Jest Another Day in Pear-A-Dice - Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm in Alberta

[CanuckBock]

Heel low:

Spring is in the air for some...thus too are the requests for hatching eggs! Blah, hilarious and depressing, all at the same time. Sigh...I have never sold hatching eggs, truly unlikely I ever shall.

The other one I get, is the "let's trade some hatching eggs!" Let's NOT and save ourselves grief ten fold, eh!

First off, why in the world after decades working on my strains here (after securing a good start, many cases 65 and 75 years of one person working on the birds)...would I risk it all by adding new blood...get real! Dilute what has taken literally DECADES to pure up, get going along good...lessen the purity of my strains of poultry...what in the world for? Do I purposely derail my efforts by crossing OUT? If I was lacking something, after this long, would I have not stopped fully and found what was lacking??

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Diseases Transmitted to Eggs

There are many infectious organisms that can be transferred from the hen to the egg that may cause the egg to die. In some cases, the infectious organism may infect the egg, yet the embryo may continue developing, and may even hatch, carrying the organism at hatch time. If an organism is passed from an infected hen directly into an egg, and then into the developing embryo, this is called vertical transmission. The term vertical transmission is also used to describe transmission of an infectious agent from a parent to an egg during fertilization, during egg development in the oviduct of the hen or immediately after oviposition. Once the egg is laid, some infectious organisms can pass through the eggshell upon contact with contaminated feces, urates or bedding. This is also considered vertical transmission if infection occurs immediately after laying. Some organisms are transmitted from the ovary to the egg, and this is called transovarian transmission. Infectious organisms harbored in the oviduct can also be passed into the egg prior to the shell being formed. Some organisms can infect eggs if contents from the cloaca contaminate the surface of the eggs, and then penetrate the egg. The other method of transmission of infectious organisms is by horizontal transmission. Some ways that horizontal transmission occurs are by preening, inhalation, copulation, insect or animal bites, ingestion, contact with contaminated equipment or fighting.

It seems obvious that prior to the egg membranes and shell being applied to it, the egg would be susceptible to infection by numerous infectious organisms. Even though the eggshell appears solid, it contains microscopic pores that can allow liquids and organisms of small enough size into the egg. The pores allow the transfer of gasses, as well.

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Her article goes on to discuss diseases transferred in hatching eggs such as:

- Bacterial diseases like Chlamydia psittaci, Salmonella, Staphylococcus bacteria, and E. coli.
- Mycoplasma is a HUGE concern for poultry persons...this one is uncurable according to many here on BYC.
- Viral diseases like Newcastle's Disease, Herpesviruses, etc.
- Parasites like adult ascarids (roundworms) can even be passed on in hatching eggs.

Whilst this quote above is more an avian type based source for pet birds, Margaret A. Wissman, D.V.M., D.A.B.V.P. is a very good resource since she is an exotic bird vet. Her explanation is educated, concise and easily understood. I have chosen this small quote as an example of her good advice...you may go to the link I have posted to read more should you wish to.

Some of the disease are zoonoses which simply means they are diseases that humans may get from animals...and birds. Chlamydia is one of those as are E. coli and Staph. Good hygiene is a great deterrent after being around any poultry and livestock...never mind the family dog or cat!

This is also a great source to have a read up on...

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Common Poultry Diseases
University Of Florida IFAS Extension - Authors: G.D. Butcher, J.P. Jacob, and F.B. Mather

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/PS/PS04400.pdf

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The most worrisome hatching egg disorder to me personally is the spread of the Chronic Respiratory Diseases. These are called stress diseases and are long, noxious, debilitating diseases that affect production of meat and eggs and generally make poultry like chickens and turkeys unthrifty and often quite a miserable existence for them; eating but not gaining weight, ruffled up and unhappy to say the least. While some may tout that these CRD problems are curable...I have yet to see any scientific proof to these claims and many of the supposed off label cures render the eggs produced unfit for human consumption and the bird itself should never be processed as food either. Personally, if I had to treat a bird (which thankfully, I have never had to do), I would solemnly vow never to eat its eggs, its meat or any of the production from the next generation it produced either. Might eat the F3's production perhaps...

I would only medicate a line of birds (Ampro is fine in turkey and chicken starters but never for waterfowl!) as a very last ditch effort to save the strain if it warranted such dramatic and drastic measures. I did not get birds to taint what they produce for my family with antibiotics and other unsavory and scary remedies. Factory farms might feed antibiotics to get their products to market, but we choose not to and want healthy good foods from our happy and healthy birds.

Read the diseases from the hatching eggs...if you need a re-freshner course. Resounding in my ears, my vet's advice on showing landfowl, "Do you want what everyone ELSE has?" Yeh, that simple advice...with each new addition of birds...comes potentially the LAST STRAW TO BREAK THE CAMEL's BACK! My vet cannot tell me what others have, but he sure the heck can advise me to be sane about avoiding issues! Even though I suppose, if I did bring things in all willy nilly, he'd have gotten way more chicken business from me trying to cure this that and the other things. NEVER EVER given antibiotics to my poultry ... not EVER. I have said this before...if I had to save something, so valuable...I could well give antibiotics to the first generation, but woe to eating any of the F1's eggs or meat, woe to eating the F2's eggs or meat...we might, we might try the F3 generation's eggs and meat. If I wanted to infect my body and my family's bodies with bad drugs, I can simply buy some swill eggs or mush meat at the grocery stores. The whole point of raising your own food is to limit your exposure to unnecessary harmful chemicals...right?

