***OKIES in the BYC III ***

[lonnyandrinda]

About all we do to winterize, other than cleaning pens out and adding fresh layers of bedding, is to use heated dog dishes for water and to put up visqueen (semi-clear plastic) against prevailing winds and rain. We usually use it only on one side. The first year, I wrapped the whole complex with visqueen, but that was definitely overkill. Our pens have wire sides, but each smaller pen has a pretty snug coop. The coops are 3/4 wood sided, with wire fronts and vents for air movement. Some of our silkies choose to sleep outside their coops, and I've gone out several times to find some of them partially covered with snow--with no problems. Their "fluffy, furry" feather structure probably insulates them a bit better than some varieties.

I've coated the combs of cochins and OEGBs with Vaseline to prevent freezing. Bag balm also works.

Same here. Clean out the pens, treat for lice/mites as needed, cover the ventilated sides of coops (leaving top air gaps for ventilation), and some pens get heated water bowls. The rest have black rubber tubs that can be turned and the ice block knocked out then refilled. I also have lighting set up to give them longer daylight hours (just 23 watt CFL's on a Christmas timer). I am going to wrap plastic around the base of my raised wire brooder so I can continue to brood in the winter. If the coops have good ventilation and no drafts around the base you won't have any problems with frostbite.

 

[NanaKat]

Quote:
The idea of "build the barn first before adding the paint" was not as literal as you thought...although that was a good thing too.

Old-timers refer to building the barn before adding the paint as a reference to getting the type set on your birds before focusing on the color traits. Anytime a new bloodline is brought into the mix, there will be characteristics that surface that need attention. Often, color will hit the focus on the F2 or F3 generations.

They also recommend breeding a separate line for males and another for females. The male line often produces the best show females and the female line produces the best show cockerels.

I have a closed flock of Columbian Wyandotte and know exactly what you mean by "not doing a sprint in my breeding plan I am doing a marathon".
I have had my flock now for 5 years, the owner before me for 5 or 6 years and the owner before him, retired after many years with the bloodline. A side breeding of a Blue hen with good type and leg color with a select cock had nice effect, but brought a few comb issues that needed to be corrected, This year I have another side pen using a White Wyandotte cock with the Columbian hens to strengthen the leg color, good combs, and greater size. The original pen bloodline has been kept "clean" until I feel I have a good line to strengthen the original flock.

Am new to BYC. Hope to learn a lot from my fellow Okies.

Tell us about your birds.

 

[Kassaundra]

I have not updated Tucker's progress lately. He has responded well to the meds. His pain meds have been reduced, he is still on steroids, will likely be for another month or maybe two. He has regained about 95% still has some weakness on the right side.

 

[NanaKat]

This is wonderful news! @Kassaundra

Did anyone feel that big earthquake near Cherokee at 1:46 am?

I'm moving the little pheasants out to the barn today in a big cage...so far there are 10 that have gotten too big for the house brooder...they are beginning to fly out when I change the food and water. They are fully feathered and as large as a week old large fowl chick. The first one to hatch is in a cage with three week old quail and is twice that size. I'll move it in with the pheasant too. A small group of eggs to hatch right after Thanksgiving and Then there is a dozen eggs due to hatch Dec 2. A big hatch of quail (64) eggs is due soon too. The hens are still laying, but I'm not hatching any more quail or pheasant.

Sounds like folks have good ideas for winterizing your coops.

 

[BetsyOK]

Good news about Tucker!

 

[GaryDean26]

The idea of "build the barn first before adding the paint" was not as literal as you thought...although that was a good thing too.

Old-timers refer to building the barn before adding the paint as a reference to getting the type set on your birds before focusing on the color traits. Anytime a new bloodline is brought into the mix, there will be characteristics that surface that need attention. Often, color will hit the focus on the F2 or F3 generations.

They also recommend breeding a separate line for males and another for females. The male line often produces the best show females and the female line produces the best show cockerels.

I have a closed flock of Columbian Wyandotte and know exactly what you mean by "not doing a sprint in my breeding plan I am doing a marathon".
I have had my flock now for 5 years, the owner before me for 5 or 6 years and the owner before him, retired after many years with the bloodline. A side breeding of a Blue hen with good type and leg color with a select cock had nice effect, but brought a few comb issues that needed to be corrected, This year I have another side pen using a White Wyandotte cock with the Columbian hens to strengthen the leg color, good combs, and greater size. The original pen bloodline has been kept "clean" until I feel I have a good line to strengthen the original flock.

Tell us about your birds.

First priority in my flock is health and vigor, followed by utilities, followed by the breed standard. There is no cut and dry way to determine which bird has the best vigor but we watch to see who is the fist off the roost in the morning, who is the last to the coop at night. Who is busy foraging in the heat of the day and who is sitting in the coop by the food bucket all day. We also look at the conditioning of the bird. We also look at how the bird moves. I look for cockerel that strut on walking on the tips of their toes as opposed to ones that walk flat footed. I watch where they hold their wings. Cockerels that hold these wings high and well tucked up are usable while that they let the wing tips point downward are not. I use the Hogan method, head points, and egg records to determine who the best layers/ quick molter are. I use mature weight, etc.

