AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

Hello all
I am jumping in at the deep end here, and hope that the collective advice of this forum may help guide, or stop me for that matter. My son is producing free range, organically grown meat chickens using the conventionally sourced chickens which do not of course have a good reputation for leg soundness. High rates of growth and selection for high muscling seem to have distorted the frame. As a producer of commercial pigs for 30 years, this was one of the challenges that I had to meet there, a balancing act really, keeping the proportion of the most highly muscled breeds as high as possible in the market pigs, but keeping leg soundness high in breeding animals.
I look at the son's chickens, have helped with his slaughter in the first batches for family, and thought that surely it could be done better.

First question. IS THERE ANYONE ON THE FORUM WHO IS ALREADY UNDERTAKING SUCH A PROJECT, AND MAKING PROGRESS? There is no point re-inventing the wheel.

My approach has been to look at the dual purpose and heavy breeds, especially the white ones for ease of slaughter and to simplify breeding then try to source groups of those breeds to use. Orpingtons, Lt Sussex, Rhode Is White if it is available in Australia, perhaps Wyandotte, Austrolorps even, possible the Indian Game that was the Cornish. The latter seems an anomally to me, but I am new to this. I guess there are game fowl and game fowl. I will be looking closely at the next batches of chickens, to see if any can walk OK, a quick way of introducing the genetics. I say quick, not really clean, and perhaps not approved, but I am of an age that time is of an essence.

Second Question. HAVE I MISSED OUT ANY BREEDS OR VARIANTS THAT SHOULD BE INCLUDED, OR AM I WORRYING TOO MUCH ABOUT COLOUR?


Feel free to express your views freely and frankly in response to my ideas here. I may well be completely wide of the mark. Much better to know now.

The plan was to have breeding groups of the selected breeds, pick the fastest growing hens and roosters to carry on in those groups, hopefully with introductions from outside as I can find them. Then cross and do the same. Possibly a male and female line would be the result, but that is a complication better avoided. I fully expect slower growth and more feed use than the std meat chickens but hopefully the offset will be in vigour, better handling and less bruising problems.

Any suggestions, information appreciated

Bob the Beeman

Hello Bob.

I have tried a number of breeds over the years and to get anywhere you need to look into the make-up of the breeds you intend to use.
Most of the large dual purpose breeds have been bred for feather/pattern with no thought to the amount of eggs they lay or the end weight of the cockerels at the age they mature. Commercial table birds lack the texture and taste that only comes with the age and free-range abilities of a pure or first cross.
I have a web page you may be interested in on the subject of a dual purpose breed.

Hello Scott
I thank you for your reply. I am working through your site, lots of information there, and I love the dogs. Pity I am so far away. Your comments on breeding will be very useful for me as I work through this process. Certainly agree with your comments on the texture and taste of the commercial meat birds. My primary concern was that they had been selected for high muscling even to the detriment of physical soundness. Reading of the classic French breed meat chicken, the Bresse, showed me the combined importance of breed and I suspect feeding in that case.

You have some great looking Indian Game pullets there in the images that you show. They were to be one of the breeds that I would use, hope that I can find somewhere near that quality.

Lt Sussex will be another, and perhaps Orpington depending what I can find in Australia. We seem to have such a limited gene base here sadly.
Thanks again

I return to studying the information on your site
Bob

One of my chook club sustainable living friends uses Indian Game and Light Sussex crosses as their meat birds. Some of the large sussex roos are huge!

I grew out a Barnevelder cockeral, butchered him myself and ate him, he was in the early 20 weeks when he started crowing, and as a roast, there wasn't a lot of meat. What was there was tasty though!

Good luck with your project. Pls keep posting updates - I love reading them!

Indian game x leghorn would be a good combination and I would use a leghorn roo to indian game hen as the indian game are a little slow on mating



LooLoo

Hi LooLoo
Thanks for the reply

This is my second attempt at a reply, no idea how I lost the first.

Every suggestion appreciated. That is not a cross I would have tried, but one learns to try the unexpected in these things and when someone with much more experience than me, or is that I, suggests it, it will be tried. I personally have come to like the Lt Sussex, I had a spectacular rooster here at home, and now some of his progeny which I managed to propagate with an incubator. He used to join me when I had cups of coffee in my courtyard. Special guy, and I miss him. The Araucana rooster before him used to come up to me and peck my toes for attention as I was having my cup of coffee. I do get personally attached to these roosters unfortunately as you can all see. This I struggled to control, another story.
There is a promise here. I will be chasing the Indian Game first and hope that I can find a good source. It would be convenient to have that here in Qld, but if not it will have be down south. I will be travelling to Sydney and Bega at least because of my bees. I will try to work it in with that trip. So any Indian Game breeders out there who have some good pullets especially, but roosters OK, please advise. I will be travelling to Cairns in October. If you have worked to measure growth rates, I implore you to get in touch. I have to keep roosters and the breeding unit elsewhere. I do have a good and safe site for this thankfully. Don't want to stretch the neighbours tolerance too much. I do so much love the sound of roosters, I just have to shift the neighbours, or ME. For months, I have been collecting the rooster from the chook pen, and bringing him up into the garage into a cage which is then covered with a dark cloth. That way he does not crow until around 6am. There are other roosters in the area, and he has worked out that the morning bird chorus is the signal. That is fair enough. The last rooster was a Wyandotte, magnificent boy, but now he has a group of girls to service in an area where people will not complain about the noise. I suspect that he misses the attention as much as I do.