Two more I have quoted here before, but worth repeating as they are good quotes...both about Wy's.

Gies, 1950:

Strainmakers...has a nice titled like ring to it, eh.

Zeigler, 1982:


An inbred line of HEALTHY birds is not something to be terrified of. I suggest persons get three pairs from a reputable breeder and keep at least three males on the go for breeding purposes...that keeps up the diversity and for those with several varieties, another good suggestion is to cross varieties (not breeds...I myself rarely cross a breed unless for a specific purpose like making large Chants into bantam ones!) of similar foundations to give the strains a boost of hybrid vigour in a positive way. All strains will hit a point in time where inbreeding depression seems in play, if you can breed through this point instead of rushing out and getting new blood (and along with that, whatever may be bad in that line will come in with that new bird too); the birds produced will end up being even stronger for having pulled through this trial and test period.

Those V shaped birds we often see...I've posted this link here before and it shows blocks for Leghorns...yes, even Leghorns are suppose to be blocks of birds...not ever V shaped.

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BUFF LEGHORNS A SPECIALTY OF FORTY YEARS - Aviculture Europe

www.aviculture-europe.nl/nummers/11E05A04.pdf

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Yes, spring in the air, thinking perhaps I might make an order from some day olds...but these indeed, will be in lots of 25 day olds at least...thereby able to keep back one, maybe even lucky enough for a pair potentially from each lot. Otherwise, what is the point? Numbers less than 25 day olds to grow out...utter waste of time since less than 25 would mean I need to be awfully lucky regarding a smaller starting point to have anything worthy of working forward from.

And then again, maybe this spring persuasion will pass...hee hee...

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[Akrnaf2]

Who said that the SOP that decide by the APA is the only criterion of good flock?
It is just the shape and plumage color, treats that in the past didn't mean a thing, especially at homesteads that needed the poultry for food!
On the contrary pure breeds are lacking the hybrid vigor, Heterosis so comper to cross breed they are poor layers(comperd to red Sex link, black sex link, and all the white Leghorn croses, like White Hyline) and poor meat producer ( comperd to cornish cross)!

I think that the will to be a breeder is a luxury that poor, hungry and the busy people can't afford.

 

[CanuckBock]

: Outbreeding depression manifests most significantly in two ways:

- Intermediate genotypes are not adapted to either parental habitat. For example, selection in one population might favor a large body size, whereas in another population small body size might be more advantageous, while individuals with intermediate body sizes are comparatively disadvantaged in both populations. As another example, in the Tatra Mountains, the introduction of Ibex from the Middle East, resulted in hybrids which produce calves at the coldest time of the year.

- Breakdown of biochemical or physiological compatibility. Within isolated breeding populations, alleles are selected in the context of the local genetic background. Because the same alleles may have rather different effects in different genetic backgrounds—there is the potential evolution of different locally adapted gene complexes. Outcrossing between individuals with differently adapted gene complexes can result in disruption of this selective advantage, resulting in a loss of fitness.

When people take 15 different sources for one breed and think that hybrid vigour is all good...you look at their results and realize, outbreeding depression is yet another item to avoid... Not always but in some cases...the thought process that some diversity is good so more is better, not always going to jive. I look upon some that have done this and their product is no more predictable than hatchery stock. So what would the point being...you could buy them breed them and select them to be more similar...perhaps but why re-invent the wheel when you can go to proper breeders and get peas in a pod that look like their stock, thru and thru. That is a bonus in my scope of being a Fancier.

Bantam Dark Brahmas
Left, three day old hatchery chick
Right, ONE day old breeder chick from lines inbred for 75 years that I am aware of ​

No issues with buying hatchery birds...but a breeder, this one photo alone shows you head and shoulders the GOOD START you have by selection of decades by Fanciers.


There is loads of work, generations upon generations of breeding, to get that hatchery bird to even begin to look like a Dark Brahma...why do that and why ruin something as good as the breeder chick by crossing other breeds on it...what for...because you like making your life difficult...I just don't get it.

Quote:

The only use "I" would have for the SOP is to define a breed (shape) and a variety (colour pattern). How to define what a Rhode Island (Gallus gallus domesticus) is and what variety is defined by the term Red. Good enough. The reason FOR the SOP's was to have some official guide to judge birds by, productive vigorous poultry stocks.


People keep making a huge mistake about why the SOPs were created...here are some word by word definitions from the APA SOP...

READ THIS...1873...that's when the need for the SOP was implemented...AND read the VERY FISRT PRINCIPLE stated...THE MOST USEFUL TYPE!

20 week old Buff Chantecler fryer...and EVER so delicious!​

Here is my proof of what my bred to Standards do, with one wing tied behind their backs.

​

Our eggs compared to store bought free rangers...

Beautiful to behold...even better to EAT!​

Our heritage bred to Standard poultry produce...otherwise, I'd not be happy.

Quote:

“The Chantecler will never be able to compete with an industrial broiler, and nor should it try to,” says Dr. Fred Silversides, a poultry research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The vast majority of industrial chickens available are supplied by one of two companies. Current market differentiation has nothing to do with genetics; it has to do with how the broilers have been fed or processed. In short, a broiler is a broiler. The value of the Chantecler is that it’s a different product.

