List of oldest U.S. chicken breeds. Is it correct?

[Bullitt]

Rose Comb RIR are the RIR answer to cold hardiness.

What about their feet?

 

[Yellow House Farm]

You seemed to have missed my point.

One quality should not be focused on to the exclusion of others. All of the qualities of a breed need to be considered.

Those who are raising birds for show do not need to consider all the qualities of a breed in order to do well with showing.

Well, on that level sure, but they can't be judged at a show, and then to a point they are. There's much that can be discerned in type as to the production potential of a bird. When you get your APA Standard, the first 50 pages do much to makes this plain. Moreover, the body requirements of breeds, especially those used for meat, do much to make that meat possible in the hands of the skillful. Still, all of this gets back to the need to really get to know the APA and the standard before forming ideas about them, especially if those ideas might actually be antithetical to progressing as a keeper of poultry.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

What about their feet?

If one's birds feet are freezing, the specific birds with which one is working are weak or the husbandry methods are in need of adjustment.

 

[The Yakima Kid]

California Grays are a breed; they are not a cuckoo Leghorn - they were produced by the use of carefully chosen Barred Rocks crossed with extremely high producing lines of white Leghorns, and then further selected for meat and temperament qualities. Go spend a day in a pen of "Barred Leghorns" and then do the same with California Grays. Close your eyes so you aren't distracted by superficial differences of appearance, and then tell me where you'd rather spend a day.

The old style practical poultrymen *abandoned* the APA. The old time practical poultrymen did breed their way out of a box. While the APA standards insisted that a certain body type was "indicative of a good layer" Slocum, Dryden, Lamon and others were proving them wrong. The APA refused to include laying trials and carcass trials in their standards. More than a few practical poultrymen raising pastured poultry do breed their own lines. Ever hear of Good Shepherd Rocks? Or how about the old high laying strain of Rocks now in the care of Decorah Hatchery in Iowa and being bought and bred by practical egg ranchers?

I don't recall the APA being involved or even supportive of the development of the 300 egg a year hen. I keep hearing that the SOP has something to do with production standards, but I see no evidence of this, other than repeating folklore about how certain shapes are supposed to reflect certain qualities - but a even a perfect SOP Wyandotte might have way to much waste or poor meat quality. You can't tell without actually measuring the performance.

I've already spent more than enough time with the APA crowd. I think thirty minutes in a chicken run with the average APA proponent would probably expiate the sins of a Ted Bundy. I don't care what a pullet looks like for breeding purposes as much as I want to know the trapnest records of her maternal ancestors and full and half sibs, and the production records of the female ancestors in all of the male lines. I am not going to breed a distinctly deformed bird - but I'll take a line that lays well and is short backed over a line that has perfect conformation and is fortunate to crank out eighty eggs a year.

The 300 egg a year hen was developed before 1916 and the practical poultrymen noticed that the highly productive utility birds didn't seem to be outstanding representatives of the standard of perfection.

I don't know why APA people insist that the SOP includes utility qualities. I've read it, and it focuses solely on appearances that are alleged to represent this or that trait - when there is no evidence to support those claims. There are some minimal inputs regarding temperament - but no practical form for testing temperament other than whether or not biddy will pose properly and let the judge pick her up.

There are general trends in breeds, although, yes, strain is a better indicator. I find it irritating that someone who bases their opinion of poultry solely on folkloric notions of correlations of ability with specific conformation characteristics seems to think that I suffer from romantic notions - I am perfectly aware that roosters crow anytime they want. I am also perfectly aware that this is why even in the "good old days" cocks in town weren't that common. And I am even more aware that some birds can fly over to the neighbors yard, and some can't - and some are much more vocal than others - and I can pretty much guess that without regard to strain that a RIR is a heck of a lot less likely to fly over the fence than a Danish Brown Leghorn.

