The Wyandotte Thread

[greathorse]

Quote:
While she is a very pretty chicken I would say she is not close to a show bird. I think the angle may have something to do with it but she seems to have a flat back, too long in the back and does not possess the "roundness" so desirable in the breed. "think basketball" the lacing does not look very clean either "to me".


If you look at some of the white bantams on here that are nearly round use that as an example of type and just make it bigger. I think another poster alluded to the birds that Katy has posted those are the"type" you would target. Her SLW are very "typey" birds.

 

[WyandotteTX]

Hello All. Long time reader of BYC and thought I would finally register and write something about my favorite breed of chickens, Wyandottes.
First off I will tell you that I currently do have a few wyandotte bantams, and when I say a few, I say that with a heavy heart. We had a pretty severe drought in Texas this last spring and summer, because of that, in my opinion, we were bombarded with varmits at our ranch. Trapped numerous very large Coons(biggest close to 40 lbs) and a couple of skunks. My father(my partner in crime) and I lost the great majority of the wyandotte bantams that we had been raising for the last 15 years. I now only have 5 Silver Pencilled and 2 White Laced Red bantams left, which is a significant drop from the 200 or so we have had in the past few years. A true disappointment to say the least for so many years of work with Wyandottes. We are going to try and rebound this year if we can to build our numbers back up a little but its hard to carry on after losing in my mind the best flock of Silver Pencilled Wyandottes in the country. Enough of the sob story haha. It is great to come on here and see so many people excited about Wyandottes Large and Bantam.
I have raised chickens for just about all my life and can say that I have raised at least a 100 different varieties but Wyandottes are and always will be my favorites. I have raised hatchery stock, private breeder stock and have had good birds from both. In Large Fowl I have raised GL, SL and Silver Pencilled. In bantams I have raised GL, SL, BLR, WLR, Buff, Black, White, Blue, Splash, Chocolate(Dun), Lilac(Splash version from Dun), SP, Partridge, Columbian, Buff Columbian and a couple creations of my own Dun Laced Gold and Dun Pencilled. There are good and bad with each variety. The Blacks, Whites and Partridges are definetely the best in quality of all the bantams and good stock is readily available around the country. Blue, Buff, SL, Columbian are a little more rare but good breeders can be found, the Silver Laced have really improved in quality in the last 10 years I think. Golden Laced, have seen and owned some pretty good birds but always seem to be a bit large and always, always suffer from shafting in the lacing of their feathers. Silver Pencilled, not many breeders. I got my start from the Bakers, Urchs and the late James Harris. They were very good quality birds to start my own bloodline from, each bringing their good traits to the breeding pen. The Baker and Urch birds had great size and feather quality, while the birds from Harris were exceptional in their markings, they really LOOKED like SP should. White Laced Red, very rare. Exceptional birds in their vigor and egg laying ability but their markings were lacking. Most of my breeding emphasis was to improve that and I had succeeded to a degree by crossing with Golden Laced to bring in the dark color from the GL. Dun, I had a long time ago and can be really great in type because you can cross with the very good Blacks to get such great type, just like you can to improve the Blues. For those of you on here that have talked about crossing the bantam Dun with LF Black, it sounds like a great idea. If you cant get it to happen naturally, you can always artificially insemenate. I had accidentally gotten a cross between LF and Bantam SP a few years back and they produced some absolutely lovely birds that had so much vigor with them also.
To those of you on here that have posted pics, you have some great looking Wyandottes. Especially Katy, Wow! You have as good of LF Silver Laced as I have ever seen. They are exceptional.
Love seeing all the BLR, never owned any of the LF but they are striking in apprearance.
My future, well it depends on whether or not I can repair our breeding pens from the immense damage that was done to them( Coons climbed on roof and pulled back the sheet metal to drop 10 ft down into the pens!) My hope is I can aquire some high quality partridge females to cross with my two remaining decent SP cockerels to start working them back towards good pencilling and type. Of course the varmits didnt take the junky culls, they took all of the keepers, just like they always do! For the White Laced Red, I would have to acquire some GL to cross back into them to start them back up also. We shall see what the future holds.
Thanks to everyone for listening and please feel free to ask any questions of me about Wyandottes. I love talking about them and will freely admit I am a chicken nerd and have been all my life. I can blame it on my father having a cardboard box of baby chicks in my room when I was 3!!

