Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[forklift]

just some good egg laying, hopefully pretty ones like silkies, or RIR, Id love another black Jersey Giant as ours got taken by a raccoon

 

[pennyJo1960]

just some good egg laying, hopefully pretty ones like silkies, or RIR, Id love another black Jersey Giant as ours got taken by a raccoon

I am sorry you had to loose one that way

 

[Duck Drover]

just some good egg laying, hopefully pretty ones like silkies, or RIR, Id love another black Jersey Giant as ours got taken by a raccoon 

Silkies are not known to be good layers because they are broody alot. They are cute and they make good incubators. Mine are great at raising older chicks but I don't let them raise their hatchlings because Silkie chicks are tiny in such a big coop and yard. I need to set up a nursery area to keep the younger chicks outside. They are not well adapted to rain so they need a covered run to keep them dry. Our run is mostly covered with a solid fence around it to keep out drafts but they still stand in the rain instead of going under cover and wet Silkies are not so cute, lol.

 

[BGMatt]

So my surgery is now scheduled for the 26th. It will be 9 months after my injury and in all that time I have not given birth to anything! I have eggs everywhere that need hatching so it looks like I am going to have to sell some eggs this year. I have ducks on nests and my Silkies are on nests but we have not left eggs for the Orpingtons yet because I was afraid they could be too related to take a chance hatching brother to sister, even though most of the hens laying now are not sisters to our two roosters.

I hatched Barnevelders from someone else's flock a few years back and I was getting deformed chicks, some with their intestines outside their body. The owner did not admit that her rooster was related to a couple of her hens until I brought up the hatching issues. It is too heartbreaking to hatch birds that have to be killed when they are intact enough to make it out of the shell but not healthy enough to survive. Then there could have been ones with genetic defects that were not obvious from the outside.

With splash roosters over black,blue, and splash hens I will only have blue and splash chicks this year. I sold off most of the black chicks and many of the blue chicks last year but I did not always have groups of four or more to sell together so we raised more than we wanted plus I was told we needed a business license to sell birds from our hobby so I did not list them very often. The goal this year is to keep splash chicks but we don't really need more blues since the majority of our hens are blue. The majority of the pullets we have sold were blue so we still have black pullets that will only hatch out blue chicks and they are the least likely to be related to our splash roosters but with blue to blue breeding anything is likely. I will need to switch back to a blue rooster once we get our fill of splash chicks but for now we only have 3 splash pullets that I may have to separate once they are laying so we don't get dilute splashes.

I am not sure if I should go ahead and hatch now while there are so few hens that could be sisters to the roosters or if I should wait until we thin down the flock to eliminate the possibility completely. If we hatch the biggest eggs and eat the pullet eggs, that should be safe but I am not in a position to raise chicks when I will be having surgery on the 26th. I should be on my feet 3 weeks following surgery so we can start hatching once I for sure have it done (it has been delayed several times since my original March 15th date).

If there is a chance of genetic defects, I would rather deal with the consequences myself than to sell hatching eggs that could possibly be too related. It is hard enough dealing with people who don't already have successful hatches to know what they are doing so I am hesitant to throw another factor in the mix. I would prefer to have some test hatches of my own before I sell hatching eggs so I know fertility and hatchability is good but there are never any guarantees of success once the eggs leave my care.

Should I sell fertile eggs and leave it up to the individual if they want to take the risk or should I refridgerate the eggs and sell them at a far lower price for eating? I don't like selling eggs at all due to the risk of salmonella if they are not cooked properly but most people at least know the dangers of eating raw eggs these days. We feed birds year round and now is the time to recover some of our feed costs but I am not sure if it is worth it to sell eggs. I have learned the hard way that people can start untrue rumors and ignorant people will believe the lies because they get caught up in the emotional appeal of the liar. I think most people are good people but it only takes one or two bad apples to ruin the barrel.

