Once birds change hands it's a little misleading to refer to their offspring as being of the original line. If, for example, someone bought Reds from gary Underwood the only way to legitimately call their offsspring "Underwood Reds" would be to have gary come over & set up your breeding pens according to his selection preferences. The least important thing about birds is the name of the person they may have originally come from.
I judged some Sumatras at a recent show. The owner of some of the birds asked me to review them with him after the show, which I did. He named 2 well known sumatra breeders as having been the source of the birds or at least that was what he was told by the person who sold him the birds. The 3 birds I lookd at were undersized, very narrow feathered & 2 of the 3 had small, narrow heads more like those of a Modern Game Bantam. This fellow bought names not birds.
I know that Bob Blosl used to state that Don Nelson's birds were a 30-40 year pure strain. Don, however, says different. According to Don he mixed birds from several different sources, including some production birds, in the process of developing his Reds. A quote from Don goes "I breed birds not names".
I see evidence of this strain-name culture at many shows. People frequently make the claim that their birds come from some well known breeder but when question it turns out that they didn't buy those birds from that breeder but from an intermediary source. In some cases this results from dishonest sellers "name dropping", in other it's a result of unsuccessfull mating decisionsEither way, the source [name] of the birds is unimportant. What is important is what's the bird in front of you look like, not who did it's ancestors come from.
Bill,
I 100% totally agree with what you said about Don Nelson's birds. Here is his exact words:
My line is far from pure,I have an old line base but have added Myers,Underwood,production,Bowers(old related line) to my flock over the last 20 years.I feel by selectively adding different birds that I have improved my Reds significantly over the ones I started with,There were mistakes made and many times took steps backward to move forward.The Reds now are larger in body size,earlier maturing,better and earlier layers,and have great color and feather quality.
Now, I am going to try once more at this. When any chicken (like anything else) is born it has a certain amount of blood, right? That blood came from it's mother and dad, right?
Now there are many strains, but, a
bloodline comes from the blood that is in that bird. Am I right or wrong. I'm not caring about whose name is on that particular bird. Now, if there are 5 birds that came from 5 different bloodlines, if they are not given a certain name or number then how on earth would we describe the different bloodlines.
I don't say that I have the Nelson or the Underwood or the Reese birds because I want to run around with my chest stuck out claiming that I have these peoples birds. My gosh, I don't feel that I am any better then anyone else or that they are any better then me. All I say that for is to let people know where this particular bloodline comes from.
What I'm trying to say is this. The birds that I bought from Gary Underwood and the chicks that I raise from these very same birds came from the
bloodline that George and Gary Underwood developed from way back years ago. They created this certain line of birds just as Don Nelson did. Now, unless I was to drain every drop of blood out of these birds and replace it with blood from the birds that came from Don Nelson would these birds from Gary not still have the same blood as the birds that are on Gary's property? I'm not trying to cause a big ruckus here but this is making no sense to me what so ever.
Again, I fully understand what you said in your post and agree. I'm not trying to be a big shot claiming that I have Underwood etc lines to get sales. It is just that if folks like a certain line of bird and are looking for that certain line of bird, is it wrong for me to say that I have the Underwood line. Now if what all has been said on here is true then I would be lying to say that.
This really doesn't make the birds any better or worse but there are a lot of people selling birds that have been crossed with others that look like crap and I sure wouldn't want them.
When I bought eggs from you and you said they were from the Nelson line birds, I expected a certain kind of bird. If you would have told me that these eggs were coming from Sadie Johnson's line of birds I would have no idea what they were going to look like or turn out. With knowing the line that these birds came from it was real easy for me to say send me some.
If I would mix two of my different lines of birds that I have then they would not be the same
bloodline of either parent because they would be coming from two different lines.
Holy Cow, I sure do hope that maybe this is a little more clear of what I have been saying from the beginning. It has nothing to do with the persons name, it has all to do with the
bloodline of birds that that person was breeding. I hope that everyone knows that I'm not that stupid to know that I will not see/produce the same thing as Joe Blow or Sam Smith but with my knowing who NYREDS and Don Nelson is then I felt very comfortable buying eggs from you to get birds that Don Nelson had worked hard to produce his line.
If this post does not clarify what I am trying to get across then I'm sorry, I'm done with this and I am surely sorry for ever bringing this up.
Jim
