The Heritage Rhode Island Red Site

[docdandc]

Yes you got it corrrect. The book is called "The call of the Hen" by Walter Hogan. Anyone can get it on Googlebooks.

My original thought was that he seemed to have alot of experience in picking hens bred for three catagories of temperments. Nervous type, middle of the road type, and very calm type. He then has a way of examining the keel bone and pinching the breast meat to ascertain if the bird is in condition or needs more food intake. He then evaluates the space between the end of the keel bone and the rib bones. The larger that this space is the better for egg production. He writes that the hens with small distance will not have enough gut capacity to digest enough feed for maximizing egg production. He shows his method for finger measuring this distance. There is also a rib bone measurement pinch and evaluation in relationship to egg size ability.

I wonder if what he calls a dual purpose, 200 egg per year, measured hen, has any correlation to what we are looking for in our Heritage RIR's? Has anyone here tried this?

 

[Robert Blosl]

Yes you got it corrrect. The book is called "The call of the Hen" by Walter Hogan. Anyone can get it on Googlebooks.

My original thought was that he seemed to have alot of experience in picking hens bred for three catagories of temperments. Nervous type, middle of the road type, and very calm type. He then has a way of examining the keel bone and pinching the breast meat to ascertain if the bird is in condition or needs more food intake. He then evaluates the space between the end of the keel bone and the rib bones. The larger that this space is the better for egg production. He writes that the hens with small distance will not have enough gut capacity to digest enough feed for maximizing egg production. He shows his method for finger measuring this distance. There is also a rib bone measurement pinch and evaluation in relationship to egg size ability.

I wonder if what he calls a dual purpose, 200 egg per year, measured hen, has any correlation to what we are looking for in our Heritage RIR's? Has anyone here tried this?

Hogan I think was using white leghorns more than old reds and back then the reds where not really up to standard untill the mid 1930s.

My experience when I got started with my Reds was poor feather quality. I could see it on my pullets when they where laying and after being in the breeding pen for four months some of their backs where torn to pieces from mating. After they molted as hens they had good webbing. I wanted to get this corrected so I started just using a method of selecting chicks that matured faster than their other brothers and sisters. I could see this in the brooder box as they pushed out their tail feathers. I would then wing band these chicks and com pair say ten ckls and ten pullets as they started crowing or laying. It seemed the slower feathered chicks where latter in crowing and and laying. So I placed these faster maturing birds in the breeding pen small matings of one male and two females. I did this for five years and each year they matured faster, lay ed quicker, crowed sooner and most of all the pullet feather quality over the back area became tight webbed which was my goal. I did this at the same time with my White Rock large fowl and the soft fluffy feathered bunny tailed rocks in five years got more like a game type feather and the fluff around their vents went away and so improved their hatch ability.

Many American class breeds get so soft in feather that you are forced to pull there feathers from the vent area so that the you can have a chance of hatching some eggs. By using this method you will improve hatch ability and most of all you start to see better breed type. You loose the bunny tail drop in the rocks which is basically in my view the Cochin genes coming to the surface as they where used in the early days to make the breeds. You also get what Hogan wanted and that was capacity in the gut to make more eggs.

You see this in breeding and judging Holstein Cows as you need the big body to make more pounds of milk per day per year which leads to more profits for the farmer. In Reds in the old days say the 1940s and 50s it was the most eggs, per year for your females with less blow outs or deaths in the females. Many of the smart Red breeders realized it was not the 275 egg cherry egger that made the most money it was the female that lay ed a lower average of 200 eggs per pullet year. These female lived to old age and could be used up to say three to four years. They also, if they maintained their brick shape and good color where the best breeders as they kept their type and color and they passed this onto their males and females. I hope I painted a simple picture its not all that complicated and you dont have to get into all this big type genetics to get there. Let me just tell you one more time. Those who take on Rhode Island Reds average about three to maybe five years and stop. Some make it to eight years and screw up their birds so bad they give up. Only about one in three hundred will make it to the tenth year. Then maybe only one in six or eight hundred will make it two the twenty year.