You're far too worried about breeding related birds together. The hatch defects you mentioned from that other line were more likely to be caused by temperature or humidity issues during incubation. You're more likely to get unknown defects from a total outcross.

For others that might not understand or worry about something like that, here's a great article recently published by the American Bantam Association on the topic.

http://bantamclub.com/aba/index.php/articles/165-breeding-from-unrelated-parents

 

[JulesChicks]

Excellent article! Thanks for sharing. From my research, many long-time breeders have closed flocks and practice line breeding, which is distinct from inbreeding. Here is a quote from the article, though I recommend reading it in it's entirety, it's not long:

[Now not all chicken lovers are interested in breeding to a standard. They just want to keep some chickens. And that's alright. But if a person has become interested in chickens and wants to set the goal of having a chicken that actually represents the breed and produces offspring that represent the breed, then starting with unrelated parents is not necessarily a good idea. My opinion.
I have said in the past few articles that if you want to get 5 show quality Japanese then you have to set 100 eggs. I know that there are a few breeders out there that chuckle when they read that statement. And rightly so because they are setting 30 eggs and getting 10 show quality birds, and they are doing it year after year after year. How do they do it? An old breeder of Plymouth Rocks by the name of Ralph Sturgeon said it best in the title his little book, " Start Where You Are With What You Have". That's the first step. But the rest of your steps have to be calculated. We are talking about the difference between line breeding and inbreeding. The basic flaw of inbreeding is continually breeding brother to sister, disposing of the parents and taking their offspring and breeding brother to sister. This will eventually end up at the dead end of infertility. (Emphasis mine)
I had a man call last week asking me if I had any good birds to sell. I said I would but good had to be defined. I have what I would call good birds. I am talking about Black Tailed Whites now. I could have sold this man a trio of good birds, but I could not guarantee that they would breed true. Four years ago I got back into Black Tailed Whites by getting breeding stock from four different strains. What I have now are birds that are crossed from three of those strains. I have disposed of one of the strains. I have to set 100 eggs to get 5 show birds. But one of my strains is from a breeder, and he is a breeder, that if he set 30 eggs he gets 10 show birds. The difference here is that I have blended three strains together and he has been breeding the same strain for 50 years. The quality of offspring from his birds is pretty predictable.]

I have been told by a breeder that you could get away with inbreeding (brother to sister) for one generation, but after that you better put mother to son, father to daughter, etc and build a line breeding program. Line breeding closes the gene pool and emphasizes both the good and the bad. When the bad shows up you select away from it year after year. When and if you introduce new stock you will be introducing a whole other gene pool and you have really no idea what is in it until you start raising them up.
Good luck!

 

[TakeMeHomeJoJo]

Hi all, I'm new to BYC - just popping in to say hello! We are first time chicken owners in Monroe, WA getting started with 3 pullets - buff Orpington, speckled Sussex and a blue Wyandotte.

Question - how much of a problem are Hawks/Eagles in a semi-developed area (most properties near us are 1-5 acres)? I want to let the girls free range during the day but I don't want to lose them! Is it best to wait until they are full size before giving them free reign of the yard? We have a full fenced yard about 3/4 acre in size and another 2 acres that they won't have access to that isn't fenced (read: wandering dogs, cats, coyote, etc.)

 

[junebuggena]

If you have lots of crows around, hawks and eagles aren't going to be much of a problem. If you don't have crows around, then you need to keep them in a covered run or provide plenty of places to take cover under.

 

[pennyJo1960]

We are not reported to have a large problem here in Mossyrock but even
so my chicken run is covered with chicken wire just in case

 

[Duck Drover]

You're far too worried about breeding related birds together. The hatch defects you mentioned from that other line were more likely to be caused by temperature or humidity issues during incubation. You're more likely to get unknown defects from a total outcross.

