The Heritage Rhode Island Red Site

[FOGELLY]

Anthony,
They look to be progressing very well. I see good things in them.
In my birds from this year it looks as though they continue to make progress on the length of their backs. Chest and keel remains good. I look forward to them maturing to see how they look compaired to the last generation.

There are many things I have learned from dealing with these old time "Heritage" birds.
The most important thing is Patience.
A bird that looks behind will usually catch up, and one day you will be looking at your flock and have a hard time picking it out from the rest.
About the time the pullets reach POL they will be stunning.
If you cull your cockerels to early you will probably kill some winners.
The difference in your cockerels from 9 months to 12 months is amazing.
Lots and lots more observations you will learn as you go down the road.

Color it seems, by all of our nature (mine included) is the thing we tend to worry most about. Case in point, a month ago I was seriously concerned about this in my young bird. Since then they have bloomed and are looking really good. Forgot the Patiance thing!

BTW on all these HRIR strains their true in person color is next to impossible to capture in a picture. At least for me it is.

Y'all enjoy the experience, it will be worth it.
We will continue to learn together.


Ron

 

[NestingHillsSC]

Very nice young birds. Ron has sent quite a few out this past spring and all the pictures seem to look like very nice quality. I'd bet that next year there will be a lot more RIR's on the ground then there was a couple of years ago. Folks have surely gotten into the RIR Craze. lol BUT that is a good thing. I wish all of you that got birds from Ron or anyone else this year the best of luck with raising them and having fun with them for years to come.
Jim

I most certainly will!! I couldn't afford them when first started a flock a few years ago. Hence my production reds. So I am really looking forward to breeding them. Hopefully I can make the HRIR community proud! HAHAHA

 

[catdaddyfro]

Anthony,
They look to be progressing very well. I see good things in them.
In my birds from this year it looks as though they continue to make progress on the length of their backs. Chest and keel remains good. I look forward to them maturing to see how they look compaired to the last generation.

There are many things I have learned from dealing with these old time "Heritage" birds.
The most important thing is Patience.
A bird that looks behind will usually catch up, and one day you will be looking at your flock and have a hard time picking it out from the rest.
About the time the pullets reach POL they will be stunning.
If you cull your cockerels to early you will probably kill some winners.
The difference in your cockerels from 9 months to 12 months is amazing.
Lots and lots more observations you will learn as you go down the road.

Color it seems, by all of our nature (mine included) is the thing we tend to worry most about. Case in point, a month ago I was seriously concerned about this in my young bird. Since then they have bloomed and are looking really good. Forgot the Patiance thing!

BTW on all these HRIR strains their true in person color is next to impossible to capture in a picture. At least for me it is.

Y'all enjoy the experience, it will be worth it.
We will continue to learn together.


Ron

Hey Ron I remember in a conversation on here a few months back where I was talking about the watching and keeping of the early bloomers/maturers(first to feather, first to crow, first to lay,ect.) and you had mentioned about how you'd notice that some of the good ones take a little while longer than the others to come into their own so to say. So just from your advice I kept some cockerels I was sure of them to be duds(headed for the chopping block) compared to their sibling brothers(at the time) and sure enough by around 10/12 mths you could see that these boys weren't all that bad in the first place, in fact one of them is now my biggest widest squared up bodied one out of the 6 but he has pink shading on his earlobes (no good for breeding and a big ol wonky, gnarly looking comb) but the moral here is you got to have patience on these dudes for sure, or like you say you may just butcher/cull a killer future breeder/keeper for sure. I know feed costs too but sometimes you got to just bite the bullet and go ahead on. Not saying you got to raise all you hatch out or receive, there signs to cull/weed out for early on, too. Just can't get all antsy about it though, is all. LOL

Jeff

Good day

 

[NestingHillsSC]

Anthony,
They look to be progressing very well. I see good things in them.
In my birds from this year it looks as though they continue to make progress on the length of their backs. Chest and keel remains good. I look forward to them maturing to see how they look compaired to the last generation.

There are many things I have learned from dealing with these old time "Heritage" birds.
The most important thing is Patience.
A bird that looks behind will usually catch up, and one day you will be looking at your flock and have a hard time picking it out from the rest.
About the time the pullets reach POL they will be stunning.
If you cull your cockerels to early you will probably kill some winners.
The difference in your cockerels from 9 months to 12 months is amazing.
Lots and lots more observations you will learn as you go down the road.

Color it seems, by all of our nature (mine included) is the thing we tend to worry most about. Case in point, a month ago I was seriously concerned about this in my young bird. Since then they have bloomed and are looking really good. Forgot the Patiance thing!

BTW on all these HRIR strains their true in person color is next to impossible to capture in a picture. At least for me it is.

Y'all enjoy the experience, it will be worth it.
We will continue to learn together.


Ron

Only have 2 roos. So won't have to worry about that this year. Not sure if I should keep all the hens. Probably will, if not for laying purposes only. Plus there my first HRIR.

 

[immyjay54]

Anthony,
They look to be progressing very well. I see good things in them.
In my birds from this year it looks as though they continue to make progress on the length of their backs. Chest and keel remains good. I look forward to them maturing to see how they look compaired to the last generation.

There are many things I have learned from dealing with these old time "Heritage" birds.
The most important thing is Patience.
A bird that looks behind will usually catch up, and one day you will be looking at your flock and have a hard time picking it out from the rest.
About the time the pullets reach POL they will be stunning.
If you cull your cockerels to early you will probably kill some winners.
The difference in your cockerels from 9 months to 12 months is amazing.
Lots and lots more observations you will learn as you go down the road.