Its simple to study if you just read the old Rhode Island Red Chronicles like I once did. See when they join and see if they stick around for the tenth year. You have to have a plan on what you want to do for say five years or little goals. Then you got to understand the history of the breed and how it was made so you don't introduce those traits more in your flock. That is the Cochin gene will cause more people to go out of reds than anything. Many want a nice WIDE width of feather. Your asking for trouble when you want nice WIDE wing feathers and WIDE tail feathers. Females that lay 200 eggs per pullets year and their brothers have medium width of feathers and so if you go that route you will not have a anti brick shaped type red. In Red bantams its even worse as those who have wide width of feathers will have tails that point down about 30 degrees in the main tail feathers. Schilling called these tails Whisk Broom tails. You also get bantams with shorter length of back then a cushion and BINGO you have to days RED ROCKS.

Well let me get off my soap box. Many don't like to hear this kind of stuff but twenty or thirty years from today if you are still in chickens just see if I am right or not. Its in the history of the membership in the Red Club and you can see it in the product in the show room.

Just don't forget the brick shape of the Red, the medium width of feather and a good egg production and you will have fine Reds in no time.

By they way Mr. Brazelton was one of my mentors who got me on this kick. He was not a Red man but his mother and aunt where in the Glory days. He got 200 egg yields son his Orpingtons by trap nesting his females. He did not use lights which if he did would improved his totals by 20 eggs in my view. If he was alive he would tell you to just take it easy and slow down and keep things simple and dont get all raped up in things. Remember the term in management and its used still today. KISS. Do you know what that means??????

Two people asked me to explain my method as above so I killed two birds with one stone. Sorry for the lenth of message. I hope you two understand what I did.

You have a nice day and promote those Reds.

 

[mississippifarmboy]

KISS. Do you know what that means??????

I'm laughing here Bob. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I have this need to have everything perfect. Before I learned to deal with it most projects took me forever to finish because I would wait months looking for just the right piece to get something the way I felt it had to be. If anyone could hear me working around the farm most days muttering under my breath.... They would head me muttering "KISS" a lot to myself. Reminding myself to not over complicate things.

KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid.

Of course sometimes it helps I'm such a perfectionist. I think in the years to come it will actually help me in my breeding program. Where someone else might just give up I tend to just keep plugging along until I get it right.

Now I just need to keep learning until I figure out what I'm doing.

 

[docdandc]

Good question. The Hogan method is for developing a line of high production layers. Now, as a rule, high production layers have narrower bodies and shallower chests. If your breed is a dual purpose breed, or one in which a meaty bird is desired, then probably the Hogan method isn't for you. Back when it was written, the next big thing was creating strains of super layers for the egg market. Everyone was doing it.
The Industrial Revolution and Machine Age had brought many hundred of thousands of people to the cities. Many of these folk no longer had or desired to have poultry flocks for their egg source. So now we have this huge demand for eggs in the cities, for eating, for baking, etc This helped give rise to the huge poultry egg and meat farms. These farms needed a super-layer to make them most efficient. Experts abounded with plans and systems to make this happen. The type they wanted in body structure was the super layer. that's what the Hogan system produces.
There is another way to select for increased egg production. It was valued back then and I know one elite veteran breeder who has tried it in his flock and is having good success. The book is small. A booklet , really. The booklet is available onlin at Archive.org , " Breeding and Culling By Head Points".
http://archive.org/details/BreedingAndCullingByHeadPoints
The emphasis here is on certain head points of the hen which define a quality layers. It's a short, illustrated fascinating read. It also explains why any breeds which place laying as a virtue, place importance on the qualities of the head.
From reading this booklet, it seems to me, this is one way of creating a better layer without sacrificing the body structure needed for a meaty bird.
Yet there is a tipping point n poultry when the egg laying abilities of a dual-purpose hen naturally cause the body structure to shift in composition from a dual-purpose bird to an egg layer.
I think the trick in dual-purpose fowl is to get a close to that point as possible without crossing the threshold and changing the structure of the meaty bird which is also desired in that breed. I have not been in poultry long enough to try this out in my flock however the logic seems sound . Think I will definitely keep a critical eye on my hens' head points in the future.
Best Regards,
Karen in western PA, USA