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GENETIC DIVERSITY
...

Maintaining the chicken’s gene pool is a constant battle. Delegates to a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) conference in Switzerland in 2007 were told that more than 1,000 domesticated chicken breeds have vanished in the past century.

Because Silversides had produced a report on how to save endangered breeds 20 years ago, the federation turned to him in 2007 to come up with a new proposal to save the Chantecler breed. He jumped at the chance. He produced a new proposal that included a large enough breeding plan to preserve the Chantecler’s gene pool and allow for the development of a market for them so the breed could support itself. In short, his report concluded that the best way to save the breed was to market it for the dinner plate.

We see wild species going extinct, and often it is the domesticated creatures we fail to realize...we are losing. Every person on BYC that decides to willy nilly cross breeds, and lose the genetics these BREEDS and VARIETIES were so carefully developed by the oldtimers...are being lost forever.

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I personally see too much of our food at too cheap a price. Subsidized, and with added things like corn syrup? Oh the horrors our food is. How can we be healthy eating this cheap subsidized swill?

I think that the will to be a breeder is a luxury that poor, hungry and the busy people can't afford.

And you will already know my response...a poor, hungry, busy person DESERVES better than mush meat and swill eggs.

Afford...to eat crap. You are what you eat. Then the poor, hungry and busy persons shall meet an untimely end...for no more reason that I suppose that is the fate they choose.

We all have choices. Eat meat once a week, we are a being that has over evolution, been destined to eat fruits and vegetable...the occasional grubs we stumbled upon...a bonus. We do not or have not eaten meat like we have now. It was a luxury, not a necessity. So when given a choice to have meat (what you say they can AFFFORD), then the choice is quality or crap. Theirs to make, not mine.

​

For me to encourage better meat and eggs, of course. And this is how you do it. That is my take.


When you are already raising poultry...it takes no more effort or resources to feed and care for decently bred birds of a breed and a variety. Us oldtimers did not spend hundreds of years perfecting poultry in ways of production AND beauty. Well bred birds produce better product on less resources and hold value over mutt stocks. Quality might cost more to start, but you reap benefits astronomically more worthy than crap mutt stocks.





In fact, compared to the misery and suffering endured by poultry in factory farms, we as humans SHOULD have the integrity and values not to cause a beast to suffer like that. Sorry state that accounting holds little value in quality of living, for the bird and the bird's keeper. Shameful not to strive for happiness and joy, that we can "afford" to justify that we cannot value proper food and decent living conditions for that food. I have a dream...but that obviously is whimsical and foolish in the weighted side of what poverty lavishes upon those captured in that vicious cycle.

I love seeing shows about people in devastated economies, taking vacant lots of ground not used by run down cities, and growing their own food there. Showing their children how to break the cycle of misery. Eating healthy is not a right, it is a privilege, I get that.

When a "HAPPY meal" (which is anything BUT happy) is chosen over a proper meal based on the economics that REAL FOOD costs way more, there goes why all the studies that children raised in poverty will never escape the vicious cycle. Poor people are physically sicker more often, and even poor persons that get out of poverty, make a success of themselves...life shorter and less healthy lives...simply because of how they began life. We cannot correct the sins of our fathers...what...seven years of strife some GOOD books say?

Here is one of my fav reads...and yes, it is long...

Written by a most famous Canadian...what a tale, what fun...what reality in why Fanciers are then and are now...no sign of us expiring even at the cost of our beloved birds...sigh!

Written by H. Gordon Green of Ormstown, Quebec; Canada's "Old Cynic," radio and literary personality, poultry fancier, and educator (had Chants beginning in 1948):

Father Was A Fancier – By H. Gordon Green ​

I am a chicken fancier, one of those men you will find joyously encamped between the rows of feathered bedlam in the poultry section of almost any fair.

Ours is a hobby few can understand. The breeders who raise other kind of livestock are sane enough. The animal of their choice generally earns them a living. But ask a man of the “fancy” how much his birds pay him, and if he answers at all, don’t expect it to be the truth. There’s no more similarity between a poultry fancier and a poultryman, than there is between a stamp collector and a …postmaster.

What no one seems to suspect is that a fancier is merely a man who is pleasantly haunted by memories of a boyhood spent on a farm or in a small town which he has really never consented to leave, regardless of what success he may attained elsewhere.

It may simply be that you can’t forget the kind of chickens your mother used to keep. Or you remember the comical Leghorn cockerel which you trained to fly to your bedroom window for corn every morning.

Or the Christmas like thrill of waking to a fair day morning in that long ago, knowing that this was at last the great day you were going to show some of your very own Minorcas. And, if you won first prize, the fifty cents was yours to spend in any way you wanted. Or if the fever had already worked itself deep enough in the blood, you could hide it away until next spring, when you could buy another setting of another kind, perhaps.

I met my breed thirty years ago in company with a half-dozen more of my father’s brood one winter’s night, as we fought for the close places beside his stoveside rocker.

We met it in a tattered old poultry book which my father had picked up one day at a library sale. The Golden Pencilled Hamburgs were on one of the color plates which hadn’t fallen out yet. What beauties they were! We had never seen such a bird. In all of the years we looked at that book and talked about these wonderful chickens, they were no more real to us than King Arthur’s Knights. There were other pictures in that book too, but right from the start, the Golden Pencilled Hamburgs were OUR breed. Ours because they were our father’s choice.

