Quality of birds from Sand Hill Perseveration?

[dheltzel]

That does mkae sense, maybe he could split the load and send half, or part of his stock to a trusted breeder. Thats what Dave Holderread did as he got older with his waterfowl.

And the result of Dave sending his flock to others is that most are now lost. Go check and see if that is right, you will not be able to locate most of his stock. Some that were commercially viable were picked up by Metzers, but most of those were sold off to others because there was not enough money to be made in hookbills and the like. A bunch of the rarer breeds were sent to Canada, where getting them back is expensive to impossible.

There is not an easy answer for this, anything, including doing nothing incurs risks. I have to hope that the people that care about these rare breeds will step up and maintain them long term - and (this is the piece that is usually missing) commit to redistributing them for modest costs.

This last part is why hookbills and golden cascades from Holderread are nearly impossible to obtain now. They are kept by some private individuals who keep only small flocks and sell a few eggs each year (for pretty high prices, considering the poor hatch rate that is typical for shipped eggs).

My conscience bothers me if I try to cash in on the rare breeds I possess, so I sell them for low prices, taking into consideration the effort to produce the offspring (Pilgrim goslings cost more than Genetic Hackle chicks, for example, though the Hackles are far more rare). My goal is to get rare breeds to other breeders so they can maintain them also. Sometimes that works, my Genetic Hackle are getting around the hobby some. Sometimes it fails despite my best efforts. I know that is the same policy/motivation that Glenn at Sand Hill has, we have talked about it and he has helped form my opinions.

 

[dheltzel]

I wasn't talking about fad type breeds I was talking about breeds that have stood the test of time. Ones that are around now, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago and more. Do they not raise any of those anymore?
Just how many breeds do they have now days? Any idea? I haven't kept up with them for a couple years. I completely understand what they are trying to do but IMO they can't do that with the amount of breeds they have/had. Do you think thats untrue? Are they overextended in your opinion?
I've ordered from them and at the time many list breeds weren't available or only in very small amounts. Would it not make sense to let some breeds go rather then keep so many that it's impossible to make much headway because they have to keep those breeds in smaller numbers?
I know when they had predator issues they had so few of several breeds that predator wiped out their entire flocks of some.
Idk I just think you can't save them all so do what you can to realistically save what you can instead of sinking the ship with unrealistic goals.

I'm not talking about "fad type breeds" either. Rhodebars have existed for a long time, perhaps longer than you and I. So have Barred Hollands.

He has a LOT of breeds, but he doesn't think he is overextended, so I'm not gonna judge that. In addition to poultry, he maintains thousands of seeds of heirloom vegetables and dozens of heirloom sweet potatoes (I never knew there were old varieties of those). We might say those are too much of a distraction and he should focus on poultry, but gardeners might see it from the opposite perspective. You see where we might have a kind of tunnel vision WRT Sand Hill's activities.

Remember, this is a "Preservation Center" not a hatchery, and as there are not many other PC's, they get some lattitude to define what that is. Keeping small numbers of a lot of breeds might offend some customers who are used to customer-centric hatcheries out to turn a profit. But for long term preservation of many varieties, it makes perfect sense.

As a mental exercise, let's suppose that they took your advice and dumped all the breeds that are readily available from commercial hatcheries. Ideal bought a lot of chicks from Sand Hill a few decades ago and were offering things like Norwegian Jaerhons for many years. So Sand Hill could have said, Ideal sells hundreds or thousands every year, why should we keep them? About 2 years ago, Ideal got more business saavy and dumped not just the Jaerhons, but a lot of varieties they originally got from Sand Hill, or other small breeders. They did not contact Sand Hill and ask if they wanted some birds back for preservation, they did not care about that, because it is just business to them and they needed the resources to for new breeds (probably "fad type"). If Sand Hill had followed your plan, there would no be no source of Jaerhons in the US, unless you hunted down a backyard breeder that was keeping them going, but I know of no one like that, so it would be a long search, perhaps with negative results.

Not a lot of people will buy from Sand Hill on a regular basis, but that is not his goal. When a breeder wants to take on a heritage breed, Sand Hill would like to be able to provide stock for that breeder.

Someday, @"The Moonshiner" and I might be talking about some old breed that used to exist in abundance, and a young person like @Chickenosauurs_RexNo54 might overhear us and want to know where he can get some of those. I would like to be able to suggest some places where they are still maintained and encourage him to try them out. It would be a shame to see some breed die out because none of us thought it was worth keeping. Maybe that is survival of the fittest, but taken to its conclusion we would have nothing but commercial leghorns and red sexlinks to keep in our backyard flocks.

 

[Chickenosauurs_RexNo54]

And the result of Dave sending his flock to others is that most are now lost. Go check and see if that is right, you will not be able to locate most of his stock. Some that were commercially viable were picked up by Metzers, but most of those were sold off to others because there was not enough money to be made in hookbills and the like. A bunch of the rarer breeds were sent to Canada, where getting them back is expensive to impossible.

There is not an easy answer for this, anything, including doing nothing incurs risks. I have to hope that the people that care about these rare breeds will step up and maintain them long term - and (this is the piece that is usually missing) commit to redistributing them for modest costs.

This last part is why hookbills and golden cascades from Holderread are nearly impossible to obtain now. They are kept by some private individuals who keep only small flocks and sell a few eggs each year (for pretty high prices, considering the poor hatch rate that is typical for shipped eggs).

My conscience bothers me if I try to cash in on the rare breeds I possess, so I sell them for low prices, taking into consideration the effort to produce the offspring (Pilgrim goslings cost more than Genetic Hackle chicks, for example, though the Hackles are far more rare). My goal is to get rare breeds to other breeders so they can maintain them also. Sometimes that works, my Genetic Hackle are getting around the hobby some. Sometimes it fails despite my best efforts. I know that is the same policy/motivation that Glenn at Sand Hill has, we have talked about it and he has helped form my opinions.

Dave's stock of Australian spotted, East indies, Mini-silver appleyards, and maybe his Call ducks are all at his nephews facility Duck Creek Farm. His Indian runner ducks, Ancona ducks, tufted romans, pilgrim, sebastopol, pomeranian, plain headed roman, and brown chinese geese are nowhere to be seen.

 

[Chickenosauurs_RexNo54]

You were right when you said they are lost.

 

[dheltzel]

Dave's stock of Australian spotted, East indies, and Mini-silver appleyards are all at his nephews facility Duck Creek Farm. His Indian runners, tufted romans, pilgrim, sebastopol, pomeranian, plain headed roman, and brown chinese geese are nowhere to be seen.

I bought AS and MSA from Duck Creek Farm. Expensive, but now there is an east coast source of those 2, as well as the Aztecs, which Dave created then stopped keeping and they were thought to have gone extinct. Luckily someone kept a flock going. They are great little birds and probably my best bantam production ducks. One has already started laying when the other ducks are still thinking it is winter.

 

[Chickenosauurs_RexNo54]

I bought AS and MSA from Duck Creek Farm. Expensive, but now there is an east coast source of those 2, as well as the Aztecs, which Dave created then stopped keeping and they were thought to have gone extinct. Luckily someone kept a flock going. They are great little birds and probably my best bantam production ducks. One has already started laying when the other ducks are still thinking it is winter.

I didn't know you also kept Aztecs, the only other breeder that I know of is Duck Buddies and Side CHicks. I don't remember Duck creek farm having Aztecs, and if they didn't where did you get your stock from?

 

[dheltzel]

I didn't know you also kept Aztecs, the only other breeder that I know of is Duck Buddies and Side CHicks. I don't remember Duck creek farm having Aztecs, and if they didn't where did you get your stock from?

Mine came from a local friend who likes to buy eggs of expensive and rare breeds, then decides she is done with them and disbands her flock to get new stuff. I also nabbed some of her Shetland ducks before she sold them all off. It is possible she got eggs from DBSC, not really sure, but they seem like the real deal.
The Mini Silver Appleyards from Duck Creek have not done well for me. Terrible fertility that I am pretty sure is caused from too many years of inbreeding. I am going to cross the MSA and Aztecs this summer to try to recreate the Overberg bantam ducks that Dave made and probably are really and truly lost. Overberg is snowy (MSA is genotypically snowy) plus blue (Aztecs are wild, plus homozygous blue). Might take a few generations, but I also expect that genotypically pure MSA and Aztecs will result from future generations of that work. Some people are trying to "improve" Aztecs by outcrossing to Mallards or Gray Calls. I don't think that is the right direction, MSA are better sized and losing the snowy genes should be easy.

 

[Chickenosauurs_RexNo54]

Mine came from a local friend who likes to buy eggs of expensive and rare breeds, then decides she is done with them and disbands her flock to get new stuff. I also nabbed some of her Shetland ducks before she sold them all off. It is possible she got eggs from DBSC, not really sure, but they seem like the real deal.
The Mini Silver Appleyards from Duck Creek have not done well for me. Terrible fertility that I am pretty sure is caused from too many years of inbreeding. I am going to cross the MSA and Aztecs this summer to try to recreate the Overberg bantam ducks that Dave made and probably are really and truly lost. Overberg is snowy (MSA is genotypically snowy) plus blue (Aztecs are wild, plus homozygous blue). Might take a few generations, but I also expect that genotypically pure MSA and Aztecs will result from future generations of that work. Some people are trying to "improve" Aztecs by outcrossing to Mallards or Gray Calls. I don't think that is the right direction, MSA are better sized and losing the snowy genes should be easy.

I remember looking for Overbergs, I think I found a breeder, but I forgot what their name was.

 

[Chickenosauurs_RexNo54]

BackYard Chickens
Overberg Eggs! | BackYard Chickens ...

 

[Chickenosauurs_RexNo54]

THy might possibly have authentic Overbergs. http://domestic-waterfowl.co.uk/overberg.html