New Blue Laced Red Wyandotte Flock

[Mrs. Turbo]

The BLRWs are getting so inbred and don't seem to get better on their own so there is some crossings going on the achieve the color, comb, and Wyandotte shape.....does take a little knowledge, guidance, lots of chicken feed, year after year of breeding and many trials and errors along the way to get the final bird.....all worth it in the end.

 

[hoppy]

bishop, I have a question, why did you start your BLR flock over vs just adding to improve?

 

[bishopschickens]

I wanted some birds from Paul's lines and my other birds were not getting any younger. Just felt like starting from scratch.

 

[turbo]

Hey NYRed,

I thought I would jump in here too...I think the reason the BLRW are so hard to breed and to improve on is this fact, if you bred only for good type the color really starts to go bad on you..by the third generation you have a wyandotte with real decent type that has brassy hackles, horrible gold lacing, ect. Now if you only breed for good color and lacing, by the third generation you have this beautiful mahogany red laced pinch tailed barnyard fowl running around in grass.

So the path I have taken is growing out 150 BLRW chicks each spring, then as they mature I start culling for type..by Sept I go through and start culling the birds that have inferior color and lacing...normaly by Nov I have about 6-8 pullets and 2-3 cockerels that are about 9 months old with good color and better type. After about 5 years, I have seen slow steady improvement in type and big improvement in color. These BLRW will drive you crazy if you are trying to breed to the standard...and the cost of growing out all those chicks is insane, for therapy I started raising the Silver Laced....but heck I ended up growing out alot of those to get improvement too...its just a vicious circle, but if it was easy everyone would be doing.

The goal of all this is to one day breed, raise and show that BLRW bird that just makes you go ...wahooooo. Hopefully one day the Germans will be drooling over our BLRW and wishing they could import our birds to their country, after all the Wyandotte is an American Bird.

Jerry Foley

 

[Mrs. Turbo]

Hey turbo..... I thought you were busy working!!!

 

[DragonEggs]

I'm looking foward to seeing how this flock turns out. I love these birds and hope to have some in the future

 

[cook_kaka_ook]

Quote:
ditto.

 

[big medicine]

Quote:
I totally agree, improving rare breeds, or projects, takes a tremendious amount of determination, dedication and investment. I don't think most people truely grasp the numbers required to improve the overall quaility of your birds. My biggest concern is someone getting a start with my birds, and then using every possible bird in their breeding pens, regardless whether that bird is a good example of the breed or not. Soon churning out poor examples, undoing many years of descriminating selective breeding.

 

[wingman2008]

that is what turbo did for me..... gave me a chance at quality stock.......heck paul's giving bishop a chance
and I'm grateful for the chance to mess up!! better than starting with poor stock?
i will follow this post closely as i have already learned a couple of things from it.

 

[kathyinmo]

Quote:
And we do know there are some people that would do exactly that .... just in it for the money. How sad that would be.