Thanks for the good response Karen. Some of these old systems, developed in the hay day of small farm breeding, are very interesting. I hate to loose some of this info because it may never be rediscovered again. I enjoy these tid bits of know how. Dan, Norco, CA

 

[docdandc]

Hogan I think was using white leghorns more than old reds and back then the reds where not really up to standard untill the mid 1930s.

My experience when I got started with my Reds was poor feather quality. I could see it on my pullets when they where laying and after being in the breeding pen for four months some of their backs where torn to pieces from mating. After they molted as hens they had good webbing. I wanted to get this corrected so I started just using a method of selecting chicks that matured faster than their other brothers and sisters. I could see this in the brooder box as they pushed out their tail feathers. I would then wing band these chicks and com pair say ten ckls and ten pullets as they started crowing or laying. It seemed the slower feathered chicks where latter in crowing and and laying. So I placed these faster maturing birds in the breeding pen small matings of one male and two females. I did this for five years and each year they matured faster, lay ed quicker, crowed sooner and most of all the pullet feather quality over the back area became tight webbed which was my goal. I did this at the same time with my White Rock large fowl and the soft fluffy feathered bunny tailed rocks in five years got more like a game type feather and the fluff around their vents went away and so improved their hatch ability.

Many American class breeds get so soft in feather that you are forced to pull there feathers from the vent area so that the you can have a chance of hatching some eggs. By using this method you will improve hatch ability and most of all you start to see better breed type. You loose the bunny tail drop in the rocks which is basically in my view the Cochin genes coming to the surface as they where used in the early days to make the breeds. You also get what Hogan wanted and that was capacity in the gut to make more eggs.

You see this in breeding and judging Holstein Cows as you need the big body to make more pounds of milk per day per year which leads to more profits for the farmer. In Reds in the old days say the 1940s and 50s it was the most eggs, per year for your females with less blow outs or deaths in the females. Many of the smart Red breeders realized it was not the 275 egg cherry egger that made the most money it was the female that lay ed a lower average of 200 eggs per pullet year. These female lived to old age and could be used up to say three to four years. They also, if they maintained their brick shape and good color where the best breeders as they kept their type and color and they passed this onto their males and females. I hope I painted a simple picture its not all that complicated and you dont have to get into all this big type genetics to get there. Let me just tell you one more time. Those who take on Rhode Island Reds average about three to maybe five years and stop. Some make it to eight years and screw up their birds so bad they give up. Only about one in three hundred will make it to the tenth year. Then maybe only one in six or eight hundred will make it two the twenty year.

Its simple to study if you just read the old Rhode Island Red Chronicles like I once did. See when they join and see if they stick around for the tenth year. You have to have a plan on what you want to do for say five years or little goals. Then you got to understand the history of the breed and how it was made so you don't introduce those traits more in your flock. That is the Cochin gene will cause more people to go out of reds than anything. Many want a nice WIDE width of feather. Your asking for trouble when you want nice WIDE wing feathers and WIDE tail feathers. Females that lay 200 eggs per pullets year and their brothers have medium width of feathers and so if you go that route you will not have a anti brick shaped type red. In Red bantams its even worse as those who have wide width of feathers will have tails that point down about 30 degrees in the main tail feathers. Schilling called these tails Whisk Broom tails. You also get bantams with shorter length of back then a cushion and BINGO you have to days RED ROCKS.

Well let me get off my soap box. Many don't like to hear this kind of stuff but twenty or thirty years from today if you are still in chickens just see if I am right or not. Its in the history of the membership in the Red Club and you can see it in the product in the show room.

