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POULTRY INFORMATION

For all your poultry information needs.

The Feathers Are Flying

by Jean Wall, I.S.P.F. 

New Website Plus Helpful Hints

by Paul Smyth, I.S.P.F.

Now is the time of the year most poultry keepers dislike. The evenings are drawing in and temperatures are dropping. What seemed a very pleasant task on a balmy summer evening now seems a chore! The hens have almost stopped laying and are now starting to moult dropping their feathers everywhere.

 

Now is the time to up their rations! All hens go through a period of great stress when they are using all their energy to make new feathers and as food is the fuel they need plenty. This is the time of the year when you can find sudden deaths in fowl as they face this challenge. 

 

For show people they are hoping they grow beautiful glossy feathers back, one big help is a small amount of cod liver oil mixed through a bucket of feed.

 

Remember to keep a constant check for any mites and lice. A simple check for red mite is to lift the nest box covers during the day, it will be very obvious if you have a problem. Treat the birds themselves and keep the houses clean.

 

Look after them well and they will reward you in the breeding or show pen in a couple of months.  

Article by Ian Kay for Fancy Fowl Magazine 2005.

Which Faults are Fatal?

 

A brief summary of faults that can be obvious as they are running on the ground include; Crooked Toes, Crooked Beak, Round in the Back, Wry Tail or one that is permanently facing downwards, Wry or Twisted Neck, Knock Knees and finally Bow Legs. If some of these faults are in females then they could still be used as laying pullets, but not as future breeders.

Once you catch the birds and examine them in your hands, further faults can be located. These include Eyes where the pupils are not perfectly round; the actual colour of an eye can only be confirmed with certainty when the birds are fully mature. Bent or Crooked breast, additional faults to the back that were not apparent when the bird was on the ground, Split Wings where there is a very large gap or a twisted overlap. If the gap is only slight and the wing feathers are broad and of a good quality there is a fir chance that the gap will tighten up as the bird reaches maturity. These are all structural faults, incorrect markings and colouring differs a lot between the breeds.

Depending on the amount of space that you have and the number of breeds that you keep, your chicks will have to be reduced to a manageable amount in readiness for next year's breeding pens. The points I have just been discussing were about quickly reducing the lowest and of your chicks, I am now moving on to you selecting the top end of the youngesters and giving them the best possible conditions and husbandry in which to develop into winning birds. Removal of the lower end automatically gives the other birds more floor space, which in turn helps to prevent bullying and feather plucking.

 

Separate the Sexes

As the birds mature it will become essential to separate them into males and females; this is the same with all breeds if you want to achieve the best results, but there is quite a difference in age between the various breeds before this separation is required. The next problem is that once separated the cockerels will, as they grow older, start shadow boxing bewteen themselves in an attempt to assert their authority. Consequently, it is prudent to see if the very best look like making good show birds, if so then they should be removed and put into their own single accommodation. These are often small sheds which are often calles 'Cock Boxes' and preferably have grass runs or have no floor to them and stand permanently on the grass.

If your favourite breeds are amongst the Mediterranean group, in which great emphasis is places on their large single combs and kid like texture ear lobes, then special attention has to be paid to these features. Leghorn Bantams are an example, they mature quite quickly and therefore require thie separation from quite an early age and even then their showing career can be quite short.

 

Comb Faults

Comb faults are one of the earliest areas where a fancier can start reducinga few cockerels. Light breeds especially, start to develop their combs at an early age and in most of these breeds the correct shape and formation of the comb serration is one of the breeds main features. It could be said that in almost all breeds if a male bird does not have a good headpiece then he is unlikely to ever attain Champion status. The exact number of spikes on a comb is not a hard and fast ruling providing that they are evenly distributed from front to back and are a good wedge shape not narrow and 'pencilled spiked'. The main faults are joining together, which is usually called a 'Double Serration'.

The comb should be set on a wide base abd stand firmly upright, the exception to this being in male birds that are required for future breeding in a 'Pullet breeding Strain'. These birds can have a comb that is gradually folded over to one side or the other.