As for the Breed standard, after I have evaluated the birds for vigor and production I don't always have a lot of choices, but I like to look at the tendency of the flock. If I have a grow out group of 40 birds and only 2-3 meet a certain point in the standard, then I am going to want to keep the best of those 2-3 so that I can keep that trait in my flock. Otherwise the next season I may get 40 and none of them may meet that point in the standard and it may never resurface in my flock. Likewise if there is a defect in my flock that all but 2-3 birds share, then I am going to work with the birds that don't have the defect so that I don't get to where 100% of the flock has the defect and it is locked into the flock. If I don't have any pressing issues to address in my flock I like to start with the ones with the best mature weight and go from top down to find one that has the distinct shape of the breed. Then I look for other defining breed features and color for the variety.

Note: a good friend of mine that I met through breeding chickens traveled from Texas to the North Carolina when Grant Brereton was here from the UK to do a seminar on poultry genetics. He is a poultry judge and published author on breeding standard breed chickens. She commented to me that he felt that some color patterns were more difficult to achieve in chickens that type and that in those varieties he would work on color first then work on type. That was backwards from everything I have learned. If you are breeding White Plymoth Rock, or Black Australorps the order of doing things may be different than if you are breeding a complex colors and patterns. Since I can't eat color I feel that utilities are more important, but to get a well rounded bird I have to keep everything in mind and make sure that I am not breeding out traits early on that I will need in my flock later on to finish it off. Sometimes that means picking the better colored bird over one that is slightly better in other ways. For me it usually boils down to picking the hen with the best type and cockerel with the best color after culling for weakness/defects and narrowing down on the ones with best utilities.

I DON'T breed a separate line for males and females. I realize that some color varieties and some features in the type look stunning on the hen (i.e. the graceful folded over comb of the leghorn hens) but not of the cockerel (i.e. you want erect combs on a cockerel) and visa versa but the idea of a "breed" is to have a homogeneous flock. I measure than by what percentage of the flock is a good representation of the breed standard and what percentage are not (i.e. culls). If you are double mating (i.e. breeding one flock to produce good male specimens and one flock for good female specimens) then yes the quality of the males from the male line can be a lot better than a male from a single bred flock and your females from the female line can be a better specimens than from a single breed flock, but 50% of your female line (the males) are not going to have any potential for exhibition and 50% of your male line (the females) are not going to have any potential for exhibition. I fail to see how less than 50% of the line being a good representation of the standard can improve a "breed". With breeding two good standard birds together to try to achieve good standard birds in both the males and females you have to give up a little bit on the female extreme and a little bit of the male extreme and meet in the middle. That is much harder to do because you have to know what type of female produces what type of male and what type of male produces what type of female rather than just type breeding for a female and not worrying about the other half of the equation or type breeding for a male and not worrying about the other half of the equation but when done right you can get to a much higher percentage of the flock that are coming out as a good representation of the breed (i.e up to 100%). That is going to do a lot more for improving the quality of the breed in my opinion. So... I am not out to breed one super bird while culling 99. I am out to produce 100 birds that are all uniform in vigor, utilities, and breed standards. To me uniformity = quality. One good birds that can't reproduce its quality in a high percentage of it offspring may be nice if you win a big price at a show but is not homogeneous and not what I call quality.

Tell us about your birds.

Hard to tell right now since I got rid of all the proven breeding stock and am starting over again with a small hatch from this spring. The Cream Legbar pullets all started laying at 20-24 weeks this year. I usually don't see eggs until about 23-24 weeks so I was happy about that. In previose year we got some hens that laid a really pale colored blue egg but I haven't seen any of those in this batch yet. Next august's heat will be the test on that. In Texas we had 12 coops and could separate out the pullets into flocks that laid different colored eggs than them so we could keep a daily laying record. Our first year were had a flock average of 165 eggs in the first year of production. ALL the hens went broody and took time off. One was allowed to hatch a brood and she did a great job as a mother. The 2nd year we had 2-3 pullets in the grow out group go broody but we have only seen one broody Cream Legbar in the past two years, so with less time off the flock average came up to about 180. We know who our top layers are now, but only have flock averages on production numbers, but I know that one hen only was taking a 4-5 week molt and laid like a champ. I am sure that she was laying over 200 eggs and probably closer to 225. Not bad for a flock that is not on lights during the winter and not managed for breeding rather than production. Most of my original hens laid an egg in the range of 60-62 grams. We had one hen that laid an eggs in the range of 67-70 grams. We selected for egg size in her offspring. Only about 1 out of 10 of her daughters were laying the 70 gram eggs. We breed those 70 gram egg hens and were up to 3 out of 4 hens from that line laying bigger eggs. The pullets right now are laying between 45-60 grams eggs. I am hoping that in March and April to see some eggs in the 67+ range but only had two pullets from that line and a preditor took one of them a few weeks ago so I am not sure what we will see. We did breed one of the cockerels from that line to another line this spring for one of the the breeding groups, but like I said it is hard to know what we will see. We like our flock. We have a not of defects and type issues. We culled for hen spurs, greed dermal spots on the shanks, insufficient white coloring on the ear lobes, small crest (and not crested all together), pale leg color, squirrel tail, narrow bodies, etc. We have seen progress and are happy that the line is starting to settle. So main goals Big birds, 200+ eggs production, 70 gram eggs, good type, good color. good disposition.