For others that might not understand or worry about something like that, here's a great article recently published by the American Bantam Association on the topic.

http://bantamclub.com/aba/index.php/articles/165-breeding-from-unrelated-parents

The thing about the defects is that they were so obvious and only in that breed and it happened over repeated hatches. I had a bunch of chicks hatching at the same time that did not have defects so it was clearly the Barnevelders. I even had multiple clutches of Marans from the same person hatching out just fine along with other eggs from other bird owners. When I have had temperature spikes in my incubators from extended hot weather not allowing them to stay cool enough, I had hatching issues that I believe were temperature related because it was the only time eggs from my own flock had such hatching issues but I do believe the defects I was seeing in the Barnevelders were genetic due to inbreeding. Unless there is something about Barnevelders in general that makes them prone to hatching with their intestines on the outside. Sure, I could disinfect the intestines, push them into the body cavity, treat for infection, and hope all goes well but I did not think it was a good idea to keep them alive if it was a genetic defect.

My roosters are fine breeding upline to our two year old hens (only one of which can be the mother), it is only a small number of the pullets from last year's hatches that could possibly be sisters (although all are at least half sisters). Because he is splash and most of the pullets left are black, that makes it a bit less likely they are siblings but I can't rule it out with blue to blue breeding). Some of the older pullets are starting to lay (I always thought they became hens at that point but I guess it is at a year old and I do not know hatch dates for every pullet to know when they become hens using that definition) so there is a very small chance that they could potentially be sisters to the roosters. The odds are small but that drop in the bucket is there. The original plan was to keep using the blue rooster over his daughters but because the code that originally allowed roosters has changed and these splash roosters are grandfathered in because they hatched before roosters were banned, we decided to keep them instead. It sounds like keeping our pullets is not going to be the enormous problem I thought it would be either so maybe we don't have to clear out our youngest layers. I prefer to have the option of keeping our favorites once they are completely filled out, which takes 18 months for Heritage English Orpingtons.

If brother to sister breeding can happen one generation without ill effects, then I suppose there is no harm in hatching our Orpington eggs and selling hatching eggs under these circumstances. I would want to disclose it to anyone hatching our eggs but in the end it may not effect their hatches at all. The reason we started our own flock of Orpingtons is so we could breed for quality instead of hatching eggs from someone else's flock and hoping for the best. I never set out to be a "breeder" but I do want to hatch high quality birds and I was frustrated with the "oops, must not have been an Orpington egg" situations that happened too frequently for me to hatch unknown eggs.

Inexperience probably plays a larger role in hatching issues and there is nothing I can do about that. My responsibility is in providing a quality product, which is easier to manage when I hatch the chicks and even easier to manage when I also raise them to maturity. I don't want to be blamed for circumstances beyond my control so I try to screen people to make sure they know what they are doing but really there is not much I can do to make someone successful if they are still learning through trial and error. We all experience failures from time to time but then we learn to correct any errors we make due to inexperience.

Matt, I really appreciate it when experienced people can share their expertise and backing an opinion with published material always adds credibility. Our ducks are an endangered breed from a small gene pool so while staying in that pool we do work hard to diversify the genetics as much as possible. I tend to think about how inbreeding has destroyed dog breeds and I would not want to pull out recessive traits that could undermine the quality of breeding stock. Most people who have chickens just want eggs to eat and any mutt hen will lay an egg but I feel invested in hatching quality bloodlines and preserving Heritage breeds.

Another thing I recently learned about chicken terminology: standard and large fowl are the same thing. I have called our Easter Eggers standard sized and our Orpingtons large fowl, which is correct but in my mind they were two different size classifications. Now I know large fowl are distinguished from bantams only and that they are classified according to their weight class. I have raised chickens for over a quarter of a century and I am still learning new things thanks to the internet.

