The Heritage Rhode Island Red Site

[ronott1]

Quote: I am happy to help.

The egg laying ability of the Hatchery RIR is what nearly drove the Heritage RIR to extinction. They lay earlier and lay more for the first two years. After two years, The lay rate drops very quickly. This characteristic is why the Commercial Egg Farms cull the hens after the second year.

The Heritage Reds will lay over a longer period of time, so they actually will lay the same amount or more. The take away for the Back Yard Chicken owner is if you have the hatchery type of chickens, you will need to either live with less eggs sooner or replace your hens every two to three years.

Bye,

Ron

 

[FOGELLY]

Ron,
We have clearly taken Bullitt's bait.

Bullitt,
I did not say my birds layed 180 eggs a year. I said I would be happy if they lay anything over 180 a year. We will see in a year. So far they are well ahead of that.
My numbers are real world. Numbers backed up by record keeping. I don't throw out numbers from sources who are trying to sell chicks.

 

[Robert Blosl]

I just got in to the last few days of your threads and thanks for posting and keeping out original thread alive and well Over the past year and half we have had folks come in and ask why the Production Reds are not the Heritage type. Let me give you some history. About the late 1920s many states had contest for egg laying and you could ship ten of your best pullets to say Stores ROP contest or one in Illinois and they would take care of your ten birds and count the number of eggs that they lay-ed for one year. They some times had trap nests in the pens so they could see how many eggs each female lay ed. Then the breeder would get in the mail a certified paper saying his ten females averaged 200 or 240 per year. The breed in competition had to be pure breeds and score at least 90 points to be considered in the competition to make it fair on all the breeders who where sending their birds to these contest. This all went along pretty good but in the late 1930s the Rhode Island Reds started to look different, much lighter in surface color, and after they where in the contest for a year they did not look like a standard looking Red. They looked more like our common production Reds today.

Why did this change happen? My sources from 20 years ago said they had to modify the contest because they where loosing money and stared bending the rules to get the big time commerical farms to send birds. In no time it all folded as the master breeders like Harold Tompkins from Mass and Strong Farms from Mississippi who had Harold's line stoped sending their birds. My source told me one farm in the north east was advertising the 300 egg Rhode Island red. Many of his females lay ed 270 eggs per year but they could not score 85 points and where not true to breed. My source felt the breeder Perimeter Farms crossed brown leghorn blood in his line to get the high egg production. I think today the current lines that are sold today by the thousands are descendants to the Perimeter line. They are great layers and the can have more blow outs than the Heritage slower layer kind but if you want eggs fast for two years they are excellent birds. I had a fellow I interviewed named Monore Babcock of Babcock Poultry Farms who developed a stain called the Babcock 290s which are still going strong in Europe. He also raised Heritage Rhode Island Reds in the 1930s but choose the comerical Production lines to make his living.

I encourage those who want to order these type of birds from the sources advertised and their catalogs pictures from Dianne Jacky are pretty but those pictures are Standard Breed pictures that she painted for the Standard of Perfection a while back. You just have to look at what you get and then you make up your mind is these birds like my old Mohawk line or not?

My favorite Production Reds are from Ideal Hatchery they lay extremely well and if you need to make money selling brown eggs I recommend these chicks to folks who ask me.

If they want the Heritage type I tell them about my friends who have the super dark birds who lay about 175 eggs per year. For the record a friend of mine called me one day and told me he bought two Rhode Island Red cock birds that where five years and that is old for a rhode island red. I asked him do you have any of the females i sent you? He said i have three that are between seven and eight years old. He mated the old old males to the super old hens and they produced many nice chicks. One male is the sire of a few nice cockerels that some of my friends have this year in the breeding pen. I dont know if the old high laying lighter colored production reds can lay when they are eight years old but my old line just keeps on living.

By the way this strain just hit 100 years old this past March and are still pure. Hope this helps the history of the two different chickens that many call Rhode Island Reds.

bob

 

[ronott1]

 

[Bullitt]

I just got in to the last few days of your threads and thanks for posting and keeping out original thread alive and well Over the past year and half we have had folks come in and ask why the Production Reds are not the Heritage type. Let me give you some history. About the late 1920s many states had contest for egg laying and you could ship ten of your best pullets to say Stores ROP contest or one in Illinois and they would take care of your ten birds and count the number of eggs that they lay-ed for one year. They some times had trap nests in the pens so they could see how many eggs each female lay ed. Then the breeder would get in the mail a certified paper saying his ten females averaged 200 or 240 per year. The breed in competition had to be pure breeds and score at least 90 points to be considered in the competition to make it fair on all the breeders who where sending their birds to these contest. This all went along pretty good but in the late 1930s the Rhode Island Reds started to look different, much lighter in surface color, and after they where in the contest for a year they did not look like a standard looking Red. They looked more like our common production Reds today.