Most other faults occur at the rear end of the comb with little spikes growing outwards; these are calles 'Side Sprigs', Another fault is when the end of the comb separates into a double ending, usually calles a 'Spil End'. An important point about the comb spikes is that in an adult male these spikes should extend into the comb as far as possible, some of the best birds such as the MacNab Minorca, had theirs extending half way inot the comb. The females can usually run together quite happile, but the usual thing is that if one of thejm gets accidentally pecked on a comb spike, or on an ear lobe, it will be the best one!

 

Show a Leg

To prduce the top quality show birds in nearly all breeds they will have required some access to green grass; this is especially so in breeds with Yellow legs, such as Wyandottes, Indian Game and the Leghorns, however, there is a point to remember that the White coloured birds become 'Sunburnt' with too much direct sunshine and they become a creamy colour, rather than a pale colour and are useless for showing until they have moulted a new suit of clothes.

 

Colour and Markings

Returning to fault finding, up to now I have mostly mentioned the structural ones, so it is now time to consider colour and markings. These points are obviously different for nearly every breed or even colour within a breed and a fancier who has been a specialist breeder in a specific breed for a long time will have learnt by experience many of the features and faults within their favourite breed and noted the ones that can improve in time and the ones which will only get worse as the birds mature. I would say that in most breeds once they reach a certain stage in maturity and are plumage, the ones with superior markings at this stage will continue to be the best birds.

If I take a Light Sussex as an example, the ones with a shortage of neck hackle markings will sometimes improve as they mature, but the ones that had the better markings will also improve and continue to be superior. A similar statement could be used in some of the self coloured breeds where shape is of paramount importance, White Wyandottes as an example. You might have a useful looking pullet that is a bit short of width between her shoulders, as time goes on she will improve, but her sister that always had more shoulders will also continue to improve and always be the better shape. White Wyandottes that are 'Cut Away' and therefore short of front, possibly being even a bit 'Duck Fronted', usually go worse the longer you keep them. These statements are based on our strain of White Wyandotteas, which we have bred for over fifty years.

Rhode Island Reds are often bred by a specialist breeder and once the adult feathers are well developed they will be able to quickly assess some of the major features. Undercolour is one of these, if it is pale and even carries a few white feathers I have never known them to be any good, the ones with pale grey smut are not much better. Occasionally the ones with only a few dark grey patches in the undercolour can clear, but I prefer to see them a rich dark red undercolour right from the start.

Their wing markings can only be assessed once they have grown their adult feathers and usually the first two or three will give you a good indcation of the final product. Similarly with their top colour, when the first line of breast feathers appear, they are quickly followed by their back feathers and these two types of feathering will quickly indicate if the birds are going to be dark enough and also if their quality of feather is going to be broad enough and not soft and frizzled.

Once the neck hackles start to develop on the male birds, any which are showing signs of a black stripe are never going to be suitable for top quality showing.

In both Large Fowl and Bantams the self black coloured breeds will usuall throw a small percentage of amle birds with red striping in their hackles, Australorps, Pekins, Orpingtons, Cochins, and Langshans are a few of the breeds. These faulty hackled birds are usually straight for the disposal unit, it has sometimes been quoted that to breed from one of these males will produce some pullets with excellent green sheen on them, but you can quickly find that you are breeding too many red hackled cockerels to be sensible, as they are no use for showing and simply wasting time and effort. Another variation of this often occurs in the Sumatras where there is Silver striping mixed in the hackle and again they have no future.

Many of the breeds of Bantams have to reach almost maturity before final and safe decisions can be made about their future, this is not too big a problem as they do not comsume the vast amounts that the large fowl birds can eat. Many of the Heavy Breeds can quite easily comcume 10-12 onces per bird per day.

Sebright Bantams are a breed in which certain feathers must be left for full adult plumage to develop before the final selection, tail feathers and lacing on their shoulders butts being two areas which can alter for the better.

 

Best Foot Feathering Forward

In the breed of Pekins the amount of foot feathering, especially on their middle toe can almost for certain be establised when they are hatched, but during their growing period they have tendency to all look the same until their final footings are completely grown. 

The correct 'Tilt' of the bird, its cushion width and its tail setting are all noticeable from a very early stage and usually the best young ones always remain the best ones even though some of the others improve with age.