“Now them’s a bird that’s got some right to holler at the sunrise,” he used to say.

And one day when the picture at last fell all the way out of the book, he took our Uncle Bertram’s army picture out of its frame and put the Golden Pencilled Hamburgs in its place.

“I think we’re going to have some of those, some day,” he said.

Our mother couldn’t understand such adolescence in her husband at all. He had always been so cautious, so solid. And here he was now getting all excited about some fowl that looked more like a red and gold pheasant than an honest-to-goodness hen.

Father didn’t argue, which meant that his mind was set. But mother refused to let the matter drop. “Anyhow,” she comforted herself, “you’ll never get around to it. It’s just one more of those ideas you’re always getting out of your dream books!”

The one dream which did materialize was the fabulous Golden Pencilled Hamburgs. Not at first, of course, for we must have looked at that picture for all of three years before we got them. There came a fall, however, when our inventory looked so good that father decided that he might be able to afford a trip down to the winter fair.

When he came back, he brought a pair of exquisitely barred feathers, to show us he had at last made a face-to face acquaintance of the breed.

“And are they really pretty, Daddy!” we asked.

“Really as pretty as they are in the picture?”

“Prettier than the picture,” he said.

The five dozen eggs arrived one March day when the first warmth of spring was sucking the snow away from the hillsides. I can remember the excitement there was when we unpacked them and found that only two were broken. I remember too, how gloomily mother wondered about their cost. “Probably spent a dollar or more a dozen for those silly eggs,” she said.

I doubt if she ever knew that father had paid five times that for the eggs. The valuation was on the express label that he told me to put in the stove.

So our start in Hamburgs cost us $25.00 plus the express, plus the second-hand incubator that father bought to bring them to life. And the incubator went into the parlor which, to us children at least, seemed the only place in the house worthy of it.

Every night for three weeks we made a pilgrimage into the parlor to watch our father test and turn the golden eggs. We went in tiptoeing carefully along the pathway of papers mother had laid down to protect the carpet, and I recall that when we knelt to look, for some reason or other, we always found ourselves speaking in whispers.

Came the twenty-first day, when we knelt by the hour to see the humble miracle of life breaking forth from the dead-rock stillness of the egg, and becoming the unspeakably beautiful thing which is a chick in its first fluff.

Surely there was never anything happened in those wonderful years more wonderful than those 42 chicks which stepped out of their shells that spring. And by September, when their plumage was coming into its first grandeur, they were the pride of the farm.

One of the things I remember clearest is how they would follow father from one end of the barnyard to the other, coaxing for the bit of corn he always had in his pocket, and how he used to lure them out onto the lawn on a sunny Sunday morning, because their gold and red looked so rich against the green.

And to the visitors who were forever coming home from church with us, he’d say quietly: “They’re real show stuff, you know. Got the eggs from a man named Humphries. He’s supposed to have the best flock in America. … Does he make a living out of them? … Well, now, as a matter of fact, he’s connected with some sort of a steel company. Never saw him, mind you, but I hear he’s one of the vice-presidents.

The usual comment might go like this. “Um-hum … Not a bad looking sort of bird. Must lay a pretty small egg though, eh, Henry?” … Wouldn’t dress out much either. Or, are they one of them you’re supposed to kill young for fryers? …”

It got embarrassing after awhile when he discovered how hard it was to explain to such neighbors that there were actually breeds of fowl whose greatest purpose was simply to parade under the sun and be so beautiful. He never got much appreciation around home. That which eventually did reach him, came from men he had never seen before.

First came Mr. Humphries himself. He drove up through the mud of our lane one bleak November day in a Packard; the fineness of him was enough to set us children gawking at him from the safety of the summer kitchen door. “Did you have any luck with those eggs you got from me?” he asked.

Father looked doubtfully at the glint on Mr. Humphries’ shoes and his low rubbers and then led off through the slop of the barnyard to the henhouse. Mr. Humpries looked at the birds for a long time.

“Pure beginner’s luck,” he said. “I believe you have almost as good a flock as I have.”

Which, so he told us confidentially a little later, was probably the best flock in the whole world. “You’ll have to send some of those birds down to the Winter Fair,” he said. And without waiting for an answer, he picked out the ones good enough to go, and put some colored rings on their legs.

Much to my mother’s fright, Mr. Humphries accepted her invitation to supper that night. But Mr. Humphries noticed neither the special food nor the special tablecloth … He just talked Golden Hamburgs.

“It’s knowing how to make the right matings that gives you birds like I’ve got,” he said. “You’ve got to make one mating for your hens and another to give you your best cock birds … As soon as I get back to the office, I’m going to send you a book about that. But you’ve got to go to the fairs, you know. That’s where you really learn.”

So father started going to the shows, his birds often going down in the same cattle truck that took him. And, now in the great bragging sessions that often filled our noon hours at school, we finally had something to say about our father.

Before this he had always been too quiet. We could never hope to brag, as the O’Hara boys could, for instance, that he could lick the next-best man in the section with one hand tied down.

