Do you ever see the pullets flirting with the rooster lawn ornament?
You Canucks are the nice polite Americans. How do you manage that with the cabin fever and all?
I'll get a picture of the dog just for you.
The snow melted a bit today. Not because it was that warm but the sun was really strong.
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Not a lot of news from my daughter other than she seems to be having a blast and keeping busy.
Hmm, flirting with a concrete lawn ornament...that could explain why they were posing where I could get a picky like that, eh?
Reason we are polite is probably BECAUSE of the cabin fever...we know we are going to be rough around the edges, so get real use to apologizing...otherwise we'd really be isolated, even from each other..."Sorry!" "No, I'm sorry!" "No, I am more sorry..." Hee hee hee....
Thank you...I look forward to the statues & dog dog pic. "Squeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!"
Love the news from your daughter and the pics of the bats... Still can't really l00k at a bat and not get startled...really nice creatures (one of the presents the kid made for us were bat boxes) eat a ton of bugs but I think the combo of fur and those featherless wings...just don't make me wanna give 'em a big ol' hug...hee ha ha
Love reading your adventurous life. Such a home body myself...day trips for us! Fun that you share your travels with us. Thank you for that.
No piccy of the young ballerina? My mother enrolled my sis and I in ballet...don't think it did me much good in the grace department (thundering moose would be moi!) but I can keep a musical beat fairly well. I also remember the teacher was a retired Russian ballerina and gave all us kids candied orange peel at Christmas time. We found it strange till my father advised us that sometimes the only food treat present you got was an orange at Christmas...a very rare commodity. That made the candied peel much more special when we understood that...we tossed the peels into the compost and being young and having our tastebuds still intact...the candied peel was very over powering. LOL
canukBock - I love the golden Chanteclers! Can only find the white ones down here and then they're hatchery stock. From what I've read yours are much calmer and friendlier. Am I right?
Calmer and friendlier, yes.
I have a theory that the bigger birds, the smarter ones; they are going to make a better calmer happier chicken flock for us backyarders. Not confined in cages, pumping out swill eggs or in large dark barns where all they do is eat and crap to make mush meat. Temperaments don't matter when you are confined in a cage with your beak trimmed or you only live for what, 47 days before you are rounded up and eaten? Terminal crosses are not meant to live well amongst others for years and years. I want my interactions to be fun, not duck and dodge their bad moods. Inside my boundaries, it has to be this silly, happy safe home. If I want evil, all I need to do is step outside the perimeters...got lots of nasty just waiting to jump the unsuspecting...hee hee...mean world sometimes!
These boys need to be amiable with all I choose to put in their pen...they share a coop with two bantam Wyandotte males...leave them totally unmolested. Note the blue in the tail of the Blaff male in front...great white enhancer in blue dilution.
Widdle boy, Big boy.
You can taste the happiness in animals that are a joy to themselves and their keepers.
It costs more to do things right (quality) but the outputs from good inputs are never questioned when you can feel the love from your labours and theirs. It has to be happy or why are we bothering...cheaper to buy food than raise it right ourselves.
These "golden" pullets are a work in progress at getting a firmer feather in the self-Buff Chanteclers...still a bit POOFY in the pantaloons and some off colours like light coloured feathers in the tails and primaries, but a harder feather captured in these two pullets and always working at maintaining my preferred shape in a longer wider back in a brainy bird.
My birds are calm...I bin told either I have a big lap or they are well mannered (I say both!) when I can stuff four large fowl Chants in my arms and still manage a photo by myself.
If they were skiddish, I'd never manage to capture this shot above, eh?
I looked at the firmer feathers in the Partridge I had. Gotta be firm to express the pencilling nicely (see parti hen Chous' thigh--got pencillings expressed = firmer feather!).
So I crossed Parti x Buff in 2009 (got nine pound cockerels) to make the Red Chanteclers.
This Red F1 male Chantecler large fowl hatched in 2009, has a broad body and I want to see "width" in a general fowl breed. Keep in mind...sometimes the fast growing fowls are not the ones that end up the biggest as adults. There is a balance point we have to want...slow and steady as the bird keeps growing or like in hybrid vigour situations, fast and bigger earlier but not always HUGE as adults. Why many breeders use hens and cocks, never pullets and cockerels to breed from. Depends on your objectives and pretty hard to access virtues like adult size, speed of moulting/back to production, disease resistance in young stocks. I also have seen things like twisted feather only show up in two year olds and by that time, it would be too late for the year prior if you used a sole male in your breeding program. Sometimes in the Chants, small wattles and combs can be offset by huge earlobes...earlobes keep growing past year one and not like you can judge a good breeder unless it is two years of age in this one instance.
This male Redmond (in the foreground on the right) is an F2 Red large fowl Chantecler. Reds will not breed true; the F1 cross is eb Brown (from Partridge) and eWh Wheaten (Buff)...so not pure in the e-series.
Medusa is an F1 Red Chant standard female and I think she's a rather fine specimen. Hatched out a bunch of her kids and firm feather and colour is on the up and up. Not perfect for sure but in the works. She is very raptor looking, stern gaze...one might even be intimidated if you did not see how silly she acts if you toss romaine in her general direction...then she gets all goofy and grins!
Medusa on the back right and some of her "kids" this winter. Got a firm feather, now want an even self-buff....
The big chickens tend to be the calmer ones...certainly not always but I have kept back hens that were big and good tempered. This is Gert (Goliath Gerty), kept because she is BIG and calm. She is too light in the ground colour to be a real decent partridge AND she has a blade comb (not cushion). Why keep her with these faults? Because I value that she is big and well mannered more than cushion combed and decently ground coloured--I got ones that are right in these traits so hoping to combine these in future generations. I'm old myself and have learned to be patient. Takes time and all the stuff we want is not gonna show up in one season of breeding or in one bird right at the beginnings. Takes time and when you see things you want more of, I say grab them and go with it. Weed out the bads and hope to keep more of the goods as you continue along.
Room to make eggs in and skeletal structure to hang meat off of; Gerty has a nice wide back. The old timer Leghorns were a bird with substance but the commercial factory farm versions are IMHO, skitso in temperaments and mostly ill structured, lacking depth/width, to be for both meat AND eggs. I often tell people I want a Chantecler you could throw a saddle on...room on the back.
These retouched photos by Arthur Schilling from 1923 are the shape I wanna see in the Chants. Dwarfs and fairies could go for a ride on those backs, eh?
The self-buffs I received to start had very soft feathers...
This is Chantelle, she's got a deep body (a block shape) but very soft feathers.
So I am now working at getting them an even self-Buff (trace mine to originator Walter Franklin - he used self-Buff large fowl breeds in the Cornish, Wyandotte and Plymouth Rock) along with this firmer feather texture.
The large fowl/standard Chants we have here are not timid or afraid, but curious and self aware...."Did you bring goodies? No goodies, no admittance!" See how every EYE is upon me?
Temperament wise, absolutely got NO tolerance for bad behaviours in the domestics (yes, we keep the wild ones and I expect them not always to be nice/nice or like the geese, hiss at me but let still me do my chores thanks!). I prefer critters with lots of attitude, but not unexplained aggression...I want a bird to look me in the eye with confidence, but not fly at my face in some unfounded rage or run away and hide like some wimp (suck it up Buttercup!). I need spunk but calmness in the creatures...I totally understand a protective hen giving me a well deserved beak bite if I choose to mess with her eggs but cannot stand an unfounded attack, by male or female just cause I showed up. Also, a nervous bird, to me, is stressing and stress invites diseases to take hold. Sick birds can't give you good eggs and meat, I want to see happiness abounding here. Happy eggs and happy meat...tastes great!
I need laying flocks and breeders that are calm, happy, active foragers (the Chants in my Sing Brightly Happy Hen flock are sweeties). They will rush the door of the coop, hoping I let them out. They are not timid and sulky, I'd find those ones a waste of my efforts...a big disappointment. Big smart birds tug at my heart strings; pretty inside and out.
If I wanted a more nervous fowl, I'd go more Mediterranean breeds. Unknown to a lot of people, as per Bro Wilfrid's obituary, his last influx in HIS Oka Chanteclers was White Leghorns in 1930 which explains why we see some versions of the Chanteclers a lot more Leghorny in build/breed shape. This Chantecler above with Bro W is certainly more "Leghorn" than what was accepted into the APA SOP in 1921.
Obituary:
The Leghorn addition was certainly something that increased egg production BUT the Chant is not to be solely an eggy breed, but also a meat breed...GENERAL PURPOSE fowl. In the 1927 brochure published for the World Poultry Congress held in Ottawa, Canada...note the Chant was never intended to be just for EGGs.
World Poultry Congress brochure - by the Canadian Chantecler Breeders' Association - 1927:
I believe that if you make selections for better temperament, you will see size increase in a chicken's brain/skull width too. Smarter chickens, better bird brains I hope! The APA SOP suggests we not choose for "crow heads" which are narrow, shallow and over-refined--this is considered a serious defect in poultry.
What may be happening in some of the White Chants is more Leghorn/eggy is being selected for (thinking the Chant is ONLY about winter eggs when she is not just that!) and therefore, a less stable and not so much sedate temperament is being caught up in the ride, too.
Old timer Leghorns are a wonderful breed; the commercial kinds, not so much. Can't really get too overly mad as what does one care if the bird has a good temperament or not when they are confined so it does not really matter how they behave so long as they are productive? I was completely put off Leghorns until I met an exhibition one. Charlie (white bantam) was the most wonderful Leghorn I had ever had the pleasure to meet...calm, beauty, awesome...he would perch on his owner's arm with the most regal of demeanors; wise and wonderful! Then it was perfectly clear to me what Leghorns were meant to be like. If commercial Leghorn is being added to the composite mix in the White Chanteclers, then it would explain the potential for less than desirable temperaments in some strains. Factory farms are not putting temperaments a backyarder would admire way up in their selection criterion.
There ARE many good lines of Whites in the Chanteclers; depends a lot on who is breeding and for what purposes. No one variety in the Chantecler breed can be labelled with any certainties; good or bad.
Studies have been done that show "temperament" is genetic AND environmentally influenced. How one raises the birds also accounts for how they turn out too. Crowding, less than good feed, bad water, constant interruptions to calmness, improper facilities, predation...not always a breeder's fault how young stocks turn out if sent on to less than ideal places...
Fred Jeffrey's describes the bantam Chantecler breed as being shaped like a Rhode Island, which to me is a BLOCK of a bird. If an elephant had the temperament of a weasel, I expect we would never see elephants being used as a beast of burden.
How's that for a nice amble ramble for today...never know where we may end up here...hee hee...not seeing pink flamingos, how about PINK ellyphonts??
Doggone & Chicken UP!
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