 

[The Yakima Kid]

~~I know it's a bit annoying when one is an aficionado of a breed, but all of the best breeds have the block-type that the Buckeye doesn't have: Rocks, Reds, Dorkings, Leghorns, Anconas, Minorcas, Houdans. It is the type both associated with the best egg-production and the best meat production.

I think you need to sit down and take a good look at some of the record setting hens. Some of the best layers were built shallow. Some were short backed.

I wouldn't consider the commercial white Leghorn - the world's hand's down laying champion - to be particularly block shaped.

 

[Bullitt]

The old style practical poultrymen *abandoned* the APA. The old time practical poultrymen did breed their way out of a box. While the APA standards insisted that a certain body type was "indicative of a good layer" Slocum, Dryden, Lamon and others were proving them wrong. The APA refused to include laying trials and carcass trials in their standards. More than a few practical poultrymen raising pastured poultry do breed their own lines. Ever hear of Good Shepherd Rocks? Or how about the old high laying strain of Rocks now in the care of Decorah Hatchery in Iowa and being bought and bred by practical egg ranchers?

I don't recall the APA being involved or even supportive of the development of the 300 egg a year hen. I keep hearing that the SOP has something to do with production standards, but I see no evidence of this, other than repeating folklore about how certain shapes are supposed to reflect certain qualities - but a even a perfect SOP Wyandotte might have way to much waste or poor meat quality. You can't tell without actually measuring the performance.

I've already spent more than enough time with the APA crowd. I think thirty minutes in a chicken run with the average APA proponent would probably expiate the sins of a Ted Bundy. I don't care what a pullet looks like for breeding purposes as much as I want to know the trapnest records of her maternal ancestors and full and half sibs, and the production records of the female ancestors in all of the male lines. I am not going to breed a distinctly deformed bird - but I'll take a line that lays well and is short backed over a line that has perfect conformation and is fortunate to crank out eighty eggs a year.

The 300 egg a year hen was developed before 1916 and the practical poultrymen noticed that the highly productive utility birds didn't seem to be outstanding representatives of the standard of perfection.

I don't know why APA people insist that the SOP includes utility qualities. I've read it, and it focuses solely on appearances that are alleged to represent this or that trait - when there is no evidence to support those claims. There are some minimal inputs regarding temperament - but no practical form for testing temperament other than whether or not biddy will pose properly and let the judge pick her up.

There are general trends in breeds, although, yes, strain is a better indicator. I find it irritating that someone who bases their opinion of poultry solely on folkloric notions of correlations of ability with specific conformation characteristics seems to think that I suffer from romantic notions - I am perfectly aware that roosters crow anytime they want. I am also perfectly aware that this is why even in the "good old days" cocks in town weren't that common. And I am even more aware that some birds can fly over to the neighbors yard, and some can't - and some are much more vocal than others - and I can pretty much guess that without regard to strain that a RIR is a heck of a lot less likely to fly over the fence than a Danish Brown Leghorn.

I can see why poultry farmers stopped participating in the APA.

The APA is more concerned with looks, just like with dog shows.

 

[The Yakima Kid]

Nope. You haven't quite gotten it yet. Old-fashioned breeds were developed at a time when expectations for productivity were less than they are now. A good dual-purpose breed that laid 150 to 200 eggs and had a nice carcass was a darn good bird, and, in reality for a family sized operation, it still is. There are lots and lots of exhibition birds that do that.