We knew that he would never own a two-ton team of Belgians, such as Burnery MacKellop’s dad took to the gravel pit every morning. He had never been overseas, or out west, or in any other of the far countries from which a man ordinarily returns as an everlasting hero.

But our father was famous anyhow. More famous by far than all the rest, we thought. Our dad had some of the best Golden Pencilled Hamburgs in all the world.

But as for me, the most swelling pride of all came from seeing the kind of men who used to come down the aisles of the great shows to greet father as if he were a long-lost brother.
A few of these were farmers like himself, but many of them were men with names which you were sure you had heard before. Big men in industry, in the world of sports, clergymen, lawyers. Men whom you felt must surely be addressed as “sir” back in their paneled offices.

But when they were talking exhibition fowl, first names were plenty good enough. Especially if they happened to be among the few who bred Golden Pencilled Hamburgs.

“Henry, you old fox!” I can hear them saying, “You’ve done it again! When are you going to give us other guys a chance?”

“Gave you the pick of the crop last October,” father might remind them.

“But you still beat us! How do you do it?” And father would laugh in his shy way, and maybe compose a yarn for them. He fed his birds banana centers. Or he kept them by the parlor stove all winter.

And then, when Mr. Humphries suddenly died, and his flock disappeared with him, our Hamburgs WERE the best in the world, and we soon had a bushel of ribbons to prove it.

The years didn’t bring father much of the ease that should have come from his toil. Each spring there was the blossoming of new promise, but each summer saw the old, old struggle against the soured and brittle fields and the unconcern of disastrous skies.

The only luxury I can ever remember father allowing himself was that flock of ornamental chickens. And I shall always be able to see him as he would come in some noon from the summer fields, the grime wrinkled in his forehead, his face weary with sun and fatigue, sitting by the well for a moment with his famous chickens gathered around his feet.

I was eighteen that year I went to Normal School. That was back in 1932. Oats were bringing a cent a pound that year, and we decided we’d feed ours into pork. From the pig money was to come enough to start me off on my great adventure.

But when starting time came in September, pigs were bringing so little I was hardly worth a man’s effort to load them into a truck. Father decided to hold on to his for a while.

So he gave me what money he had, and one memorable day I boarded the bus for the city. “I’ll send you the rest as soon as I sell the pigs,” he promised.

But the price of pigs was to go lower still. Farmers began shooting their piglets at birth that year, because they were worse than worthless.

It wasn’t until I hitch-hiked home for Thanksgiving that I learned where the money had come from. Father had sold the Golden Pencilled Hamburgs!!

I felt awful! I knew how much they’d meant to him.

“$300 is a lot of money, son,” he explained quietly. “And maybe it was like your mother said anyhow … They always were sort of a plaything.”

But it was only when he saw how badly I felt about it that he tried to joke a bit. “Guess I showed some of those practical Thomases around here that there was gold in them after all,” he said.

That was the day I made a solemn promise to myself that some day, just as soon as ever I could, I’d see to it that the Golden Pencilled Hamburgs could come back to my father’s farm. It was the only way I could get that Thanksgiving dinner past the lump in my throat.

But it was a harder promise to keep than I had anticipated. There was hardly as much money in teaching those depression years as there was in feeding pork. Came then such things as marriage – and then the war. And by the time that I might have bought some of our breed back again, the family had begun to break apart.

Then father moved into the city where chickens were considered unsanitary – and a rooster is forbidden by law to crow every morning. So I never was able to keep that promise really.
But I finally did put back some of the Golden Pencilled Hamburgs. I got an even dozen of them a few months ago. Not from the man who gave my father $300 for them so long ago, because he died last year. But the son to whom the birds were left was quite pleased to have me take the fool things off his hands.

And I got a lovely redwood incubator along with them. It’s in my front room now, beside the television set, and my own three children have been begging me to load it up with eggs, ever since we set it up.

The chickens themselves aren’t quite as good as they used to be when we had them before. At least that’s what father says. That’s why he’s up at my place so much of the time right now.

“It’s knowing how to make the right matings that gives you the good birds,” he reminds me. And he doesn’t think THAT knowing is quite mine yet.

Come show time again – the best may once again be ours.

- E N D -​

I have publications here, listing single birds selling for $100 pounds (English currency) in 1915. Today, a hundred pounds would be quibbled about for buying jest one chicken. Eh??

Your birds resided in the rafters of your little hovel house...precious birds...cherished birds...birds that laid the golden eggs! It is more person's of today's stature that overly deflate the value of chickens. Homesteaders had excellent flocks of productive birds...they could not afford to feed, house and care for crap so they invested in GOOD BIRDS--they knew the value of a hard earned dollar and taking time to save and invest in something worthwhile with a good return. There were crap ones, but those ones were known to be a waste of resources--who has not seen variable chicken types running about trying to survive virtually on their own. Many people were proud of their prowess in maintaining breeds and varieties...proud to tout the virtues of breeds and the varieties they kept and they kept them well, pure and pristine...poultry back then was worthy of keeping protected and cherished.

There is a kind of person, that has the savoir-faire to know what dessert fork to use when and where...a stylish person that has etiquette and panache that appreciates the finer things in life. You cannot make a silk purse from a sow' s ear...and therefore, there will always be persons that do not appreciate that there is an upper end to breeding poultry to a feather; the reasons to do this, simply escape them. For them, I have no ability to teach them to appreciate a sunset, a sunrise or the glory of the day. To look upon a beast many would label a chicken, one I have invested decades into helping create and have them understand why we do it. It is to many, and always will be, a chicken...something you deep fry in batter so past that, why argue?