Why did this change happen? My sources from 20 years ago said they had to modify the contest because they where loosing money and stared bending the rules to get the big time commerical farms to send birds. In no time it all folded as the master breeders like Harold Tompkins from Mass and Strong Farms from Mississippi who had Harold's line stoped sending their birds. My source told me one farm in the north east was advertising the 300 egg Rhode Island red. Many of his females lay ed 270 eggs per year but they could not score 85 points and where not true to breed. My source felt the breeder Perimeter Farms crossed brown leghorn blood in his line to get the high egg production. I think today the current lines that are sold today by the thousands are descendants to the Perimeter line. They are great layers and the can have more blow outs than the Heritage slower layer kind but if you want eggs fast for two years they are excellent birds. I had a fellow I interviewed named Monore Babcock of Babcock Poultry Farms who developed a stain called the Babcock 290s which are still going strong in Europe. He also raised Heritage Rhode Island Reds in the 1930s but choose the comerical Production lines to make his living.

I encourage those who want to order these type of birds from the sources advertised and their catalogs pictures from Dianne Jacky are pretty but those pictures are Standard Breed pictures that she painted for the Standard of Perfection a while back. You just have to look at what you get and then you make up your mind is these birds like my old Mohawk line or not?

My favorite Production Reds are from Ideal Hatchery they lay extremely well and if you need to make money selling brown eggs I recommend these chicks to folks who ask me.

If they want the Heritage type I tell them about my friends who have the super dark birds who lay about 175 eggs per year. For the record a friend of mine called me one day and told me he bought two Rhode Island Red cock birds that where five years and that is old for a rhode island red. I asked him do you have any of the females i sent you? He said i have three that are between seven and eight years old. He mated the old old males to the super old hens and they produced many nice chicks. One male is the sire of a few nice cockerels that some of my friends have this year in the breeding pen. I dont know if the old high laying lighter colored production reds can lay when they are eight years old but my old line just keeps on living.

By the way this strain just hit 100 years old this past March and are still pure. Hope this helps the history of the two different chickens that many call Rhode Island Reds.

bob

Thank you, Bob. That is good information.

I never thought of production reds as Rhode Island Reds, though.

The confusion for me was that the Rhode Island Reds from hatcheries may not qualify as Rhode Island Reds. I think I would be happy with the Rhode Island Reds I saw on that hatchery website, because they look close to the heritage Rhode Island Reds and lay 250-300 eggs a year.

That is impressive that hens at 7 and 8 years old were still going strong. If people butcher their chickens, a hen is not really needed past maybe 4 years old because they can have pullets to replace the hens. For breeding purposes, I see a hen can be useful much longer.

 

[Bullitt]

Ron,
We have clearly taken Bullitt's bait.
Bullitt,
I did not say my birds layed 180 eggs a year. I said I would be happy if they lay anything over 180 a year. We will see in a year. So far they are well ahead of that.
My numbers are real world. Numbers backed up by record keeping. I don't throw out numbers from sources who are trying to sell chicks.

It wasn't bait. This is a discussion thread.

I am sorry I misunderstood.

Now I understand that heritage Rhode Island Reds lay about 175 eggs a year and hatchery stock lays about 260 eggs a year (5 eggs a week).

 

[FOGELLY]

It wasn't bait. This is a discussion thread.

I am sorry I misunderstood.

Now I understand that heritage Rhode Island Reds lay about 175 eggs a year and hatchery stock lays about 260 eggs a year (5 eggs a week).

I believe I misunderstood your intentions. Like Bob, I should have spent some time helping you understand the difference.

 

[heritagehabitatfarms]

i think the other thing here is management style, type and proten content of feed, and if a bird free ranges or not, and weather... this all affects laying... give 2 ppl the same strain of birds and one flock will lay better than the other... so its hard to say that any one breed will lay so many eggs per year to many variables IMO...

