scientific with his approaches to farming at Oka in Quebec. The monkery relied on his abilities to make the endeavours sustainable and he used everything new and exciting for the time. I so wish we could find a follow up to the progress that Fred Kennedy did with the Campines...1,600 females.
I do laugh at the lack of any wage for his labours...makes you understand that if you really did need money perhaps an occupation where you said, "Do you want fries with that?" at minimum wage might be more viable...but I digress...
Souvenir of the World's Poultry Congress, 1927 from The Canadian Chantecler Breeders' Association:
THE CANADIAN CHANTECLER FOWL - Why and How it has been originated
...
THE LAYING CAPACITY
...
Brother Wilfrid wanted no "frolic" in the form ; he intended no excess in laying either. After all, it is not the high record of a few birds in a flock that counts in the bank account; an average and normal record is the best.
A judicious and constant selection will surely increase the winter laying capacity of the Chantecler. Many breeders have made it a rule to admit for breeding purposes only birds having a record of not less 150 eggs. Owing to that severe selection, four of them have just now a global flock of 63 birds whose official record varies between 150 and 224 eggs. Two other remarkable records: 233 and 247 eggs, have been registered. One Chantecler has laid 240 eggs in twelve months, in an official and controlled competition.
The right conclusion is that the Chantecler, properly selected, has a natural aptness to a strong laying capacity, and that before long it will be, if not superior, at least not inferior to any other breed, specially as a winter layer, a quality it is inheriting from the Rhode Island Red, the best winter-layer, according to prominent judges in the matter.
What I suspect is that by leaps and bounds...poultry egg production (meat too) was improved upon...plus as the fella Fred states, the importation of live birds from England making up the majority of his flock meant it would take four generation for them to acclimatize to his particular conditions...over in Ontario, they often have the "lake affect" which makes the temperatures unbearable because of the humidity! England gets fog but a much milder climate overall than say Ontario.
I love how the old publications look at time and the passing of such with such upbeat expected tolerance...can you imagine telling today's poultry person..."You have to WAIT for four generations (in some aspects EIGHT YEARS if hen and cock breedings) before your new strain you imported from across the Pond settles into your place on the planet" Bwa ha ha...nothing EVER instant about breeding poultry...not then and not now....hee hee.
Nowadays you see persons have a dozen or so hatching eggs shipped, get them hatched, take those first eggs from breeding the pullets and cockerels, sell hatching eggs to others and in the time period of perhaps just FIVE years...the whole project of poultry is over done and finished before the oldtimers would even contemplate having let the new strain SETTLE in to the new environment! What I liked reading in the old Campine publication was that some breeders refused to sell any birds until years, literally years later say in regards to the Golden Campines because they felt the new stocks had not yet settled in enough to put their integrity as breeders of GOOD BIRDS by letting stocks go before they were worthy of others judging and keeping them. Integrity...and highest of standards. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you...pride, respect...diligence, labours of extreme love. You can't instill that enough into people and what those "good starts" mean to the real enthusiast, the Fancier of poultry. The good ol days seemed to spend alot of time enjoying the moments...not the sensory overloads where the human consciousness is inundated with way way too much information ... slow, steady, enjoy the eye candy, slower pace like an old wise chook, about to take a dust bath in the sunshine!
So I was up late last night, typing up a storm...maybe my take on not being overly impressed with 14 eggs per month is the wrong attitude for 1913 in the Campines where many of these laying birds were just settling in to their brand new country and setting up their place in Ontario, Canada?
What you think @Wisher1000 not quite perfected then and I am just tired and not seeing the TRUE beauty and usefulness of the tree for the forest?
Have a read of the article and give me some feedback to digest on...
Doggone & Chicken UP!
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