You are either born with an appreciate for the finer things in life or not; the keeners, the ones that strive for the top rung and higher, we do not question why we do what we do...we were born with a destiny to pursue joy & happiness and should do just that.

I cannot bestow the virtues of being a Fancier of Standard-Bred Poultry to persons that choose not to see the glory in a pursuit that I will never quite achieve. I am at a loss before I even begin.

Edmund Hillary:
Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[CanuckBock]

Heel low:

Posted this here before, but well time for a review of it I guess.

Here's MY TEST of commercial tom compared to heritage hen...the CHOICE part comparison...how many are hood winked into thinking the BROAD BREASTED turkeys are giving us more white meat...well we thought this was an improvement...well it is NOT! The heritage turkeys these rare persons that keep them...we know the TRUTH. We know the rally rankers are wrong...the BBWhites are not better...they are losing to the heritage birds...and in so many other ways but let's look at the choice cut of the turkey...the coveted WHITE breast MEAT!

Marketing...yeh, dive right in eh...because THEY advertise and inubndage you with it...don't EVER let it make you think it is true... I say, you need to PROVE IT...to yourself, by your own doing...or...or may you continue to have a shroud pulled tightly over your rights to reality. Away...away you go, like a flock of dulled down domesticated beasts...no fuss, no muss, don't rock the boat, don't think for yourselves...just believe what we cram down your throats and good enough.

I chose to have the primitives, the heritage, can function just fine without me in most issues--type beasts. The ones that don't need me because "I" crippled them to need me. The thrivers, the alivers, the zesty ones...that revel in my care and the ones that are more wild than domesticated into crippled ness...but that be just me...anyway...

http://www.wolven.ca/higgins/ratranch/turkeys.htm:
I proudly raise heritage turkeys and they are better than the commercial factory farmed Broad Breasted Whites! Natural foraging, breeding, long living (still got my original day olds from 2008, going on strong!), slow growing (quality meat and eggs)....intelligent, able to raise more of the same, pretty, productive...just fabulous!

​

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...ritage-turkey-coop-coupers-chat#post_14694723

January 28 2015....

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Let's dash one basic myth...

The biggest one I love to destroy is that the Broad Breasted "commercial factory farmed" turkeys have a larger percentage of (more) BREAST meat than the proper heritage turkeys do...NOPE, simply untrue!

Turkey breast meat (white) is lower in fat than the dark meat and the most highly valued of the turkey meat cuts. For decades now, the mythology would have you the consumer and keepers of turkeys all believe that broad breasted breeds (white or bronze) had a higher percentage of white meat compared to the heritage breeds. BWA HA HA...not so!

Commercial turkey TOM on the left...Heritage turkey HEN (yes, I used a female turkey in this test!) on the right ​

The shape of the heritage turkey is different...this is why heritage turkeys may breed naturally, forage so well, live long prosperous outdoor existences...just are generally better happy healthy birds.

I kept processing our home grown heritage turkey birds and wondering..."was it me...was it so, was there MORE choice white meat in the heritage birds?"...so I just had to find out for sure...was my hunch correct? Now was it?

October 7th, 2012 - Canadian Thanksgiving​

So I cooked TWO turkeys that holiday (much to the delight of my men folk and the dogs...YUMMY...lotsa turkey!).

I chose a Lilac heritage turkey HEN (yes, a girl! and a commercial broad (ha!) breasted white TOM to cook. Identical conditions, in my own home.

Heritage hen white meat on left and Commercial tom white meat on right

​

Weighting the choice cuts of breast meat...

Heritage hen


Commercial tom​

The heritage hen weighed 9.5 pounds and the commercial tom weighed 14 pounds. Keep in mind, whilst the hen was smaller than the tom, overall we are more interested in the percentage of white meat produced by the actual turkey birds. She is heritage and he is suppose to be BROAD BREASTED...compared to what, not sure what BROAD BREASTED means but I am now pondering what kind of sic marketing ploy that entails.

Maybe we need to RE-name the heritage breeds of turkey ... something like Heritage BONUS CHOICE meat cuts, er HBCMC for short...dunno, I am still in shock all these years later and STILL not very creative naming wise...I just know that this flamboyant miscarriage of truthfulness must be dashed!

The percentage of white meat based on original weights...wait for it...

HERITAGE HEN - 20.2 percent

COMMERCIAL TOM - 18.6 percent

YUP! The heritage hen had MORE WHITE MEAT than the commercial tom...by 1.6 percent.

How does the rest of the birds stack up....

Leg meat
Commercial tom on left / Heritage hen on right​

​

My son adores turkey legs and he just raves about how much more tastier the heritage turkey meat is compared to the commercial turkeys. So much more turkey tasting flavourful!

Heritage hen​

Commercial tom​

Heritage hen on left / Commercial tom on right
​

You can SEE the heritage meat is more firm--I only wish you could TASTE the superior quality the heritage turkey has over the bland commercial mush meats.


Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[Akrnaf2]

Tara I really can't manage with your short posts!