I am hoping my efforts may develop into a component of an Urban Garden project near Samford, again whether the roosters will be OK is the issue. This Urban Garden is to be a demonstration/education project, and ideal for what I am hoping, and the breeds in my view. It is to be located on the site of the old CSIRO research station, a place where I visited/studied in my university days, and sadly studied then the introduction of new plants for pasture use. I say sadly, as some of those plants have become weeds in this valley that I now call home.The naivity of a university student. I just have to get my son to put some time in there to this project as well as his meat chickens, or some willing WOOFERs as my time is spread very thin these days with my stingless bees
I now look to develop a 'chicken tractor concept' which utilises plants planted to provide forage for my stingless bees as they flower, then greens and seed for chickens and poultry as their mobile housing follows the development of the plant, and contribute to the green manure value of the plant for following rotations in the garden.
Birds and Bees, complex, probably is. I never say impossible. That is my mindset. I get very stubborn when told that it can't be done, because I believe that it normally can be, with the right frame of mind. No negativity allowed. Fowlman take notice.
I should not be spreading my interests beyond bees, they have been my passion for many years, my area of true expertise. Actually it has been a lifetime, 60 years +. Poultry are new found through my son, and I will support him to my best ability. The forum will, I hope, put up with me. LooLoo I have appreciated your comments and welcome. I hope that my stubborness, and persistentness in ensuring a fair go do not get me thrown off this forum. I have actuallly been stimulated by the debates, and the research that it has forced me to undertake. Great stuff.
Anyone with Indian Game chickens/poultry out there, PLEASE REPLY
Bob



Bob

You will need to find a long legged Indian game rooster they are hard to come by because they are show breeders culls.
leghorns are fast maturers that is why people have used them but it would be better to use a leghorn hen then keep the pullets from the cross back to the Indian
game rooster that way you will get more eggs and a faster growing bird. pure Indian hens don't lay many eggs and can go broody more often.
the pure Indian game are slow growing .
If you wanted to go down the pure heritage line then the Orpingtons would be a very good option in my opinion .

I have tried Leghorns (Exchequers) to IG

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h117/ ... 0_0769.jpg

It will take you at least 4 seasons and even then your not going to get any weight on and hold egg numbers.

Of all the breeds I have tried over the many years I have been breeding for a good Dual purpose bird the best start you can get is with an Australorp roo on an Indian Game hen.
All the chicks will come out black.

Sibling mateing the resulting best roo to the best pullet will give you this.
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h117/ ... 6th176.jpg

You can then run 2 strains.

All the blacks back to Australorp.
All the red/black back to Indian Game.

Your line breeding with 2 basic breeds. They start to break down in year 4 (sibling mated), so go back to pure in 3rd year and only breed from the ones with best vigour.

All pullets will lay very well. A good size buff egg and around the 180 mark on free range.
The have a tendency to sit, but thats good in as much as they can produce the next years birds.

Hi Scott
Fantastic extra detail. We will not be getting any genetic help from your side of the world with the sad failure of the first attempt at importation into Australia since the late 40s, so have to work with what we have. Perhaps the second attempt will produce results, I remain an optimist.
I will start trying to find suitable Indian Game first as they will be hardest to find. Australorps should be easier. Would Orpingtons be worth a try as another line because of their extra size? In Australia they are very short on genetic diversity and colours have been lost, as I read their history. I had been chasing the white Orpington, pehaps I will just stay consistent with the black.
I had been concerned with feather colour and skin colour after plucking. As I understand it, the base of the feather needs to be white so as to make the final trimming up after the plucking machine easier, and any residual pin feathers not stand out. This is the appearance side of things at packaging and freezing that becomes harder to judge until the birds are in hand.
Great to hear from you again.
Bob

No worries with a black bird re feather stubs, as you check for the stubs (on the back) before you dispatch. Any still in the sheath will come through in a week or so depending on time of year and feeding.

As with any breeding plan you must select for feathering up time,( Slow birds are not taken farther and they are usually the males) Egg numbers, Weight, size and above all vigor.

If you start with 2 breeds you will always have just the genes from those 2 breeds to work on. Your first choice must be to use the best male you can find, as he puts half the genes into the chicks and if that bird is a very good example of what your aiming for breed back to his gene pool by mating the best daughter/s to him. They now carry 75% of his best and worse genes, but hopefully more good than bad.

I have strains here that are now 6th generation back to original pure breeds. Indian game that have been outcrossed once to Australorp and since that initial outcross always back to a pure Indian in a line I can dip into when I need to bring a new flush of known genes into the main line.
You need a lot of space and runs and above all records to run a project like this. Loads of work (I'm retired now) but the satisfaction you get from a bunch of good birds makes it all worth the time involved.

Besides which you get to eat your mistakes.

Orpington over here are all feathers and no good.

http://s62.photobucket.com/user/castlef ... ort=3&o=40