The Heritage Rhode Island Red Site

[FOGELLY]

I got ya. Thanks for the heads up. I have misinterpreted some info on this. I do have a couple of young cockerels with some black in the hackles, it was my thinking was that this could be of use in helping color in the females.
It is clear I have still have much to learn on the color side of breeding.
Thanks again, another good tip given with thoughtful respect.

Ron

 

[Matt1616]

​

I got ya. Thanks for the heads up. I have misinterpreted some info on this. I do have a couple of young cockerels with some black in the hackles, it was my thinking was that this could be of use in helping color in the females.
It is clear I have still have much to learn on the color side of breeding.
Thanks again, another good tip given with thoughtful respect.

Ron

You are correct, you can use those males for improving color in the females which is what I said in the last sentence. You just have to be careful with it unless you're double mating because it will get in all your males if you don't watch it. Balancing the black "points" of the RIR is no easy task. It is a ongoing battle that will never end.
Trust me, I am learning more every day. I certainly am not an expert...I always say that it is just my opinion which could be wrong depending on who you ask. My only intention is to help.

Matt

 

[FOGELLY]

​

You are correct, you can use those males for improving color in the females which is what I said in the last sentence. You just have to be careful with it unless you're double mating because it will get in all your males if you don't watch it. Balancing the black "points" of the RIR is no easy task. It is a ongoing battle that will never end.
Trust me, I am learning more every day. I certainly am not an expert...I always say that it is just my opinion which could be wrong depending on who you ask. My only intention is to help.

Matt

Matt,
One thing that has helped me in all aspects of my life is I have learned to learn.
I have no problem taking good solid advise from others. I took no offense from your comments, actually the exact opposite.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Ron

 

[immyjay54]

Hey guys,
I don't know how many of you have been to my site and read the Rhode Island information page and Rhode Island information page 2 but there is some really good stuff on there. On page 2 there is a good article by George Scott about the black coloring in these birds. I've read this quite a few times and still go to my own site and read the stuff I have on there every once in a while. Anything I find on the web that I feel very interesting, I usually put it on there. I know there is an awful lot on my site that maybe folks don't want to look at but there is also some very good stuff on there too. lol
Jim

 

[Chickens Naturally]

This is the breeding practice I am familiar with in bringing in new blood: first generation will be half. Second generation, three fourths. Thired generation seven eights. Fourth generation fifteen sixteenths. If you take a fifteen sixteenths cockerel and raise it up and cross it on hens from your line you would be introducing only one thirty second new blood. Are you all saying that one thirty second of new blood will throw your breeding progress back five generations of heavy culling to correct?

 

[SallyinIndiana]

This is the breeding practice I am familiar with in bringing in new blood: first generation will be half. Second generation, three fourths. Thired generation seven eights. Fourth generation fifteen sixteenths. If you take a fifteen sixteenths cockerel and raise it up and cross it on hens from your line you would be introducing only one thirty second new blood. Are you all saying that one thirty second of new blood will throw your breeding progress back five generations of heavy culling to correct?

My answer is based strictly on the numbers as your question has quite a few of them. Thus I think they interest you. I'm going to narrow down my answer even more by dealing with only color. Yes, 1/32 can make a BIG difference. How big would depend on the new blood and how close the new blood is to the old blood. For visualizing, think of paint. I love the color fire red. Always have. It is really really hard to get paint to be fire red. Once the formula comes out right, the paint people don't like changing anything about that fire red paint. But lets say some new paint company wanted their own special blend. Then sure they could take that fire red formula and add say 1/32 of white. Big difference. Now maybe 1/32 of brick red would not make as big of a difference but it would be different, not as vibrant to be exact.
I know paint is not the same as chickens but there are so many things breeders here are breeding for to match the standard, leg color, size ~ length, height, weight, feathers ~ how fast or slow they come in, the color, the size, even lacing. I'm sure there are other breeding qualities too. I'm thinking a breeder with some skill and experience could come up with 32 things to check on a bird. Now if this new blood messes with just one of those things, it can be hard to fix even if the breeder has a non mixed first generation bird that happens to be either fertile or laying still.
This is just my opinion but I can fully understand why breeders might be a touch bit cautious about mixing in new blood. Plus what are they to do with all of the mixed breed chickens say the 1/16 or 1/2 not HRIR. They sure can't eat them all. Also when mixing breeds it is not as easy as mixing paint. The chicks don't all come out the same. One might have the new legs while another has the new neck.

 

[flowerchild59]

Thanks Jimmy for posting such good information on your web site.