 

[Matt in Okla]

Did anyone feel that big earthquake near Cherokee at 1:46 am?
.

Rocked us between mustang and Yukon. I swear what we think is a normal day round here is an apocalypse movie elsewhere.

 

[NanaKat]

@GaryDean26 Good comments on your breeding plan. I suggested the male and females lines because of the multi-colored nature of the breed with which you are working. BUT your utility focus is wonderful since you are not showing your line. Hogan has a great record for improving egg production. Sounds like you are making huge progress.

I do not use the male and female line breeding either. I find that working with good Columbian Wyandotte specimens as breeders keeps the uniformity that I seek. I also look at vigor, food conversion and egg production.
I do breed daughters to sire and son to mother as two of my many pen sets. The ability to rotate the best Cock into several trios of hens allows for closer supervision of the chicks as the grow.
Record keeping is our friend when improving a flock. .

 

[GaryDean26]

@GaryDean26 Good comments on your breeding plan. I suggested the male and females lines because of the multi-colored nature of the breed with which you are working. BUT your utility focus is wonderful since you are not showing your line. Hogan has a great record for improving egg production. Sounds like you are making huge progress.

I do not use the male and female line breeding either. I find that working with good Columbian Wyandotte specimens as breeders keeps the uniformity that I seek. I also look at vigor, food conversion and egg production.
I do breed daughters to sire and son to mother as two of my many pen sets. The ability to rotate the best Cock into several trios of hens allows for closer supervision of the chicks as the grow.
Record keeping is our friend when improving a flock. .

Actually I am showing my line. At the 2014 Texas State fair we had 30 Cream Legbars on exhibition. This was part of a special project in which Cream Legbar Breeders from around the state sponsored 4H families in the Dallas and Austin area to grow out and show Legbars for their 4H project that year. After the judging a member of the APA standards committee did a special feed back session with the 4H youth and Cream Legbar Breeders to comment on the draft of the proposed APA standard and the quality of the birds to the standard. As far as I could tell we had 5 different breeders stock represented at that show. The 4H girl who won best of breed was showing a pullet that she had hatched from eggs that her and her sisters got from me to start the project. They hatch 4 cockerel and 4 pullets. They couldn't keep cockerel so they brought them back to me. They showed the best three pullets (one for each sister) and one of them won best of breed. How's that for consistency in breeding? They showed the same birds at a 4H show in the Austin area this spring that I wasn't able to attend. It was nothing close to 30 Cream Legbars but I believe they won best of breed at that show to with a different hen winning. I too have only showed my Cream Legbars at one show myself.

Note: I also bred Black Copper Marans. I didn't double mate them either and didn't follow any of the "breeding tips" that circle the Marans groups that required compensation breed or hen lines and cockerel line. I had a good mentor though and credit her for keeping me from getting mixed up in all the "breeding tips" that float around the marans groups. She has been working with the breed for 12 years and when I started with the breed she had a winning streak of winning best of breed at every show she had been to for 3 years. I am not sure if she has been beat yet by have seen some of her continental champions. She was big on using birds that meet the standard to achieve consistency in the flock. She achieved it with out double mating and I did too. My biggest show win with the Marans was a Reserve of Variety out of 26 Black Copper Marans. That may not sound very impressive but there were 6 Marans breeders at that show who had won continental champion or Reserve Continental with their Black Copper Marans at other shows. I am not a big exhibitor but do try to go to one show a year so that I can get feed back from the judges on how I am doing with the breed standard and what areas I am over looking, etc. Sponsoring the 4H groups work well for me. I prefer to work on the breeding and let others do the showing for me. If you know any good junior exhibitors that are looking for a good project let me know. ;-)

 

[NanaKat]

Congrats on those wins! @GaryDean26

Have to report an almost fire in my brooder room on the barn! The boys were doing some welding on a mineral feeder and kept smelling smoke. They looked around, thinking they had sparked a fire...and found nothing. They decided it must be a neighbor burning brush. UNTIL...Roger walked into the barn for a tool and noticed smoke in the brooder room. When he checked, there was a heat lamp on the floor...still on! The sand, wood shavings and poop on the concrete floor was smoldering! That light was warming chicks in a wall cage and had somehow come loose from it's double wire supports. Have no idea how it dropped without breaking the bulb. Lucky it was caught before a fire! And before chicks were killed.
Made me re -check the supports that were installed for the other heat lamps on thermal plugs. Also decided to hang a few high roosts for the Bantams that may have tried flying to the cord for the light.
Safety first!