However, it's also completely false to think that beauty wasn't a huge motivator in the development of the old breeds. Most of the old breeds were developed before refrigeration and reliable, fast mass transportation. Food production, like most production of most things, was decidedly localized. Beauty and the development of breeds went hand in hand, and why should it not have? The breeds were being asked to supply a local market and they did, but they were also an attraction of the local market. Consider it, smaller-scale, localized life appreciates smaller-scale, localized things. Hamburgs were always awesome layers, very beautiful and challenging to maintain in good form. It was a total package--just like distinct barring. Indeed, in most breeds, the more "beautiful", meaning complex color-wise, were developed before the "practical" white varieties. Plymouth Rocks were first barred--barred, not cuckoo--very specific, very complicated, challenging, exciting--beautiful. The Whites arose out of them as sports in Maine. The Wyandottes? Silver-laced. Now, that's hard work. How much fun for one not buried in emails, commutes, life-time mortgages, college debt: eggs, meat, and a creative challenge. They were perfectly suited to small-scale farm life, along with all of the other "impractical" hogs breeds, cattle breeds, sheep breeds, and goat breeds, that were ignored in the rise of large-scale corporate agriculture. Their loss of profitability in the current economic climate doesn't somehow make them unworthy of admiration or somehow less than, nor does it somehow devaluate APA breeders who maintain them, they way one maintains other old-fashioned crafts that hail from a day where beauty and purpose could walk together.

You've just explained why the APA is irrelevant to anyone into practical poultry. Dual purpose bird laying over 200 eggs a year were in development in the 19th C - but I don't think the APA was particularly happy about it. Early maturity - and fast feathering - tend to mess up those perfect bars the APA wants on Barred Rocks. For years after it was found that the barring gene caused a difference in the width and intensity of the bar colors in Barred Breeds - the APA still held both cocks and pullets to the same standard, leading to the totally wasteful practice of double mating which depended on the existence of birds that failed to meet the standard for their sex!

Sorry, but the APA is as untouched by reality as the modern AQHA which continues to register good looking horses best known for a genetic defect that causes them to fall on their riders and not be able to get up.

 

[Yellow House Farm]

Put two of them in a pen together. Note the temperament difference. Take a very good look and watch their behavior. One is panicky, flighty, cannibalistic, and will be bouncing off the fences if in a yard or floor operation. The other is non-cannibalistic, not flighty, and will allow you to walk through a flock with the ease of passing through a flock of Dominiques.

Outward appearances are the concern of the APA, not utility traits. Too narrow, the APA is concerned with physical traits, because physical traits are what make a breed a breed. These ideas about productivity, flightiness, cannibalism, these things are maintained one generation after another. They're not breed traits, and they can arise in any breed. No breeds are supposed to be flighty and prone to cannibalism, and all are supposed to maintain breed specific levels of productivity. If a hatchery strain of "California Greys" is performing well in this area, it's not because of the original breeder. These things are maintained generation to generation. They do not hold in a static state over countless generations. The strength or weakness of any bird are due to the breeding of that bird and more recent genetic influences: such as carcass size and offal content. These things vary strain by strain, one can only make the broadest statements about breed attributes with any sort of accuracy.

Dryden's objectives tended to be stated in terms of ideal finished product - eggs per year, dressed carcass weight, meat distribution, meat quality along with ease of management and feed conversion. .

 

[Bullitt]

"utility traits," not physical traits.

As I have been saying, egg-laying, a utility trait, is not very important when APA judges consider a chicken.

 

[gjensen]

Both of you raised this point about the APA.

"Those concerns are not with the APA, but with the breeders."

Why shouldn't the APA care about the reason that breed exists today?

If a person is showing a chicken, a judge has no idea the ability of the chicken to lay eggs and the judges have no way to really check on it. It is not considered when judging chickens.

I agree that breeders should try to meet the standards and the utility qualities that the breed was intended for. But a chicken that can't lay very well but should can be declared the winner in a show.

Talk about one extreme concerned with another extreme.

The balance is in the middle.

Have either of you tried taking a mediocre laying strain and bred them up to high performance? I would take the arguments more seriously if the arguments were not based on dead men's accomplishments and ideals. I mean, do you guys actually breed birds?

If you are, I would like to hear numbers, records, accomplishments, failures. I would find that far more interesting.

I have long been interested in performance genetics, and you are right. There is a lot more to it than how a bird is shaped. That is not to say type is irrelevant though. Far from it.

And do not be so bitter. LOL. This is a hobby.

There is nothing to be concerned about. There are far more performing birds in this world than not. LOL. They might not live long, but they are out there.