Just don't forget the brick shape of the Red, the medium width of feather and a good egg production and you will have fine Reds in no time.

By they way Mr. Brazelton was one of my mentors who got me on this kick. He was not a Red man but his mother and aunt where in the Glory days. He got 200 egg yields son his Orpingtons by trap nesting his females. He did not use lights which if he did would improved his totals by 20 eggs in my view. If he was alive he would tell you to just take it easy and slow down and keep things simple and dont get all raped up in things. Remember the term in management and its used still today. KISS. Do you know what that means??????

Two people asked me to explain my method as above so I killed two birds with one stone. Sorry for the lenth of message. I hope you two understand what I did.

You have a nice day and promote those Reds.

Thanks Bob. I appreciate the response. Keeping it simple is always good. I try not to fall into my "Paralysis of Analysis". My USMC buddies like to use the seven P's. Remember that? Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance.

 

[3riverschick]

Thanks Bob. I appreciate the response. Keeping it simple is always good. I try not to fall into my "Paralysis of Analysis". My USMC buddies like to use the seven P's. Remember that? Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance.

Chuckle, that brings back memories. My Dad was an efficency expert. All the time we were growig up he would tell us,
"Make a plan and do it right the first time.". He was one of the driving forces behind the Zero Defects quality assurance
method. We used to call it, "Zwissler's Daddy". That was my maiden name.
Best,
Karen

 

[henpeckedmuch]

I have posted this before, two respondents whom I respect, thought these hens were in juvenile plumage or less then 6 or 7 mos. old.
but that is not the case these hens are 6 1/2 mos. old.
The fault is all mine for not communicating my question well.
I have tried to address their concerns in this post. So, I'm asking the question again. And, I'm trying to be more precise in my description.
This is a Standard of perfection question.

I wish I wasn't technologically ignorant, then I could post pictures easily. In the mean time I must depend on my ability to describe my concern.
Should my 21-23 weeks old RIR pullets, which have lost their juvenile feathers, have black on their tail coverts? --(see figure 4 on pg.15,of the 2010 Standard; tail coverts #26).
Their main tail feathers #25 (on the same page, same figure), are green / black as they are supposed to be, but several rows of their tail coverts also have black centers which are edged with dark red. The Standard mentions color of male tail coverts but when referring to hens it only mentions their main tail feathers. (pg 52).

 

[Robert Blosl]

I have posted this before, two respondents whom I respect, thought these hens were in juvenile plumage or less then 6 or 7 mos. old.
but that is not the case these hens are 6 1/2 mos. old.
The fault is all mine for not communicating my question well.
I have tried to address their concerns in this post. So, I'm asking the question again. And, I'm trying to be more precise in my description.
This is a Standard of perfection question.

I wish I wasn't technologically ignorant, then I could post pictures easily. In the mean time I must depend on my ability to describe my concern.
Should my 21-23 weeks old RIR pullets, which have lost their juvenile feathers, have black on their tail coverts? --(see figure 4 on pg.15,of the 2010 Standard; tail coverts #26).
Their main tail feathers #25 (on the same page, same figure), are green / black as they are supposed to be, but several rows of their tail coverts also have black centers which are edged with dark red. The Standard mentions color of male tail coverts but when referring to hens it only mentions their main tail feathers. (pg 52).

I dont have this standard and I use the standard from 1962 should still be the same words. I was looking at some pullets the other day about five months old they are getting their adult feathers and some had total green on the out side of their main tail feathers but on the inside they had two to four inches of brown red color not green. The strength in the color is green on the out side that you see but when you sit down in a chair and flip her over and part her tail you will see the green which is duller in hue but you would like to set goals over five years two get the green or black to the quill or to the skin. Them male seems to have more intense green than the female which he is normally more in color like a male pheasant to at track the enemy's in the wild where the female is more bland or to blend in to the ground cover so she can escape from the cats, hawks, or other animals trying to catch them.