 

[Robert Blosl]

I got a message asking me in the glory days of say 1950s what did the good Heritage Standard Breed Flocks average per female. In the articles that I read in the rhode Island red Journal and Red Chronicle in that time the best advice I got was from Harold Tompkins of Mass. He said you want to have your females weigh about one pound above standard weight and you want them to average about 195 eggs per pullet year. He then said you would have less blow outs or deaths from the more higher layers and the longevity of your birds would be greater thus his main point more profit per hundred females in the chicken house. Harold use to sell eggs and chicks by the thousands to people and then had a show string which mainly consisted of hens and cock birds that molted back with the ideal color and type the next year. If he had a hen that came back year in and year out looking like a pullet he would keep her till she died. That is what i did and many of my females would live to up to eight years of age. You have to remember each year the female lays about 20 eggs less as she gets older. But if you have a five year old hen laying 140 eggs per year and you put half of them in the incubator and get super star chicks from them she is worth her weight in gold.

In comparison when I lived in Wisconsin the Amish farmers where more organic type farmers like my grand father was in the 1940s. There milk yield per cow per acre was more than the modern day farmer. Their ton age per acre for hay was more per acre as the ground could breath because tractor tires where not uses only horses.

In contrast Harold made more profit per 100 Rhode Island Reds than his commerical friends did and he said the secret was he did not loose females to blow outs. He breed them that way.

Also , when you breed and push your Heritage Dark rhode Island Reds to high egg production using the Hogan method of selection like I did you get fa

fantastic feather quality on your females. That is the egg laying fast feathering gene at work. This is not a com on practice with exhibitor type breeders as they just want looks but we are breeding a dual purpose chicken.

If you want high egg production per 100 females for say two years or you want to rotate and replace your females each year go with ideal product on reds. I dont know if you will make more profit keeping them for two years vs one year but thats my view. I like to breed from hens and cock birds as they have prov en to me if they have that youth full look. The standard of perfection picture is not a cockerel or a pullet it is a 18 month old bird. So the secret is to breed from older birds who prove they have the color, feather quality and type to be breeders. that is one of the reasons so many of our older hens and cock birds dont look very well is their parents just dont have the right stuff.

 

[catdaddyfro]

I got a message asking me in the glory days of say 1950s what did the good Heritage Standard Breed Flocks average per female. In the articles that I read in the rhode Island red Journal and Red Chronicle in that time the best advice I got was from Harold Tompkins of Mass. He said you want to have your females weigh about one pound above standard weight and you want them to average about 195 eggs per pullet year. He then said you would have less blow outs or deaths from the more higher layers and the longevity of your birds would be greater thus his main point more profit per hundred females in the chicken house. Harold use to sell eggs and chicks by the thousands to people and then had a show string which mainly consisted of hens and cock birds that molted back with the ideal color and type the next year. If he had a hen that came back year in and year out looking like a pullet he would keep her till she died. That is what i did and many of my females would live to up to eight years of age. You have to remember each year the female lays about 20 eggs less as she gets older. But if you have a five year old hen laying 140 eggs per year and you put half of them in the incubator and get super star chicks from them she is worth her weight in gold.

In comparison when I lived in Wisconsin the Amish farmers where more organic type farmers like my grand father was in the 1940s. There milk yield per cow per acre was more than the modern day farmer. Their ton age per acre for hay was more per acre as the ground could breath because tractor tires where not uses only horses.

In contrast Harold made more profit per 100 Rhode Island Reds than his commerical friends did and he said the secret was he did not loose females to blow outs. He breed them that way.

Also , when you breed and push your Heritage Dark rhode Island Reds to high egg production using the Hogan method of selection like I did you get fa

fantastic feather quality on your females. That is the egg laying fast feathering gene at work. This is not a com on practice with exhibitor type breeders as they just want looks but we are breeding a dual purpose chicken.

If you want high egg production per 100 females for say two years or you want to rotate and replace your females each year go with ideal product on reds. I dont know if you will make more profit keeping them for two years vs one year but thats my view. I like to breed from hens and cock birds as they have prov en to me if they have that youth full look. The standard of perfection picture is not a cockerel or a pullet it is a 18 month old bird. So the secret is to breed from older birds who prove they have the color, feather quality and type to be breeders. that is one of the reasons so many of our older hens and cock birds dont look very well is their parents just dont have the right stuff.

Well I say Mr. Blosl You are definitely worth your weight in gold (dare I say platinum) with the wealth of information you dole out in you posts. Thanks so much for your insight, it really is a help to us just getting into breeding these wonderful Heritage type birds.

I just went to the PO and picked up 16 one month old Horstman RIR's they are awesome and I can most definitely see a world of difference in between these and my line(started out with "factory stock"great layers too) of reds I have had for 6 years.< Ideal and Privett crosses of my choosing and selections over the past few years.

Thanks again for all this great reading and learning material it's such a help for all, I'm sure.

Jeff