 

[Fentress]

Me Too! Thanks Jimmy

 

[Chickens Naturally]

My answer is based strictly on the numbers as your question has quite a few of them. Thus I think they interest you. I'm going to narrow down my answer even more by dealing with only color. Yes, 1/32 can make a BIG difference. How big would depend on the new blood and how close the new blood is to the old blood. For visualizing, think of paint. I love the color fire red. Always have. It is really really hard to get paint to be fire red. Once the formula comes out right, the paint people don't like changing anything about that fire red paint. But lets say some new paint company wanted their own special blend. Then sure they could take that fire red formula and add say 1/32 of white. Big difference. Now maybe 1/32 of brick red would not make as big of a difference but it would be different, not as vibrant to be exact.
I know paint is not the same as chickens but there are so many things breeders here are breeding for to match the standard, leg color, size ~ length, height, weight, feathers ~ how fast or slow they come in, the color, the size, even lacing. I'm sure there are other breeding qualities too. I'm thinking a breeder with some skill and experience could come up with 32 things to check on a bird. Now if this new blood messes with just one of those things, it can be hard to fix even if the breeder has a non mixed first generation bird that happens to be either fertile or laying still.
This is just my opinion but I can fully understand why breeders might be a touch bit cautious about mixing in new blood. Plus what are they to do with all of the mixed breed chickens say the 1/16 or 1/2 not HRIR. They sure can't eat them all. Also when mixing breeds it is not as easy as mixing paint. The chicks don't all come out the same. One might have the new legs while another has the new neck.

Well first let me say thank you for your reply. I should have asked specifically about bringing in new blood from a related line and not a separate breed, however, the question was brought up about the New Hampshire which is at least related to the RIR. For the purpose of this scenario though let’s just consider bringing in fresh blood from one RIR line to another line. First of all, why would you want to do this? Cocker Tan Bark states, “Good breeding is only a matter of intelligent selection of brood fowl…” (Tan Bark, Game Chickens and How to Breed Them, 1964, p. 27). Well if every line of chickens were of good size, healthy and fit, there would be no reason to do this. However, if a particular line of chickens have become problematic, could be poor layers, poor hatchability, poor health etc.., what do you do with those chickens?
What if, in addition to some of these other issues, chickens were small? How could you make intelligent selection? What I am suggesting is that there may be a time when it is advantageous to bring in new blood. This is very different from someone wanting to cross up say RIR with frizzle silkies, mess up the gene pool and then abandon the breed after a few years. As a preservationist, what are you preserving with a line of chickens in poor condition and how many years before they would be abandoned as well? Now I have been following several threads and read where lines (of different breeds) suffer from these problems, suggested the need for bringing in new blood, then been told there were no issues and then continued reading about the issues. I have read where some have ‘tried’ different lines and didn’t want the issues and decided to abandon those lines. I’m assuming that the idea, that it is never acceptable to ‘cross’ lines are the reason they are abandoned or never worked with to begin with. What I am asking is, is that always the case? If nobody wanted to work with a particular line of heritage chicken because it had become too problematic, would it really be better to lose that line than attempt to improve it by bringing in new blood?
There is more than one way to bring in new blood. If you end up with one sixteenth new blood, for example, you’ve already been selecting from the offspring who have inherited the ‘legs’ or ‘neck’ from the new blood introduced for several generations right? The purpose of bringing in new blood would be to revive vigor and to introduce some genetic diversity to work with right? I’m just a little skeptical that you never cross anything for any reason is always the best answer, but I’m open to learning, that’s what I’m here for. Thanks again for your input.

 

[SallyinIndiana]

You bring up some interesting points. Kind of a what would you do if all of the good birds of a specific breed were gone and only hatchery stock was left.
I don't know. I'm not a breeder really. I just saw that your post kind of got buried and thought I would try to help explain some of the issues of bringing in the new blood.
It does sound like even if someone wanted to add the new blood, it would take years of endurance and culling to pick the better birds. Also lots of space / separate pens and identification methods for multiple chickens at each breeding stage. Lots of note keeping too. Maybe even several mixes that look different but have the same amount of mixed blood. Possibly even several restarts on the mixing in of the new blood. LOTS of WORK and TIME.
Personally, I don't want to spend 10 yrs improving the chickens I own, if I can easily start over with breeder quality chickens. So if say in 5 yrs I have somehow made a horrible breeding error and my birds start looking like production reds, well then I'm going to have a lot of chicken dinners or a large layer flock and get in contact with a good breeder and try again.
I can see your point too that there has to be a way to breed improvement into a chicken breed gone wrong. But is it worth the effort, that would be up to the chicken breeder / owner. Those who started the RIR way back when just might say sure lets have a go at breeding a better chicken. But if I'm reading the history right they were trying to make a new breed not improve an existing one. To me if I could create a new breed or improve one in the same amount of time, I would choose new breed and fame.

There has been a number of posts a few pages back about a project of mixing some lines this spring, I think it was the bantam line and the mohawk line. ( I may be remembering the posts wrong though, you would need to check.) I'm almost certain that everyone talking about this project is expecting time and effort to go into the mixing, so not perfect results after the first hatch. It is really the time and effort involved in mixing in new blood that can cause a person like me to give up when results are not as expected. That risk will keep me from mixing in new blood if at all possible.