Dont get to hung up on what the standard says and what you have. Many Rhode Island Reds do not have the color in the wing as the standard calls for or in the tail. You try to select birds that are as close to the standard in color however over time. My thoughts on color is for beginners they can get so confused over this that in three years they can get so frustrated they want to cross another strain onto what they have then they are in bigger trouble.

For the first three years you should focus on breeding for type. Learn this as best as you can. Then the next three years work with judges and good breeders on color. Breeding for color in Reds is not easy. It is however, much easyer than say Silver Pencil led or Blue Andalusian which are hard as can be to breed and rookies who fall for this color pattern are in for a big surprises it takes ten to twenty years of experience to just have satisfactory birds in this color pattern.

When I was looking at these pullets one thing I saw was the big SIN lacking in the neck feathers. Look at your standard it calls for ticking just a little bit of green on each neck feather and the male should have no black in his hackle. But this is the biggest disobeyed rule in Breeding Reds. Old timers calmed that the direction of the black to the tail and wing was blocked by the lacking or stripes in the female neck feather. They begged the beginner to put breeding pressure on ticking or no ticking at all. Then the green or black could go to the wing properly or to the main tail feathers. I saw a female with very little black in her wing but over all great type and comb. Should she get the ax? NO she is a $500. female. She will bail you out of trouble when you get to much black in a wing as in the males. What Mrs. Donaldson use to preach is she will absorb the excess unwanted black.

Hope this helps you some. Take it easy on the color heck I have been breeding Buff Brahmas for five years. I dont know crap about the color pattern but I have the type and outer color that I want. I will figure out the other parts of the color spectrum in the next five years. KISS. Thats my mo to and may the gods bless you with patients.

 

[Chris09]

I have posted this before, two respondents whom I respect, thought these hens were in juvenile plumage or less then 6 or 7 mos. old.
but that is not the case these hens are 6 1/2 mos. old.
The fault is all mine for not communicating my question well.
I have tried to address their concerns in this post. So, I'm asking the question again. And, I'm trying to be more precise in my description.
This is a Standard of perfection question.

I wish I wasn't technologically ignorant, then I could post pictures easily. In the mean time I must depend on my ability to describe my concern.
Should my 21-23 weeks old RIR pullets, which have lost their juvenile feathers, have black on their tail coverts? --(see figure 4 on pg.15,of the 2010 Standard; tail coverts #26).
Their main tail feathers #25 (on the same page, same figure), are green / black as they are supposed to be, but several rows of their tail coverts also have black centers which are edged with dark red. The Standard mentions color of male tail coverts but when referring to hens it only mentions their main tail feathers. (pg 52).

henpecked,
For the tail read the description for Columbian should be page 36 in the 2010 Standard of Perfection.

Female --
Tail --
Main Tail --
Black with the two top feathers laced in Red
Convert --
Black with a lacing of Red (the lacing should be narrow)

Remember that the R.I. Red has much the same standard as a Columbian colored fowl except your dealing with a Red fowl, not a White and you want Ticking in the hens neck feathers not Lacing.

Chris

 

[Robert Blosl]

Here is a few pictures I found in my computer to look at the male in the bottom had good green in his tail he was Champion at Michigan State Fair about four years ago.

The picture of the tail was done by schilling this was his vision of a medium width of feather in a tail. This came out of the book of knowledge in 1944.

There is a picture of a nice wing unknown source but great illustration of black and good red color.

The other picture was a color print done by Schilling in the 1940s of the ideal Reds. You might be able to see the color in this print.

The standard calls for little things in the legs and in the tail you may not ever see these things. That is why we have point cuts for these lack little things. Big time breeders dont really get all hung up on them. Some judges might cut a real good bird to third place and the next judge may make him Champion Large Fowl. Got to know what your judges like and dont like. There is so much other big things to worry about and that is type. Do you know the percent of points for type and then for color???