Re: Brooding hens that won't let me near the eggs

" Jill" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
Farm1 wrote:

Domestic fowl have not been Jungle fowl for over 4000 years - and
some say a lot longer
The heat in the "jungle" they came from was much nearer your
temperature than ours, so there is a greater degree adaptation to
our climate than yours.

I'm was initially quite shocked at your ignorance but on
reflection I
guess living in a hot counry makes me more aware of the problems
than
you could be expected to be. Domestic birds suffer dramatically
and
in many cases, fatally, from heat stress.

I know
But you were overly dismissive of the problems that wet and cold can
produce
I was flippant but you are also seemingly ill-informed quite
naturally of
the problems in other parts of the world.
:~)

Jill have you ever been to Australia? I strongly suspect from your
lack of knowledge of the range of climates in Oz that you haven't.

Not only do I have to cope with very high temperatures, I also have to
cope with LOWER winter temperatures than you do. You wrote that you
get winter temperatures as low as -5. Our winter temperatures can get
down to -9!!!!!!! We don't, however, get your sort of rainfall where
we now live. I wish we did.

However, I DO know about cold and wet. I was born and lived on a
poultry farm in an area which had a high rainfall and was cold and wet
and had similar falls in a 12 hour period as you record. This area is
famed for its very high quality, English style gardens. I've even
seen some of them in the UK mag. "Gardens Illustrated" and if you know
that mag at all you will know that it is only the highest quality
gardens that make it there.

As you have illustrated this is a well researched situation and
there is a
lot of advice for coping with it

Not for domestic poultry keepers! We do not have the luxury of either
fans or misting sytems in our sheds. We just have to keep up the
water supply and provide shade and hope!

And its been the same there in all the thousands of generations
that
have gone into creating the birds you have in Australia. Birds
have
been breeding in those conditions for

Pure supposition on your part. The birds are bred here just as in
the
UK for your favoured "productivity" in terms of egg production and
table birds or a combination of both.

And there are LOTS of different strains within those criteria for
different
conditions around the world

I have already explained that even getting some of the more common
breeds can now difficult in Oz. Rare breeds are in real danger and
because of our strict quarantine laws there has been little input into
the gene pool since about the 1940s.

If you bother to read the cites
you'll realise what heat affects the birds at a the level of their
blood metabolism. Breeders don't "do" blood because it has
nothing to
do with Poultry Standards or appearance or egg or meat production.

But they will do physiology - its part of survival
You can breed for improvements in being able to cope with a lot of
different
things and the free range breeder you would expect to be better than
some of
the intensives who can control more of their environment
artificially

You haven't paid attention to my more geeral comments on the breeders
in Oz. Many have gone out of business over the past 10 years when we
first suffered a real shock due to drought in the price of bird feed.
That was the first time that I noticed that 3 breeders of really good
domestic chooks that I knew of went out of the game. Since that time
things have become even worse and the cries in the publications I read
for people willing to take on rare breeds has been escalating. But
the situation doesn't only apply to rare breeds. It also applies to
breeds that were common as little as 40 years ago. We have had major
outbreaks of exotic diseases (Newcastle Disease being one) and that
has led to wholesale slaughter of large flocks (think UK F&M outbreaks
here and what that did to some breeds such as the Belted Galloway in
the UK - we have heaps of Belties here BTW if you need to import a
few)

And chooks will die in that heat MUCH easier than they
will from -5 and rain if they have halfway adequate shelter
where
they can stay out of the rain if they choose.

And you do not provide halfway adequate shelter/provision from
your
heat? ;)

Of course. They live in an orchard and thier house is in the
permanent shade from evergreen trees, but you try surviving 40+C
temps
for weeks and you'll realise how hard that is as human let alome a
chook with a permanent feather coverage. I was in Paris 2? years
ago
during their heatwave when thousands of humans died from the heat
and
it was not as hot as here (and I still have the blister scars on
my
feet to prove it).

I know - but they are not used to it.
You are saying that this is not unusual for you so provision is part
of your
natural set up

What provision I can supply. However, when I have found a broody dead
on the nest well before the time for hatching is due, I cannot be sure
what she has died of. It could be from a snake or it could be from
heat. Either is a likely scenario.

I suppose what I am saying is that it DOES surprise me that you are
suggesting that there has been no selection at all in the pure
breeds for
qualities that can cope with the conditions better. You suggest that
the
mongrels you create by random matings of some of "this and that"
have more
"toughness" which I take to being ability to cope and control their
metabolism better, and have better liveability.

Hybrid vigour.

So the qualities exist
genetically in the poultry genome within the populations of the
birds
available so why has no-one bred for it in the past 200 years?

I've said it is so many ways that I fear boredom if I repeat it. You
might just have to come to Oz and do a tour of the poultry breeders
and the shows.

It has happened in other countries. Africa is pretty hot but they
are keen
breeders and improvers of their stocks.

And until about the 1940s Australia held most world records for egg
production and was world reknowned for its birds and breeding.
African breeders possibly also do not have strict Quarantine
restrictions since it has land bridges up into Europe and the middle
east.


.

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