Re: Choosing a new breed - help please


"Jill" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:13f5hng3s9g4a2e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Amy Blankenship wrote:
Its the fact that publications give pet homes the impression that
owning a couple of hens of XXXX breed is doing somthing to help save
the breed that is so disingenous and has lead directly to the
weakening of many "endangered" breeds.

I don't understand how that could be, since what the "other" breeders
do shouldn't affect the quality of _your_ birds, and whether they do
or do not produce these birds that go on to pet homes shouldn't have
any more impact than if their hens laid eggs they then ate instead of
hatched.

There are no longer large flocks of any of the pure breeds [barring one or
two folks] so there is no easy gene pool to dip in to to refresh ones
stocks.
So, to me, each and everyone of us who breed in the UK have a
responsibility to the "national" flock.

That's good, and if others want to help you, fine. But how does other
people having birds and _not_ helping you hinder you?

None of us are big enough to work alone any more. Those days have LONG
gone.
We have to make up for hundreds of breeds owning hundreds and thousands of
birds as was the case some 30 - 50 years ago by each and every one of us
breeding with an aim.

Sound like it behooves you to be a bit more conciliatory and not look down
on everyone else so much, then, since you're the one who needs and wants
others to work with you.

Each and every breeder that does not select weakens the whole.

How? Are they putting "unselected" eggs under your hens? Sneaking
"unselected" roosters in with them? Maybe buying breeding stock you
coveted?

Seems to me that birds that are hatch but "unselected" <shudder> are not
going to do anything worse than chickens that never hatch out at all.

I have the utmost respect for the breeders of show birds -- they are
actively working and selecting for quality.
It is the breeders who are commercially exploiting the fashion and the
work of graet breedesr of day s gone by to line their own pockets but put
nothing back into the genetic pool they are happy to exploit.

OK, you're saying that they should not expect any profit at all for their
labors, and that only people of "pure" motivation should be able to get
their hands on decent breeding stock? They're hatching EGGS, Jill. Whether
the eggs hatched by birds you don't own and have no interest in breeding to
(because they are "unselected" <shudder>) do or do not hatch is not going to
affect your birds at all.

News flash: great lines die out all the time. Whole species become extinct,
too. I know which one I am more concerned about.

Unfortunately in the UK we have no national poultry assessment
scheme and our rare breeds organisations are worthless for poultry
and waterfowl. From the "conversations" I have had with breeders
around the world, few of the national poultry schemes are really
effective or coordinated.

OK, it's hopeless, so might as well relax. No one (even people officially
charged with the job you've so enthusiastically taken up on this forum
unofficially) can meet your standards of what's required. Don't soil
yourself with further "conversations" with such unworthies. Note I helped
you out with the quotes for you protection and theirs ;-).

Seems to me all you can do is do your own thing. You can't force
other people to keep birds the way you do.

I agree.
BUT when the greatest proportion of the poultry keeping public want simply
useful healthy birds and most of the sellers are exploiting that without
doing any of the hard work - I am allowed to be a bit peeved sometimes.

Most of the poultry keeping public are GETTING useful healthy birds. And
keeping birds by itself seems like hard work (fun but hard) to me. If you
want to make it harder, knock yourself out. But you're certainly not going
to "win friends and influence people" by acting like your way is the only
way and your goals are the only acceptable goals. I think one of the many
reasons we no longer have the great breeders of the past (in many species)
is because animal fanciers used to go out and actively recruit people.
They'd take the most casual interest and fan the spark until they got a
usable flame. But they didn't insist people go from casual interest to
zealot in 3 seconds. Somewhere along the way, _all_ the animal fancies have
become infected with an almost religious idea that there's only one way to
do things and if you're interested in being in the secret society you better
be willing and able to toe the party line immediately. There's no room to
be a novice or to grow your own opinions. And anyone who tries will be
sniped out of the society instantly, where they'll quite happily do whatever
they want with their own animals and no further influence from you.