Color it seems, by all of our nature (mine included) is the thing we tend to worry most about. Case in point, a month ago I was seriously concerned about this in my young bird. Since then they have bloomed and are looking really good. Forgot the Patiance thing!

BTW on all these HRIR strains their true in person color is next to impossible to capture in a picture. At least for me it is.

Y'all enjoy the experience, it will be worth it.
We will continue to learn together.


Ron

Ron,
I have found that the closest that you can capture to the real color on these birds is if it is sort of a hazy day or the birds are in the shade and use NO FLASH. lol I've got hundreds of pictures of them and maybe 1% of them show the true color. If the sun is shining brightly on them they seem to look like the photo has been fixed and contrast added. If you use a flash it seems to wash out the true color. I know that with all the photo's I put on my site, very few of them show the true color.
Jim

 

[NestingHillsSC]

Hey Ron I remember in a conversation on here a few months back where I was talking about the watching and keeping of the early bloomers/maturers(first to feather, first to crow, first to lay,ect.) and you had mentioned about how you'd notice that some of the good ones take a little while longer than the others to come into their own so to say. So just from your advice I kept some cockerels I was sure to be duds(headed for the chopping block) compared to their sibling brothers(at the time) and sure enough by around 10/12 mths you could see that these boys weren't all that bad in the first place, in fact one of them is now my biggest widest squared up bodied one out of the 6 but he has pink shading on his earlobes (no good for breeding and a big ol wonky, gnarly looking comb) but the moral here is you got to have patience on these dudes for sure, or like you say you may just butcher/cull a killer future breeder/keeper for sure. I know feed costs too but sometimes you got to just bite the bullet and go ahead on. Not saying you got to raise all you hatch out or receive, there signs to cull/weed out for early on, too. Just can't get all antsy about it though, is all. LOL

Jeff

Good day

I would like to put one of my hens when shes still young on the grill just to taste the difference between the PRIR and the HRIR. But I want to make sure I'm not eating a breeder first.

 

[FOGELLY]

I would like to put one of my hens when shes still young on the grill just to taste the difference between the PRIR and the HRIR. But I want to make sure I'm not eating a breeder first.

I would probably wait and eat some of their offspring. Just Saying

 

[RedRidge]

Rotational Line Breeding....

.... Good pictures keep them coming. bob

OK Bob... can I ask some newbie questions here?
I've been studying this particular post repeatedly... I have printed it out for my files.
Very interesting concepts, especially compared to other types of animal breeding I have done.
So here are my questions...
When your top 2 females return to the breeding pen the following year, are they returning as the only 2 females in the pen? or are they added to the previous years females from that pen? If they are returning alone, where are the previous years females?
Similar question for the roos... I understand that the best roo resulting from Pen 1 will become king in Pen 2 the following year, but at the end of each breeding season, are they ever used again? Breed back on? Disposed of?

Probably silly questions for those of you who do this, but the line breeding I have done with other types of livestock I have frequently held out an excellent sire for several years and then gone back to him - a different sort of line breeding.
Now mind you... I have no problem eating any of them... I simply wasn't certain how or IF you were breeding birds beyond their first year.

Thanks for the explanations... I am really enjoying this thread and learning a lot.

 

[Robert Blosl]

Quote: Love that picture. I have a devil of a time attaching this box with my old article from 20 years ago. When I lost my first web site I copied this article but could never get the picture to go with it. My wife made this for me and its the ticket to enplane the concept.

Lets say you have four family's. You pick the best one or two pullets and put them back into the pen their egg was layed in. A example the chick from pen two goes back to pen two to lay her eggs, then the best female a pullet goes to pen three where her egg came from and down the way to pen four and one. However, in the males the top male and his brother is put in a spare pen to stay incase you need a male if the top one is sterile or he dies on you. However, the top ckl from pen one goes into pen two the top male goes into pen three and the top male from pen four goes into pen one. You always rotate the male to the right each year the top females goes back into their house they came out of.

You can have two families and you can have a partner who has two family's. Lets say you take the top male to a show from pen two and you friend puts him in pen three at his house. Then you take his top male from pen four and put in your pen one pen. This way you both can just focus on two family's and not have a total of four which is very costly. It would be better for a single breeder to just have three family's. with this system.

There is a question in this madness what happens if last years male mated to a nice pullet produces a Champion Large Fowl of the show chick.

Should you kill these birds? Should you mate the best ckl from say pen three to his mother? Or the best pullet his sister to the old male again?

This is a nice system on paper but you got to have some common sense in breeding. You could even have a third partner and give them the great pair to hatch out some good birds.

I like inbreeding good birds back to others for say three seasons then rotate them to the right and inbreed those birds for three years. This is breeding 104.

The beginner does not need to worry about this but look down the road in three years and have some type of plan. The first two years is learn to breed for type and learn to keep them alive and in three years you will get it all together. PATIENTS is the secret.

The breeders you used say last year can be sold to beginners or given to beginners to start their pens to start. The object of this method is to improved each year with better typed and colored birds.

 

[BGMatt]

The only thing I wonder about with that process you just described Bob, is that way you're always breeding from pullets and cockerels it sounds like, and yet we know from the oldtimers that it's wiser to breed from older birds. Which is better in your opinion and why?