I would have some awesome pics right now if my wireless would work. I have some old pics on the website of our original rooster.
Right now we have largefowl and bantams in black and blue. For bantams we have 2 pair of blacks and a pair of blues. The blue bantam roo we have has the largefowl look to him and an awesome tail. His only flaws are that he has single spurs and his comb is alittle big.
For largefowl we have a quad of blacks and for sure 3 blue cocks and 1 blue hen, I am not sure what happened to the other blue hens (had 3 going into winter).
We basically had to start over with our largefowl because our main rooster died and the hens we had werent that good. We ended up with one Diablo daughter and some other black and blue hens and a blue rooster that was too big. He must have weighed 8 lbs and had a domestic look to him but he had a nice long tail. good comb, and too many spurs to count, they went down to his bottoms of feet.
We bred them together and got some okay birds. The hens looked great but the cockerels had the fathers tail. The tails were long and all but it just didnt look right. They were soft feathered like a rock or andalusian. When we were selling some crele phoenix birds I was loading them into the truck for the guy and saw a blue sumatra and asked if he bred them. He said he did and it turned out that the rooster was out of our original birds! He looked alot like his great grand father. The guy was going to take him to a trader because he had single spurs. I got the rooster from him and he has matured very nicely and he has a second spur coming in, a good comb, and great type.
I think that alot of the sumatras now a days are bred too much for size or tail length. We got some from another breeder and they had horrible bottoms of feet, they were basically white. Many of the birds have red faces or single spurs or a combo of all 3 "no-no's". When we are setting up breeding pens we always set up pens to compliment the other birds. An example is the new rooster. He basically has single spurs but great foot bottoms and type so we are going to breed him to hens that have yellow foot bottoms that could be brightened up, they have lots of spurs so they will make good chicks with the rooster. All of our breeders have dark faces.
I dont know if any other breeders that have blue have noticed this but we mated a pair of blues together and got one splash cockerel and he had a spotted face. It was mostly red with some black specks. He also had light blue legs when he started to color in but by the time he went to his new home his legs turned willow. It seems that the blue dilutes everything with them.
As far as the bantams go I know that they were created by cross breeding. If any sumatra breeders here are serious into them they know of the famous Schock and Berger sumatras. We got our bantams directly from Myron Berger and they were some of his best. He told me that his main cross was with OEGB. He told me that some other breeders used rose comb bantams and thats why the white earlobes show up. Because of the OEGB in them many have the wings like an OEGB and red faces.
I love sumatras and all but it seems that alot of them are going down the drain because of poor breeding.