So you could look at all those small breeders out there as a potential
resource, the new great breeders of the future, who just need a little
nurture and care to become the great breeders of the future. Or you can
yell at them and hope they go away, which they probably will. They won't
quit breeding, but they will go away ;-).

Hence my <soapbox> marker.

I know I can make little difference with our birds -- we are too small and
too far away.
If, when folks call from parts of the country we cannot supply, or when we
are booked up, I can plant the seed of the idea that they should question
the next supplier they call - I will at least have done something, rather
than nothing.

And if they don't get satisfactory answers? If they get no birds? If they
get birds from the people with unsatisfactory answers? What did that help?

And if they do keep the
birds in a different way, you don't have to breed your birds to
theirs. So from your perspective, it would seem someone breeding
badly is the same as someone not breeding at all.

Its worse.

You have yet to articulate how.

And I'm not sure
how this is harmful to the breed, since presumably there are breeders
like you that keep on doing their thing.

VERY VERY VERY VERY few
Unfortunately.

And how would having other people stop breeding chickens help this?

Would a lack of dealers and new breeders bring back the old breeders?

I am realistic -- I know that fashion will be supplied.
What I hope is that I -- and the remaining folks, some of whom I have
learnt SO much from, who are still interested in the hard work that goes
into selecting for eggs and creating decent table birds, can inspire a few
more to follow in the footsteps of those who went before us.

Don't you think you're more likely to do that by saying things more like
"Gee, I wish they'd taken more time to explain what breeding these birds
_could_ be instead of taking the limited view they did" would be more
inspiring and less off-putting?

One of the major death knells of the larger breeders was the loss of
national distribution of birds and day olds.
It is not possible to get them around in quantity like you can.
That was the final nail in the coffin.

Which has nothing at all to do with the article you're decrying. If I were
you, I'd be petrified of having Avian flu turn up close to me. Much more so
than worry about what other breeders are doing.


Well, an "ok" layer still lays eggs (is still fit for the purpose)

Not when a RIR generally only lays around 150 eggs a year and feed costs
have just doubled.
Most pure breeds struggle to get over 100 eggs a year.

But then that's how chickens are made. One could argue that trying to push
them beyond that is inhumane and shortens their lifespans. One could argue
practically anything if one were of a selfrighteous bent and wanted to make
people who do things differently than oneself always look like they are in
the wrong, couldn't one?

and an "ok" broiler still can be eaten.

These are not broilers -- they are all fancy feathers and lots of bone and
certainly not producing enough meat at 18 weeks to make feeding them even
sensible.

I guess that depends on your circumstances and the birds involved.

Is the extra gain you get by
putting all this time and money into breeding only the best greater
than or equal to the investment? If not, there is not really a
_practical_ reason to do it.

Its not about "BEST" its about maintaining or restoring the qualities of
the breeds that people want and that they were designed to have.
Its an ongoing process. There is no finish that "best" would signify.

So if you don't have any best birds in your flock, then what are you
selecting for? Whatever.

Few poultry keepers are interested or are in a position to breed.
Thats fine. But we have long lost the producers who were breeding
from a 1000 bird flock which were trap nested and recorded.

And you think they'll come back if such magazine articles are not
published...?

No, and I did not suggest they would.
But if the publications were prepared to learn something about what they
wrote, and took responsibility for what they wrote, they might write
articles that inspired even the smallest poultry keepers to have better
aspirations for the birds they wanted to keep and for the smallest
breeders to take some care about the hatchings they made.

Maybe they did. Maybe lots of their readers went out and researched
whatever they felt was useful to research before mail-ordering a bunch of
chicks. Do you really think people read ONE article and then march off
somewhere and come back with a bunch of chicks?

I am absolutely certian that there are still raelly good birds out there.
But we are loosing them year on year because there is no monitoring at all
done.
It can be done by anyone, however small.

Monitor away, then. Obviously no one else is able to do it up to your
standards.

If
I am completely aware that we cannot go back to how things were, but we
could go forward on hell of a lot better than we are.

Probably. But at some point you'll probably need to relax a bit and talk to
people where they are, and not where you think they should be.


.

Relevant Pages

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