In Buff coloured birds any sign of White in their wing feathers is usually there forever and does not clear as they mature the females will be satisfactory as laying pullets, but the male birds will have to be places into the 'Out Tray'. Attention will also have to be paid to the colour of the feather shaft at the base of their flight feathers, this does not want to be white but as strong a colour of Buff as possible, similarly their under colour requires to be as rich as possible and not showing traces of pale buff that in some cases almost approaches white.

 

Style and Character

Belgian bantams, escpeially the d'Anvers, require a lot of time to fully edvelop their style and character, whilst their neck hackle and what is often called their 'Bowl' improves for several years; there had been many a bird sold in haste as a youngester that has matured into a top class winner.

The points that I have been discussing are suggested guidelines to help a fancier reduce their group of chickens as quickly as possible down to the very best birds, which they can then give the best of conditions and attention and hopefully prepare them for winning some first prizes whilst at he same time reducing their corn bill.

A final point that until now I have not mentioned, is that in all my writing I have assumed that only one breeding pen of birds in each breed has been bred from, with the idea of producing winning birds for the winter show season.

 

Several Separate Pens

However, many of our most successful breeders who often specialise in just two or maybe three breeds at the most will mate several different breeding pens. In doing so they give themselves an option that if one of the pens does not produce as good a quality of youngestes as was anticipated, then another pen will hopefully produce the winners.

Another of the reasons behind having several breeding pens is that stock from one breeding pen can be immediately mated with the stock from another of the breeding oens that has immediately given the fancier a breeding programme for future yeards without having to breed fresh bloodlines, unless a particular feature in the birds are weak and requires strengthening, For this system to operate correctly it is essential  that the chicks are accurately marked as they are hatched, either by toe punching, wing banding or by smalle plastic leg rings, which are increased in size as the chicks develope. Obviously the eggs have to be separated as they are places into the hatching trays at around the eighteenth day of incubation.

The chickens will now rear together as normal, but as they start to mature, it is quite common for curiosity to get the better of me and I start to catch  one or two of them as I feed having noticed a difference in the birds and seen something that took my fancy, The only way to check toe punching is to have them in your hands and physically look for the little hole that then tells me what pen they have been bred from, sometimes I have guessed correct, on other occasions you get a pleasant surprise.

When you are grading stock that are the same breed, but bred from differnet breeding pens, I like to separate them into their groups before commencing grading, especially as you may be looking for a special feature from one of your pens that you require for next years breeding pens, rather than a winning bird. However, most of the faults that I have just written about would not be suitable to include in your breeding pens, no matter how they were bred.

I find grading your youngesters a very pleasant task, that is unless you have bred a load of rubbish. If you have, then the best way is to clear the lot out and probably the breeding pen that bred them! Conversely, if you breeding pen had bred some good stock, then it is sound poilcy to repeat the mating next year, as well as another pen containing the pick of this years youngesters, but be carful not to breed from full brother and sister, I do not find this to be very successful used for over 100 years. Uncles and Aunts can also be brought into your planning.

I will close be stressing what I wrote at the beginning, the worst problem with poultry is for them to be over stocked. It is essential for a fancier to keep reducing them and retian the very best in top class conditions.

 

Taken from the article written by Ian Kay for Fancy Fowl magazine 2005.

It is good to see the new website up and running, I hope it will be used well to the benefit of the Irish Society of Poultry Fanciers.

 

Maybe I am talking through my hat but I don't think so, you can never learn enough in this life, this is especially true of our hobby of breeding and exhibiting fancy fowl, or pure bred poultry for want of another name. These are the breeds that need to be preserved and improved upon for the benefit of all even commercial breeders for these are the breeds and blood lines that were used to form the commercial breeds of hy-breds, broilers, etc. 

Any job, hobby, adventure is not worth doing, unless you do it well to the very best of your ability, and you can improve on this by passing on helpful knowledge to others who follow in your path.

 

Any Society is as good as its members allow it to be, ask yourself if you are a member 'What is your imput?'. Ask yourself is it positive, helpful, and for the benefit of the Society, I believe we have a good Society with members with a wealth of knowledge, a year book, newsletters, a sale in Larchill, Kilcock, a Young Bird Show, a National Show, informative talks, etc. put on when we can, a lot of information can be got when you need it.

