The Smithies, the $5 "Ayam Cemani" black meat bird

[gloryblue]

DC
can you tell us more about how these two are developing ? What I'd like to know is are their bodies so far about the size and build of your Svart Honas' and/or Ayam Cemani's at the same age? Do you see anything notable other than fm and coloring for difference from your other two fm breeds? Are there any behaviour differences? How about with your Birchen type, more or less like any of these?

Traits such as more game bird as the Leghorns or emphasized maybe because of the addition in recent ancestry? Perhaps the AC also is like this somewhat...a characteristic I like though with people friendliness.
Since Smithies are a newer fm breed for you....was wondering if there were anything you're taking notice of as these two lovelies are maturing...Smitti and Macie..
Great new names for them...
I've become so passionate about my chicken breeding dreams...so blessed to have an animal loving hubby who indulges me in this newer passion. Fibromelonistic meat birds
I'm also working on fibro guinea hybrids...since they are all dark meat to begin with. ..and my guinea hens have already been bred to and raised some hybrid chicks..next step is fibro hybrid chicks...

 

[Double Kindness]

@ gloryblue I have a friend that has ayam cemani that aren't the Smithsonian line, but from the same breeder Mike. She's hatching eggs now, and a splash orpington jumped into the cemani pen and I have 6 of the progeny.

which I think some may carry fm skin/genes more than others.

I'm expecting svart hona chicks from DC in a couple of weeks also, and adding ayam cemani chicks from my friend's flock, as well as any more of these "haffies".

If I had experience incubating eggs, I would try the smithies, but as I don’t, it's best for me to wait for chicks, especially being at a high altitude and dry climate.

FM meat birds and in general fascinates me, and I'm excited. Idk if I can cull my own, but I have several friends who will send mine off to freezer camp for me, I'm interested in the the medical benefits of fm meat also, as well as it's a part of my Asian culture.

I might add a few of these haffies to my layer flock, but the cockrels will be headed to freezer camp definitely. Possibly the orpington will give a bigger size meat bird? I see that my chicks, the ones more cemani leaning in coloring are much smaller even though they are the same age/same mothers.

Are fm birds usually smaller than other chickens? DC- you mentioned on another thread about clear skin when crossing fm with non fm genetics in chickens, what does that mean "clear" skin? But some of these haffies may have fm skin/meat?


Hybrids of several fm breeds interests me also, that would lead to hybrid vigor in the f1 correct?

 

[julick]

With DC having just one pair of Smithies, all eggs from him will be siblings. What will be good to mix with them without breaking the bank or loosing their 'Smithieness'. Will AC hybrids be good? I want to start off right.

 

[Double Kindness]

Idk about that, maybe silkies onto the smithies to preserve the dominance of fm genetics? Everything else seems very costly atm.

 

[bstromgren]

You need more than one pair to get this started. Does
anyone else have birds from the same source? How about mixing in the 'Ayam Cemani hybrid' that someone is selling on ebay?
I have a small flock of EEs and Ameraucanas and have been looking for a project bird. Your Smithies sound interesting and just what I was looking for.

I have 2 roos and one hen that I bought from a gentleman in the same state with the same first name in Feb. My birds look strikingly similar to the Smithies. One roo is being bred to a jet black Iowa blue hen and the other will be with the "ayam Cemani" hen. They were advertised as 90% Cemani, but all have a fair amount of color. Count me in for helping develop the Smithie breed. My hen is still young at about 14 weeks. I want to get my investment back, so I won't be giving eggs away, but they will not be an arm and a leg either. I'm going to incubate all of the eggs for a while, chicks will be available also ... reasonably priced.

 

[DCchicken]

DC
can you tell us more about how these two are developing ? What I'd like to know is are their bodies so far about the size and build of your Svart Honas' and/or Ayam Cemani's at the same age? Do you see anything notable other than fm and coloring for difference from your other two fm breeds? Are there any behaviour differences? How about with your Birchen type, more or less like any of these?

Traits such as more game bird as the Leghorns or emphasized maybe because of the addition in recent ancestry? Perhaps the AC also is like this somewhat...a characteristic I like though with people friendliness.
Since Smithies are a newer fm breed for you....was wondering if there were anything you're taking notice of as these two lovelies are maturing...Smitti and Macie..
Great new names for them...
I've become so passionate about my chicken breeding dreams...so blessed to have an animal loving hubby who indulges me in this newer passion. Fibromelonistic meat birds
I'm also working on fibro guinea hybrids...since they are all dark meat to begin with. ..and my guinea hens have already been bred to and raised some hybrid chicks..next step is fibro hybrid chicks...

I need to get out and take pics again. But things have been busy and I have like 150+ birds that need my care.

It's hard to compare the Smithies with my other breeds. The Svart Hona are already very good even though they are landrace and probably always will be as that is more suited to that breed (cold hardy, somewhat dual-purpose).

But my Cemani are generations into breeding them on my main line. I just processed some of the previous generation this weekend. Actually someone else processed them for me). But they were 4-5 months old and weighed in at 2 pounds dressed. The skin is nice black tone overall. But in comparison, I also had a Birchen Maran roo processed yesterday. It weighed in at 4.5 pounds dressed and was the same age. Not sure if that was due to the line being focused on show qualities rather than productivity.

So weight is something that we will need to work on with the Smithies. They are, after all, supposed to be black meat birds and 2 pounds dressed is not gong to cut it. So emphasis on offspring that eat a lot quickly is something I will track.

 

[DCchicken]

With DC having just one pair of Smithies, all eggs from him will be siblings. What will be good to mix with them without breaking the bank or loosing their 'Smithieness'. Will AC hybrids be good? I want to start off right.

The Smithsonian line itself is a hybrid line. So back-breeding is going to be necessary at some point. But I don't think we have to worry about siblings being too close. People make a big deal about that when the reality is that you can breed for years with the same original line before seeing inbreeding issues. With most breeds that come to the U.S., there are only 3 or four. Yet there are many thousands of each breed. Bresse are a good example. I know people that maintain very very large flocks of them that were started by just a few breeding pairs.

But if you were going to cross with them, don't use Silkies. That would be absolutely the worst idea. Silkies are for show, not production. A closer breed to cross with would be the Hmong or the Ogye.

 

[DCchicken]

@ gloryblue I have a friend that has ayam cemani that aren't the Smithsonian line, but from the same breeder Mike. She's hatching eggs now, and a splash orpington jumped into the cemani pen and I have 6 of the progeny.
which I think some may carry fm skin/genes more than others.

I'm expecting svart hona chicks from DC in a couple of weeks also, and adding ayam cemani chicks from my friend's flock, as well as any more of these "haffies".

If I had experience incubating eggs, I would try the smithies, but as I don’t, it's best for me to wait for chicks, especially being at a high altitude and dry climate.

FM meat birds and in general fascinates me, and I'm excited. Idk if I can cull my own, but I have several friends who will send mine off to freezer camp for me, I'm interested in the the medical benefits of fm meat also, as well as it's a part of my Asian culture.

I might add a few of these haffies to my layer flock, but the cockrels will be headed to freezer camp definitely. Possibly the orpington will give a bigger size meat bird? I see that my chicks, the ones more cemani leaning in coloring are much smaller even though they are the same age/same mothers.

Are fm birds usually smaller than other chickens? DC- you mentioned on another thread about clear skin when crossing fm with non fm genetics in chickens, what does that mean "clear" skin? But some of these haffies may have fm skin/meat?


Hybrids of several fm breeds interests me also, that would lead to hybrid vigor in the f1 correct?

Ayam Cemani came from Ayam Kedu. Kedu are the clear skin version of Ayam Cemani. They have clear skin that will look pink because of the blood going through it. Kedu actually do carry the FM genes. But you want to avoid breeding with Kedu as you are going to get a lot of Kedu and very few all black ones. When they mature, the combs and wattles will turn bright red.

But even if you have perfect lines of Ayam Cemani, you will still always produce some Kedu out each hatch. That's because the hyper-pigmentation does not always happen perfectly. So even two perfect Cemani can have chicks with pink patches on them (or white toe nails). Those are usually culled. Many Cemani breeders will cull 80% of all hatches and only let perfect ones grow up to be breeders.

Crossing out "halfies" is only going to increase the incidences of clear skin. That's because hyper-pigmentation requires two copies of the FM gene plus the GF modifier. If you cross with something else, that something else better have at least one copy of the FM gene plus the GF modifier or you have broken the chain. Some small percentage will be black. But most will revert to gray or clear skin but not black skin. In fact, depending upon the breed, you might lose the FM gene entirely with the cross. That's what happened with the Sumatra. They still have the GF modifier but have lost the FM genes along the way.

 

[Double Kindness]

It's obvious to me which of my haffie chicks have more saturation of black than others, with 2 showing a very marked face and the cemani leaning looking chicks being much smaller than the orpington leaning chicks. My chicks came from a local friend with ayam cemani from the same guy that has the Smithsonian line, but she's now also getting gff ayam cemani line to work with until svart honas can make their way to one or both of us.

The "haffies" were an accident of a couple of black & white paint/mottled orpington roos jumping into the cemani pen. Since they're here, I'm going to raise them to see what they turn out like, but plan on continuing to add fm genetic carrying chickens into my flocks. And since it's costly to get more ac & sh & fm chickens atm, I am just working what I have available to me while the wait for others to become attainable.

So, it looks like Mike's ayam lines of both his cemani lines, and gff lines are what I can source, with my friends quad of cemani laying pretty regularly etc, but I don't have an incubator and don't know anything about hatching eggs, otherwise I'm sure I'd have my dining room table full of eggs in incubators lol. So I just get what I can as I figure out this chicken raising thing better. Of my haffies, I'm planning on caponizing the males and after they heal changing them to the oats soaked in raw goats milk to "finish" them 4 weeks before processing them to see if that's an improvement on final dressed weight? As mentioned getting the dressed weight up is a goal, correct?

 

[buckbye]

I know very little about AC, but it is my understanding that the entire story about "the Smithsonian line" is a complete fabrication and the birds mongrels that may or may not have any AC lineage, correct? Didn't NY Mike have to know this? (I concede, this is the guy who posted his full name and address, indicating that it was the location of extremely valuable livestock in his classified ad, and then complained that his birds were stolen. And it's still up!) I admire everyone's civility with regard to being scammed, especially when NY Mike has been so forthcoming as to where he can be served with papers.

And I guess in my roundabout way I'm trying to ask, if these aren't the AC they were represented to be, just what are they?