BUT I have to say 2 things
1. I don't look for records chicken, I look for the AVERAGE for the breed.
2. AND Austraorp is basically an..... Hybrid! Made of Black orp., RIR, Langshan and some more pure breed! So it is a basically a salad! Stabilize salad, but still a salad!

 

[CanuckBock]

Tara I really can't manage with your short posts!

BUT I have to say 2 things
1. I don't look for records chicken, I look for the AVERAGE for the breed.
2. AND Austraorp is basically an..... Hybrid! Made of Black orp., RIR, Langshan and some more pure breed! So it is a basically a salad! Stabilize salad, but still a salad!

1. But if you think the commercial mush meaters and swill eggers are better...you do have to look for RECORD CHICKENS and which ones are better than the factory farmed ones. If people HAD to raise birds that made our meat and eggs humanely...they would have to raise the heritage real thinking happy chickens--not these monstrosities of misery! These commercial monsters we humans think are better for production...that would never be allowed! We have our value systems all messed up. I cannot help that happiness and joy and a good life don't count on a balance sheet! $$ does not equal goodness...some say the root of all evil IS money.

On average...heritage chickens produce a better QUALITY product...is it worth the effort...if we measured happiness, joy, decency and love...you BETCHA the average to Standard Bred chicken would always win over the commercial factory farmed products.

2. ALL chickens are Gallus gallus domesticus...every single bird that is not a Red Junglefowl is a form of chicken hybrid. Under that ruling...all domestic chickens are hybrids. OR all are one species and not truly hybrids or every single chicken crossed and made from foundation breeds is a hybrid...


I have to say that the SOP recognizes a hybrid as a BREED, then breed it must be. An Australorp is a PURE BREED. My fav breed, the Chantecler is a mixture of breeds--what I call a composite breed of chicken, as are all breeds of chickens that are not JUNGLEFOWL.

And you will note in my short post...I labelled the Rhode Island as ...

Gallus gallus domesticus

Above post:
All chickens are descendants of one breed (well OK...some debate on Grey or Red Junglefowl or both or even others...let the scientific community fight that debate out!) and one species because they cross breed so well. I do believe some of the Junglefowl have different behaviours...some crow, some don't, some other things that our chickens do or don't do.

What all chickens are NOT, are heritage breeds. All chickens are not bred to the Standard birds...there are no mush meats or swill eggers in the Standards...

Quote:
These factory farmed commercial Frankenbirds are not REAL chickens and cannot produce REAL FOOD...they have been manipulated to the point of no return and do not produce tasty firm meat and delicious real eggs in true abundance (Australorps are a breed as per defined in the SOP's...Cornish Rock crosses or whatever they are now at 30 days and dead...NOT A BREED in the SOP...the egg layers are not a breed found in SOP's either). They produce, but not satisfactory good products...not like heritage stocks do!

The mush meats and swill eggers are not chooks in my books...can never produce the premium products us Fanciers have come to know and love.

​

I personally don't care that it costs me more to produce fine eggs and excellent meats that take time...happy meat and happy eggs from happy birds...QUALITY. It would be like saying you can have all the poop you want, fast cheap and simple...no, I don't EAT POO thanks. So I will pay what I have to pay to eat real meat and real eggs. Lots of poo...is simply lots of poo no matter what makes it and how fast it is made...still poo! We compost poo here...happily making real food from the poo, but not eating poo directly...no thanks!

Just about every breed of chicken found in the SOP has a section entitled "ECONOMIC QUALITIES" that speaks about the economic (profitability!) items like eggs and meat. The only breeds with no mention are ones like the Naked Necks, Shamos, Yokohamas, Pheonix, Modern Games, Old English Games, etc. The more ornamental birds and even here their plumage is sought after by fly tyers...so can still generate "products" that make money.

Here is a cute (with a bit of sadness at the end) story I just read today...mentions how unsavory crossing breeds was seen to be...back in the olden days, eh!

Bantams Are Very Clever, published in April 1946 issue of Bantam Magazine: As time went on, and as I expected, the feeding and care of a few Bantams in a pen, when I had so many large coops of broilers to demand my time, became a bother, so I decided to turn them out to range, since I had five acres for them to travel over. I soon found that when they were free to choose their own way of living they seemed very satisfied to stay close to the poultry buildings and become very tame. Soon one of the Sebright hens made a nest and was sitting on eight eggs, in one of my buildings. A day later I noticed that one of the Black Tail Jap hens had layed an egg in the Sebright's nest. I then realized that to let the trio of Black tail Japs and the trio of Sebrights range at will, would soon cause a mixture of breeds that would not be desirable. So I again made pens for both trios but left the little Sebright where she was to hatch out her brood. In due time, four little Sebright babies appeared about her and yet she sat another day, then off she came proudly displaying her babies, four Sebrights and one Jap.

In due time the babies became large enough to take from her and I prepared a pen for them, but just neglected to put her back with the balance of her trio. In fact I had become accustomed to her meeting me at the door of the building each morning and demanding her breakfast, and felt I did not want to lose her morning greeting by returning her to the flock. She rebuilt a nest and began to lay.