 

Helpful Hints

It is now September, the back end of the year, a time when we should have decided what breeding stock we are keeping for the next year, a time to de-louse and worm birds, check them for health, and above all check and repair our housing runs etc. before the harshness of Winter sets in. Make sure our houses are rodent and fox proof.

 

We have had a terrific Summer and these jobs may be forgotten, the leaky roof, the drafty door that does not close properly, the run that becomes a waterlogged mudbath in the wet winter, also cleaning and disinfecting the houses, birds spend longer indoors during the winter nights. Keeping your birds dry, clean and draught free should be your aim with clean fresh water, food, grit, a small grain feed as the birds retire for the night will kepp them full and warm for the night. 

 

The next big event is the Young Bird Show, I wish exhibitors well, and after the elections at the AGM I hope we will have a few new faces bursting with energy to help steer our Society towards a bright future. 

Article by Jeremy Hobson for Fancy Fowl Magazine 2005.

Room To Roam And Roost

 

Fortunately, peafowl take happily to domestic life but they are not really suitable for the back garden breeder, requiring both space to roam and height to roost. They are also very noisy which makes them unsuitable for built-up neighbourhoods, but if you have the room, they make spectacular companions.

Rearing peafowl is an interesting hooby and can be quite profitable. For the first couple of seasons, both male and female look alike and it is not until the third summer that the cock bird acquires the beginning of his famous fantail (the more females a peacock has in his harem, the more he displays). Therefore, you should. ideally, start with three-year old stock. Generally, the peahen lays one clutch of eggs each year and can produce as many as 20. Obviously she would not be able to sit on this many and I used to remove the eggs and hatch them in an old paraffin-fuelled Glevum incubator. If you decide to let the hen sit on some of her eggs, she makes a reliable broody, but as the young chicks cannot stand the cold or wet weather conditions, she should be provided with some sort of shelter in which to rear her brood.

 

Safe From Foxes

Feeding is easy and do very well on a diet of pheasant pellets and grain. 

The rafters of the barn were perfect for roosting, but mature peafowl will survive quite happily by roosting in tree branches, provided, of course, that they are reasonably safe from foxes as they go up or cme down from roost. A fellow keeper told me that his birds made good barometers and, if he ever saw his birds going up to roost on low branches and under dense leaf cover, he reckoned that you could be sure to be in for a wet and windy night. They are also very sociable birds. Not content with his own harem, my peacock used to spend a great deal of time with my bantams and would, on occasions, fly into the pens of laying pheasants in orde to 'strut his stuff'!

Like geese and guinea fowl, peafowl make good watchdogs and will certainly let you know when any stranger appears in the yard or indeed, anywhere that they consider to be their property.

My experience of quail is a relatively recent one. Here in France, we run a holiday business and I thought it would be interesting if the visitors had an aviary of birds to keep the children amused once they had got bored with spending time in the pool. Someone told me that it was a good idea to have a  few Chinese Painted quail running at the bottom of the aviary in order to pick up food that would be spilt and wasted by the other inhabitants. Never one to conform, I bought a trio of 'ordinary' quail from the local market. Here it is quite common to see crates of quail for sale but they are generally bought for the table rather than to act as live vacuum cleaners for the base of an aviary! A few weeks after their purchase, we went to a country fair where I entered a clay-pigeon shooting competition and, instead of receiving a small cash prize for breaking over fifteen clays, was surprised to be presented with a cardboard box containing a further three live quail - they certainly do things differently in France!

 

Quail Are Fasinating Birds

They are very inquisitive and think nothing of pecking between your toes if you are foolish enough to go into the aviary barefooted. Mine became tame in a very short space of time and lay eggs on a daily basis throughout the saummer, in fact they are prolific layers, although in the wild they would normally lay only two to three clutches each year. We generally hard boil them and take them on picnics or put them in salads where they add colour and a delicate flavour. I have yet to try it, but quail eggs can also be pickled in vinegar and salt or even smoked after being hard boiled. Apparently, the shell will disappear completely if the boiled egg is put in commercial vinegar for just twelve hours or it could just be hand peeled in the cinventional manner.