 

[BGMatt]

The thing about the defects is that they were so obvious and only in that breed and it happened over repeated hatches. I had a bunch of chicks hatching at the same time that did not have defects so it was clearly the Barnevelders. I even had multiple clutches of Marans from the same person hatching out just fine along with other eggs from other bird owners. When I have had temperature spikes in my incubators from extended hot weather not allowing them to stay cool enough, I had hatching issues that I believe were temperature related because it was the only time eggs from my own flock had such hatching issues but I do believe the defects I was seeing in the Barnevelders were genetic due to inbreeding. Unless there is something about Barnevelders in general that makes them prone to hatching with their intestines on the outside. Sure, I could disinfect the intestines, push them into the body cavity, treat for infection, and hope all goes well but I did not think it was a good idea to keep them alive if it was a genetic defect.

My roosters are fine breeding upline to our two year old hens (only one of which can be the mother), it is only a small number of the pullets from last year's hatches that could possibly be sisters (although all are at least half sisters). Because he is splash and most of the pullets left are black, that makes it a bit less likely they are siblings but I can't rule it out with blue to blue breeding). Some of the older pullets are starting to lay (I always thought they became hens at that point but I guess it is at a year old and I do not know hatch dates for every pullet to know when they become hens using that definition) so there is a very small chance that they could potentially be sisters to the roosters. The odds are small but that drop in the bucket is there. The original plan was to keep using the blue rooster over his daughters but because the code that originally allowed roosters has changed and these splash roosters are grandfathered in because they hatched before roosters were banned, we decided to keep them instead. It sounds like keeping our pullets is not going to be the enormous problem I thought it would be either so maybe we don't have to clear out our youngest layers. I prefer to have the option of keeping our favorites once they are completely filled out, which takes 18 months for Heritage English Orpingtons.

If brother to sister breeding can happen one generation without ill effects, then I suppose there is no harm in hatching our Orpington eggs and selling hatching eggs under these circumstances. I would want to disclose it to anyone hatching our eggs but in the end it may not effect their hatches at all. The reason we started our own flock of Orpingtons is so we could breed for quality instead of hatching eggs from someone else's flock and hoping for the best. I never set out to be a "breeder" but I do want to hatch high quality birds and I was frustrated with the "oops, must not have been an Orpington egg" situations that happened too frequently for me to hatch unknown eggs.

Inexperience probably plays a larger role in hatching issues and there is nothing I can do about that. My responsibility is in providing a quality product, which is easier to manage when I hatch the chicks and even easier to manage when I also raise them to maturity. I don't want to be blamed for circumstances beyond my control so I try to screen people to make sure they know what they are doing but really there is not much I can do to make someone successful if they are still learning through trial and error. We all experience failures from time to time but then we learn to correct any errors we make due to inexperience.

Matt, I really appreciate it when experienced people can share their expertise and backing an opinion with published material always adds credibility. Our ducks are an endangered breed from a small gene pool so while staying in that pool we do work hard to diversify the genetics as much as possible. I tend to think about how inbreeding has destroyed dog breeds and I would not want to pull out recessive traits that could undermine the quality of breeding stock. Most people who have chickens just want eggs to eat and any mutt hen will lay an egg but I feel invested in hatching quality bloodlines and preserving Heritage breeds.

Another thing I recently learned about chicken terminology: standard and large fowl are the same thing. I have called our Easter Eggers standard sized and our Orpingtons large fowl, which is correct but in my mind they were two different size classifications. Now I know large fowl are distinguished from bantams only and that they are classified according to their weight class. I have raised chickens for over a quarter of a century and I am still learning new things thanks to the internet.

Glad it was helpful. Blue is a fun color to breed too, although easy to mess up if one gets too wrapped up in color. Over the years have bred it in every breed that is recognized.

The Standard/Large Fowl thing is a source of confusion I never thought about! The really trippy thing is if you ever have to fill out an APA show report neither term appears on the report form, it's referred to as "Large Chicken". I do confess I'm often guilty of using both Standard and Large fowl terms. Simply because as mentioned there can be quite a difference between something like a Langshan, Giant, Cochin, Brahma, etc and a Leghorn or Hamburg. Then there's hatchery birds that are in between sizes, bigger than bantams but smaller than the Standard size they're supposed to be. Never really gave it much thought, I'll have to police myself better about that.