In the meantime the four little chicks seemed to realize the difference of the one of their lot and always the Jap baby seemed to be alone and grieving. One day I turned her loose thinking she might be happier alone if she had more space to range in. She did not tarry about the pen she should have felt was home by that time, but went directly to the building of her first home. There she waited until I opened the door, and entered. She went directly up to her mother who was sitting on her new nest. She spent the next three days winning her mother over, and then fourth day I discovered she has won for that night she went to bed under her mother's wing. After that night her mother began clucking to her and for several months they were inseparable, and if so much as a box would separate her from her view of her mother she would put a demanding cry as a small chick would. Then one day the little Jap which was now almost a fully developed pullet seemed to realize that her mother was ill, for indeed she was; she had in some way contracted a cold which was fast closing one eye. Her baby took up the task of scratching for both of them and as her mother grew more ill and lost her appetite, she began coaxing her mother to eat just as her mother had called her at the finding of a choice morsel. Then one morning, Sebright mother lay dead and the little Jap was sitting quietly beside her when I entered the building. As the day went on she left her mother's side to hunt food and then was my opportunity to remove the body. Sebright's babe made no further outward fuss but went about the business of living.

Not desirable to cross breeds...too bad so many nowadays don't SEE it that way. Sigh...

Chicken salads...abound...

I like chicken salad, but not that kind--stable or unstable!!

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[Akrnaf2]

Tara
Don't get wrong I DO PREFER THE HERITAGE BREED 10,000 MORE THE INDUSTRIALIZED HYBRID.
BUT I don't love the "morality package " the come in.
First I really don't like (I didn't choose worse words ) the word "humanely" because it suppose to represent, compassion and mercy, but the opposite is the truth! The biggest atrocities ih history (the Holicost, " Shoa", Gingis Chan, Stalin regime ect, ect) have been made by Humans and not Animals!

Second the ACT of domestication itself is not merciful OR "HUMAEIN " taking a bird that lay 30 eggs annually and make it lay 180 or 200 a year is cruelty, or making an animal lactate all year long is cruel also.

 

[drumstick diva]

Akrnaf I think it is terrible that some have tinkered with genes to produce meat(chicks) birds that eat till they drop and explosive growth just so the grocer will have chickens available- that took the least time from hatch to $$$$$market. They may as well grow them in test tubes, they have no real life as a chicken.

 

[Akrnaf2]

Akrnaf   I think it is terrible that  some have tinkered with genes to produce  meat(chicks) birds that eat till they drop  and explosive growth just so  the grocer will have chickens available- that took the least time from hatch to  $$$$$market. They may as well grow them in test tubes,  they have no real life as a chicken.

I agree, but DD I say, that from the BEGINNING domestic chicken don't have chicken life.... even if it free-range it isn't even resemble the jungle fowl life! We humans, using selective and genetic manipulation made the domestic chicken what it is : an egg and meat manufacturing machin! Do you think that a chicken that weight 2.5 kg lay every year of its first 2 years almost 5 time here weight in EGGS??? (220 eggs a year x 50 grams per egg= 11000 gr= 11 kg! And I didn't take the maximum numbers! ) so In my point of view the next step of chicken evolution AKA commercial flocks was inevitable!

 

[CanuckBock]

Tara
Don't get wrong I DO PREFER THE HERITAGE BREED 10,000 MORE THE INDUSTRIALIZED HYBRID.
BUT I don't love the "morality package " the come in.
First I really don't like (I didn't choose worse words ) the word "humanely" because it suppose to represent, compassion and mercy, but the opposite is the truth! The biggest atrocities ih history (the Holicost, " Shoa", Gingis Chan, Stalin regime ect, ect) have been made by Humans and not Animals!

Second the ACT of domestication itself is not merciful OR "HUMAEIN " taking a bird that lay 30 eggs annually and make it lay 180 or 200 a year is cruelty, or making an animal lactate all year long is cruel also.

Don't get me going on supposed "HUMANE" being good...some cases, the homosapien can be more than kind, caring and admirable...and then again...not so much...

Like the original reason for chickens...blood sports...yeh, wonderful, pit animals in situations where their acting badly is encouraged and make money off of their misery...jolly!

:
The history of agriculture records the domestication of plants and animals and the development and dissemination of techniques for raising them productively. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin.

Wild grains were collected and eaten from at least 20,000 BC. From around 9,500 BC, the eight Neolithic founder crops, emmer and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC, followed by mung, soy and azuki beans. Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 13,000 BC, followed by sheep between 11,000 and 9,000 BC. Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and Pakistan around 8,500 BC. Sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 7,000 BC. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 5,000 BC. In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 8,000 and 5,000 BC, along with beans, coca, llamas, alpacas, and guinea pigs. Bananas were cultivated and hybridized in the same period in Papua New Guinea. In Mesoamerica, wild teosinte was domesticated to maize by 4,000 BC. Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 3,600 BC. Camels were domesticated late, perhaps around 3,000 BC.

We need to administer some "act of domestication" if we are to keep chickens and turkeys period. The wild versions, would be as miserable and potentially MORE miserable if we did not tame the beasts down a bit.

Given a choice...domestication to the "heritage" and "primitive" (like my Jacob sheep are...a primitive sheep breed!) state in the situation that I keep them in...that is better than me out chasing wild things in the wilderness to stuff in my pie hole...my thoughts, eh.

I am not going to stop eating meat and eggs, so I prefer to keep creatures that can be kept happy and healthy to enjoy a reasonably good existence until I decide to consume them I guess. Wicked me, the human protein seeker!

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada