Breeding to the Standard

[BantyChooks]

I'm making this thread primarily for record-keeping on my part, since putting photographs into notebooks is time-consuming and bulky. My goals are to get my chosen breeds, Buff Chantecler bantams* and Peaches**, to where I am satisfied with their health, type, colour, rate of lay, and growth rates; ranked in order of importance. I'm putting pressure on them towards the Standard of Perfection, but first and foremost I am breeding them for utility: it is a very hollow success to have a technically perfect bird without exceptional production traits. Comments, corrections, and observations are always appreciated.
Updated 9/1/19 to reflect current breeding programs.

*I originally started with Partridge Chanteclers, but after a few roadblocks and incentives to switch including the loss of my best birds, the breeder I sourced from deciding not to sell any longer, and a windfall of great starting stock for the Buffs, I decided it would be best to move my efforts over to them. Post #33 of 53
**"Peaches" is the term I use for my bantam mutt line. See post #6 of 53

Below are attached some images of this year's birds.

Spoiler: 2018 juveniles

Partridge Chanteclers:

Purple band PC pullet. Good, wide back, solid stance.

Red band PC pullet. Identical to sister.

#10 PC. Pullet. Sweet temperament. Much darker than the other two.

Silver Ameraucanas:
I hatched 4 Silvers this year. Two pullets have been culled already due to health issues, and the one cockerel is going to be culled due to recessive red leakage in his shoulders. I lost their sire to heatstroke this summer, so I will be acquiring new stock next spring.

Rose, the one pullet that is left. I would have culled her several months ago but she tugged on my soft old heartstrings. She was a broody hatch, in the wettest part of the year, and she got coccidiosis and a runny nose pretty bad for a while. I was just going to cull her, but I changed my mind and gave her some Corid. She made a fantastic turnaround and became the healthiest Ameraucana I have. Good feathering, clear face, and she caught up on growth. I'm torn as to whether I should breed her or not. On one hand, she did get sick when the others didn't... but she was a broody hatch, not an incubator like the others, and she was out and about getting wet and cold when she was probably too young to take it.

Tyler, cockerel. Nothing special, really. Started crowing today. Bit gangly for my tastes. Temperament has the potential to turn bad if I don't keep watch. I'm letting him grow a bit more before I eat him. Edit: I culled him. He had an incredibly crooked breastbone.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Your birds are beautiful, Banty! I'll definitely be following along!

I'm not familiar with Chanteclers, but I am pretty familiar with laced partridge. I think #10 is a pullet. She should be showing the black chest and red shoulders of your big guy Carey by now if she were a cockerel.

 

[BantyChooks]

Your birds are beautiful, Banty! I'll definitely be following along!

I'm not familiar with Chanteclers, but I am pretty familiar with laced partridge. I think #10 is a pullet. She should be showing the black chest and red shoulders of your big guy Carey by now if she were a cockerel.

Thank you! Maybe it'll be a nice dark pullet instead of the brilliant yellow on the other two.

All right, now for last year's birds.
First is Alex. She was hatched in April 2017. The first picture is her as of a few days ago, and the next picture is her as a pullet. Does she look remotely like a bird with Partridge lineage? No. Is she a useful bird? Absolutely. Even if she was a mutt I'd still keep her, that's how good she is. She is a decent layer of well-shaped brown eggs, she goes broody a few times a year but not excessively, she has a solid temperament and the smarts to stay out of a hawk's clutches, and she has great body type. She handles like a good bantam: larger than she looks. While she is a LF, so this maybe isn't exactly what is wanted, it's a sight better than looking small and handling small too. She has a very wide stance, a deep abdomen, and a well-fleshed breast. When her turn on the BBQ comes she'll be worth the effort it takes to turn her dinner-ready. Nice flat back, too. She also has good health. When all her siblings fell ill last year to what I suspect was a bacterial infection (possibly from mouldy feed,) she stayed healthy. I have hope that her first moult will give way to pencilling, because she has a sister that looked even worse in the colour department than her and her moult has revealed quite a decent colour pattern. I'm guessing the aforementioned health issue at time of feathering had something to do with that. Now that they're all long over it, they can grow their feathers as slow and nice as they want to.
This bird is mother to all my 2018 hatches, including the two under her. She's a great mother.

Sweetheart, cull PC. Not much to say about her, seeing as she's a cull for way more reasons than just colour, but her dramatic colour change is impressive.
Bad picture, but her colour really was awful. Not a shred of pencilling anywhere, only shafting and irregular markings.

Another bad picture, but you can see the pencilling she has now.

Carey, the father of all 2018's chicks. He's not a bad bird, just average. I chose him from the three I had because he possessed a balance between the two extremes of the other two. He has good, dark colour; I wish to retain that in genetics in order to avoid the sunflower-yellow that sometimes crops up in Partridge varieties. He has an okay temperament (but he hates ducks) and he isn't terrible with the hens. He's got a wide back, but he could have a deeper chest, longer back, and springier tail-line. His comb is small enough to avoid the majority of frostbite that winter throws his way, but he did get some last year when a sudden drop in temperature left him in cold, wet weather with a strong draft. Mea culpa.

Tank---Carey's brother. I wish now that I had kept him, but seeing as his place of residence is in my freezer that's a bit hard to achieve. I culled him for a few different factors: he fought a lot, he was way too red for a PC, he had a weird tail carriage, and really big comb and wattles. The last is something I really don't want in my birds; I'm so sick of frostbite on every single cockerel that crosses through here. Which is about 15 annually. Still, I probably would have kept him if it weren't for the fact that I just had too many males. Someone had to go, and since he was making a butt out of himself by fighting and making extra work for me, it was him and two hatchmates: the next PC cockerel I'm putting up, and a Dominique.

This picture is to show you just how massive his shanks were. I don't have small feet, either. He was built like a Tank. Heh.

He weighed in at nearly 5 lbs. dressed, and I had to use two gallon bags taped together to put him in! Not bad, not bad at all. I'm hoping for another bird like him out of Carey, since they shared the same parentage. I don't think Carey was a bad choice, he's got plenty of merit on his own... he just wasn't as spectacular. Oh well. You learn by doing, eh?

Java---Carey's other brother. When they were little, this was my first pick for a keeper. He had that dark 'burnt fire' colour that judges everywhere swoon for, the flattest and smallest comb I'd ever seen on a rooster, and a solid body shape that was well on its way to filling out beautifully. Unfortunately, winter hit and showed just how sickly he really was. His development stunted, he ended up with a narrow back; he sneezed a lot and sat on the roost all day, like this.

Still, before all that, he really was a nice looking cockerel. He had potential.

When he was processed, he had barely any breast meat at all. Not what I want in my birds. He was skinny, had a strange backline, and had more legs than the rest of him all put together! So, all in all, I don't regret eating him one bit.

The gang together, sometime last fall:

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

WOW, Tank was HUGE! I think he even put my Dorking boys to shame!

Does ( / did?) Sweetheart have slate legs? She almost looks like an Easter-egger in that first picture. That was quite a dramatic transformation!

 

[BantyChooks]

Silver Ameraucana stock is next. I purchased six birds—five hens, one cock—as adults last year. I almost never buy anything except eggs or chicks, but I jumped at the chance because this is a rare variety. They're not superb, but they're a start. I could have easily found a better, more well-bred line of another colour of Ameraucana, but I loved the Silvers from the moment I saw their illustration in the SOP. I would like to help out this under-recognised and beautiful variety, even if it does take me many years. Breeders of BBS or Black are a dime a dozen. Breeders of Silver are few and far between. Thankfully, I know where I can get more of these, since the cock died of heat stroke and the cockerel has a nasty recessive red from whoever his mum was. It's one of three hens that I had in this year's breeding pen. That'll teach me to not single mate like I know I should have.

One thing I am seeing in them that is really bad is roach back. The worst hens, the ones I didn't breed, almost looked deformed. I'm trying my best to breed away from that, pronto. They have horrid rates of lay, they are rather sickly, at least the juveniles, and could have more substance. All-in-all they're very much a project and I expect years of work.

Now, for this spring's breeding pen...
Bonnie, my best Ameraucana hen. She has good quality feathering, a calm temperament, a more even chest and ground colour than the rest, and a flat back. Unfortunately, she's on the small side, and could be better in type, I think. There's something weird with her legs but I don't know what.

Clyde, the cock I had until this summer. Yes, his beak looks awful, he messed it up bad cage-fighting and it required a lot of trimming to fix. He had double spurs and a tendency towards duckfoot. He had a decent weight to him, and good feathering. He was a jerk though. I blame it on being raised singly.

Orange band hen, don't remember her name. Birds in this pen were selected for uniformity in colour and flat backs. They were all equal in health.

Red band hen. She almost didn't get put in.

 

[BantyChooks]

Now, for my own special project, that has almost nothing to do with the SOP other than culling for any obvious DQ's that go across all breeds, such as twisted feathers or weird tails: Peaches. Living where I do, weather is a most formidable opponent in the constant process of trying to keep these crazy featherballs alive. Especially the mini ones. If I don't bring the OEGBs in, I lose them. The other bantam breeds survive, mostly. The problem is, I love the OEGB look and colours. I don't want feathery legs, I don't want annoying crests, I don't want stumpy legs and short necks and the lack of brains that come with a lot of the cold hardier bantams. So, what I'm doing is taking two bantam hens, a bantam cockerel, and making my own blend that can survive winter without being babied. I have one bantam that has me twisted around her tiny little toes already and that's plenty. Chickens stink when they're in your basement for a week.

The first hen, Luna, is kind of an OEGB but not a recognised colour and way sturdier than your average hatchery specimen. She's from my neighbour, who has kept birds for 80 years (not all the time, obviously, but enough to know what he's doing) and has, er, had, some real nice bantams. He got wiped out by a bear this spring. I wish now that I had gotten more eggs from him. She handles larger than she looks, has decent feathering, and has an active temperament as such that it keeps her from wasting away on the roost. What I mainly want in her offspring is downier feathering and less of a tendency to be broody. She literally goes one or two weeks in between setting. I keep breaking her and she keeps going back.

The second hen is Georgia, a mutt bantam. Maybe some d'Anvers, maybe some Sultan, maybe some Silkie, maybe a whole bunch of something else entirely. I'd like to see more of an OEGB type in her offspring, with no leg feathering. Cleaner facial features optional. The second picture is terrible, but it shows you just how much feathering she has. This is what made it so she could spend all but a few days outside last winter, and those few only because I was paranoid after losing a different one.

The cockerel is a SDW OEGB x BBR OEGB. He looks nearly SDW in colour. His parents are tiny, but they both survived winters on their own, and stay in brilliant health with no more help than a safe place to live and some scratch. I'm not sure how old he is, perhaps four months?

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I LOVE those Silver Ams! Those cheeks!!

They definitely need a lot of help as a variety. I understand much of the U.S. stock is flighty and scrawny compared to other varieties of Ameraucanas. I'm with you on love at first sight with them, though!

And it'll be interesting to see what you come up with with the bantams. I love my little bantam Cochins and they're tough as nails when it comes to wintertime lows (which you would probably laugh at up there, but we've been seeing around -26 C and lower in just air temperature fairly often these recent winters). I do understand the aversion to feathered feet, though, as they aren't very practical.

 

[BantyChooks]

I LOVE those Silver Ams! Those cheeks!! View attachment 1539915 They definitely need a lot of help as a variety. I understand much of the U.S. stock is flighty and scrawny compared to other varieties of Ameraucanas. I'm with you on love at first sight with them, though!

And it'll be interesting to see what you come up with with the bantams. I love my little bantam Cochins and they're tough as nails when it comes to wintertime lows (which you would probably laugh at up there, but we've been seeing around -26 C and lower in just air temperature fairly often these recent winters). I do understand the aversion to feathered feet, though, as they aren't very practical.

I'd believe it. They look almost nothing like the Blacks that made me sit up and take notice of the Ameraucana breed. What I loved about them was how balanced they looked. Those tails... perfect. These birds are cold hardy, though, and at least they're something to work with!

Heh, I'm fairly sure that we had that as a high one day last winter. I have a friend with bantam Cochins and they do pretty well, but I don't want the feathered feet for SLM reasons. Also, with free range birds, most of the feathers get broken off... then you have a stubby looking chicken with broken feathers all over their legs. Not pretty.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

See, toldja you'd probably laugh! I haven't dealt with SLM, but the feathers do wear down and break off, especially the ones on their outer toes. Plus, if you have any mud anywhere, then they become a total mess. But the birds themselves are just so cute!

 

[BantyChooks]

See, toldja you'd probably laugh! I haven't dealt with SLM, but the feathers do wear down and break off, especially the ones on their outer toes. Plus, if you have any mud anywhere, then they become a total mess. But the birds themselves are just so cute!

View attachment 1540044

I treat it, but it keeps popping up. I'm thinking I'm going to try Ivermectin soon because Vaseline isn't doing anything. One mutt with feathered legs has almost no scales left despite being treated as soon as I noticed and then multiple times since then. Sigh. It's hard to notice, too, because it's so slow-spreading. I don't handle the average flock member that much and it's invisible from viewing a few feet away.