 

[hcammack]

Quote:
I am so sorry to hear that It sounds like you guys had some amazing birds! I am so sorry you lost them to predators. Hope you can recover. My first wyndotte bantams are due on the 29th there are 16 eggs they are blr.

 

[JanieMarie]

WyandotteTX Wow that's a devastating blow! Sounds like you had alot of interesting projects. Care to share any pics with us? I really feel for you. Coons are a problem around here too. However Welcome to BYC and I look forward to picking your brain!

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

Welcome WyandotteTX! I see you called the dun splash lilac, I have always known them as khaki. It is nice to see someone that has had experience with the colors. When I wasnt decided on a set color I had many colors of wyandotte bantam. For awhile I had 2 white laced red males, a good colored cock that showed influence of cornish, and his son that was out of him and a gold laced female. The cock was killed by a guinea and the cockerel went to the traders place. When our dun male mated with a BLR hen we got all dun and khaki chicks, the cockerels showed some lacing on the breast and I almost got side tracked with dun laced red project but didnt. I also thought about dun partridge for awhile after I saw the chocolate partridge but it wouldnt be that exciting until the khaki sports showed up.
Oh how I miss my wyandottes. If all goes as planned, in less than 5 years I will be able to play with wyandotte colors again.

 

[snowydiamonds]

I'm down to one GLW roo and one GLW hen, three standard combed BLRW hens and a daughter from one of those hens that has the BLRW until you see her face...her daddy was a EE roo so she's got his face
GLW hen

BLRW hens

I'll have to get pics of the GLW roo tomorrow, he was hatched out last summer from a banty dad and a standard hen (GLW)
(Obviously mine are hatchery stock LOL) Is that why my hens lacing isn't like everyone else's, or do I have another breed???
Here's the two cockerels that hatched out the same time:

 

[cedar post]

WyandotteTX wecome to byc. Sorry to hear about all the problems with coon. We have that hear as well. Hopefully you can get back on track. Mike

 

[Katy]

Quote:
Welcome and thank you for the kind words about my SL. I can't take credit for them tho as I hatched them from some breeder eggs and so am just starting out on my journey with them. I searched for quite some time to find them and I am excited to have them. Hopefully I can do them justice and keep them on the right track.

Sorry about the loss of your birds.

 

[WyandotteTX]

Thanks for the welcomes, greatly appreciated. It is disappointing to lose birds and projects after years of work but its partially my own fault for having them in chicken houses built 60 years ago. I am in serious need of building some new pens and coops or at the least a major remodel of existing facilities. I also need to do some serious varmit control also. My grandpa trapped on our ranch for years and would get close to a 100 coons a year off of our 200 acres and its been many years since then so I am sure there is a very healthy congregation on the property haha.
Sorry if I called the Dun variety by different names, I still revert to calling them what the original breeder I aquired them from had referred to them. Chocolate and Lilac....Dun and Khaki are probably more appropriate. The Duns I had initially were gorgeous though, would love to have some more someday. They were as good as any Blacks I have seen in shape and type. The Dun Laced Gold/Red I raised were really gorgeous. Only raised two of them but they had great type from the Duns and had really good lacing also, unfortunately though I couldnt ever raise any out of them. But wouldnt be too hard to recreate one of these days.
I loved working with some of the new colors, it was alot of fun to try and create new things. A lot of it was hit and miss but was great to learn about along the way. Will be forever grateful to a grand master of Wyandottes, Edgar Petty of OK. A fine older gentleman who helped me with alot of my projects and to understand more about Wyandotte genetics and the dos and donts crossing certain varieties.
Enough of my musings for the night.

 

[WyandotteTX]

And I do have alot of pics from the last 15 years, all of them are printed pictures but can go make a disk to load them up to post them eventually.