 

Easy To Rear

Quail are easy to rear under bantams, but from my experience, the female quail never goes broody. In research, it was found that quail perfer to mate with their first cousins and if they were forcibly paired with siblings, first cousins or distant relatives, the ones paired with first cousins produced fertile eggs several days before any of the others. They are quick to mature and the chicks will be producing eggs themselves at about nine weeks of age. If you were considering rearing them as a table bird, they are also ready for killing at the same age, but to make a good meal, you would probably need two birds as they only dress out around 135g (4.5oz) oven ready.

In the aviary, our birds are obviously fed on small birdseed, but they will do just as well on layers pellets and pheasant food (it is important to ensure that only the smallest available pellets are bought unless you are prepared to crush larger ones into quail 'bite-size' pieces). Specially prepared food is manufactured for the commercial industry but it is not all necessary if you are only ever intending to keep a few birds for eggs, pleasure and interest. They also love being given a lettuce that has gone to seed and need access to fine grade grit.

 

Taken from an article written by Jeremy Hobson for Fancy Fowl magazine 2005.

   

Article by Grant Bererton for Fancy Fowl Magazine 2005.

A good example of what I refer to is the Partridge Wyandotte. Its colour is closest to all the Wyandottes to the 'Wild Type' colour plumage. For this reason we can utilise its traits effectively and quantify just how genetically diverse it is in relation to the 'Single Sire Phenomena' in poultry.

For example, the particular male I am using is from Dutch origin and is a big boned bird, which is extremely viorous and thus carrying on its traits if highly desirable to me.

 

Blue Partridge

The first mating I used hi in was a Blue Partridge Wyandotte female. I successfully hatched a percentage of normal Partridge and Blue Partridge offspring.

 

Partridge Pullets

The second mating I used him in was a Silver Pencilled Wyandotte female (in a quest to produce some good Partridge Wyandotte females). This mating was also extremely successful. I sold the 'Impure' Silver maes from this mating.

 

Pile Wyandottes

The third mating I used him in was with some Pile heterozygotes, which were also heterozygous for the Wild Type colouring (like a Welsummer). I know that both the desirable traits of the Pile females (Salmon Breasts and Dominant White) were dominant to that of the Partridge Wyandotte male and that I could easily select for them in the offspring. The beauty is that I can keep breeding the Partridge male to Pile females which display these dominant traits, whilst the type naturally improves with each generation.

 

Wheaten Wyadottes

The fourth mating I used him in was with some Wheaten Marans females. I knew that Wheaten colouring was dominant to Partridge colouring and that the Pattern genes of the Partridge would not have much effect on a Wheaten background, whether pure or not. I will be able to keep breeding the Partridge male to the Wheaten segergates in order to purify the Rose comb and yellow skin genes of the Wyandotte. Again selecting the Wheaten segregates is easy because they are yellow as chicks as oppose the 'chipmunk' colouring of the Partridge. I will obviously endeavour to breed all of the colours as pure as possible from a colour point of view, once the Type, Size, Comb and Leg Colour are set.

The purpose of this writing is to demonstrate just how useful a single male can be. As outlined above, the particular Partridge male I have used is the progenitor of four different lines of fowl, to include: Partridge, Blue Partridge, Pile and Wheaten Wyadotte. These examples are just what I in particular use him for. The Partridge male could also be incorporated into Crele and Buff Columbian Projects.

Questions may be raised as to what would happen if this prticular male died? My answer would simply be, that I would use a Partridge son from him, which originated from the Blue Partridge mating, in order to carry on his good work.

We may need to turn to this sort of genetic knowledge if we are unlucky enough to encounter a deadly attack of Avian Influenza. What I am trying to outline without getting too technical is that a lot of colours are realted to each other. In the case of creating new colours such as Wheaten Wyandottes, it is essential to know exactly what the most direct route is. Whether or not we need new colours is open to much conjecture, howeve, it is surely worth knowing what is achievable, if nothing else.

 

Taken from the article written by Grant Bererton for Fancy Fowl magazine 2005. 

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