Archive for category Crowned & Crested

The genetics and history of chicken breeds is a fascinating subject and the more one looks into it the more really surprising things one finds out. For instance, so many of the breeds which are purported to come from exotic places seem to have their origin here in Britain. I assume that this was a sales pitch. If you could say that your new breed of back garden chucks came from Shanghai or Lima, or even just Russia or Poland you would get more buyers.

Of course I am not implying that there aren’t any exotic breeds. That would be ridiculous; but many breeds as we know them now were standardized in Britain and bear little relation to the strain that was first imported. We can see the same thing all happening again in America, where ‘exotic’ British breeds have been changed out of recognition, and now in our global society, the name has to be Americanized to differentiate it from the original British breed. In many of the oldest breeds, sadly, the actual origin is shrouded in mystery.

A momentary aside, with a general thought: – Britain is the great Breeding Nation! We have produced the highest proportion of the successful breeds of dogs cats horses pigeons and all farm animals and poultry that are found in the world today. Just. But for some reason we seem to have largely lost interest and other nations are taking over with better commercial breeds.

A breed really isn’t a static thing. There are subtle changes even when chicks are moved to a different breeder. This is why we have standards. A chicken must conform to the breed standard to be accepted as the breed, even if it can be proved that it has been bred on pure for generations. If breeders do not select the characteristics and breed on from their best birds, the flock would eventually revert to common barnyard fowl.

Here is a Barbu D’Anvers cross cockerel. It differs from standard in that A it lacks the lift at the back of the skull, B it is too big C it has the wrong colour legs, but the most interesting difference is D- too dark. This lovely deep black used to be the standard colour but over the years most of the black has been replace by buff.  This was a particularly interesting bird because there was no dark coloured bird in his breeding. The colour seems to be a genuine ‘throwback’ to an older version of the breed.

Conversely it is often possible to pick out of a mixed barnyard flock a chicken that conforms perfectly to the standard of one breed or another. This is called a phenotype. I don’t know that many breeders would allow one of these ‘lookalikes’ into their flock. It would add new vigour especially to a rare inbred species, but the downside is that many or even all of the offspring would be non standard, and even if the flock was in general improved, non standard birds would keep cropping up for generations.

So people who fall in love with, and strive to perfect and show a breed, are conservative and very aware of even the tiniest difference in birds which other people would consider identical.

Power to their elbows!  I think it is a wonderful thing to keep a breed and work it up to perfection.

The trouble with me is I am far too whimsical for my own good. I try to think of and do things that nobody has thought of or done before. Why would I even believe that there are such things? ‘There is nothing new under the sun’ they say. But are they right? Does the world, history, fashion, really go in cycles, or is the movement progressive, more helical than circular? Or perhaps wanting to create a new breed instead of trying to perfect one of the breeds I am fond of, is simply a question of cash. Good stock costs money, but picking up a few interesting looking chucks and experimenting doesn’t. Unless one counts the feed! For every decent bird I want to add to the breeding program there are ten that I want to get rid of, and I can only market them as back gardens.

Here is a mixed clutch of young birds, mainly cockerels from last year, showing a relatively new breed, the Sablepoot, bottom right, which was the only pure bred bird there. I had the egg from next door. But I found that I got the best vulture hocks (which Sablepoots also have as standard) from my ‘sport’hen Hockney. Two of the birds in the picture are showing them clearly.

Me, I just love experimenting. I loved lucky dips and surprise presents at Christmas and birthdays, even though they were less expensive than the things I knew I was going to get. I love beachcombing and going to boot fairs and jumble sales because you never know what you are going to find. It’s the same with chicken. Every chick I breed at the moment is wildly different. Unexpected colours and shapes are cropping up all over the place. In the six that hatched a week ago every chick was a different colour.

Well yes, this variation is normal for any mixed flock . And I know I will have to select a line and breed on. Right now I am looking for interesting and spectacular birds to create that line. Once it has begun to settle down I shall probably lose interest, but at the moment the one big question is have I ‘fixed’ the crowns?

One of my three oldest crowned pullets has made an adorable little nest, very neat, with a perfectly positioned little clutch. I have a feeling the eggs won’t be good because the little crowned cockerels which are slightly younger, may not be covering yet, but if she wants to sit on them I will let her, and if the hatch is successful I will have the answer this year  to the question- do the crowns breed on? Crests of course are an easy thing to fix, although it will take some work getting them all the right shape. But there is a possibility that the unexpected success I have had this year with the crowns is only due to the crossing. It’s a good job I don’t bite my nails.

Here is a picture of the first mixed hatch this year. A very early start! Hmm,

Everything I do is always at the last possible moment. I have kept chickens for more years than I care to say, and apart from selling some Belgian Campines which were my own version, I never tried to produce a breed. The Campines were all black with rose combs. They had that lovely characteristic head and neck which was arched like a rocking horse. This is a characteristic they share with the Barbu d’Anvers, but in these Campines it showed to best advantage because they were not the shape of small bantams. They were small, long and lean with a smooth undulating line from beak to fanned tail. This may still be present in the British Campine but it is rather hidden by the upright comb.  They also had a funny and endearing extra. Their legs were black but the soles of their feet were bright lemon yellow. I hope there are some still around. It was quite long time ago.

For a long time recently I kept only Pekins which I was given. They wouldn’t have been my choice. I have always preferred long lean chicken with big tails, although the round pompom tail of the Pekin is rather sweet.

So, how did I actually get around to the idea of seriously creating a new breed? Well it was a combination of factors. The year before last I found someone to do swops with and swopped pheasant eggs for some of her chickens eggs. That resulted in an adorable pair of turkeys, a breeding pair of Old English Game and one very interesting little hen that neither of us could account for. Hockney has to be half Pekin, but it doesn’t show much. She is much more close feathered with long vulture hocks that really show, and a peculiarly upright small tail. I was so intrigued that I thought I’d like to find a few more ‘sports’ and see what I could produce.

So early last year I went down the road and begged a couple of cockerels from a friend of a friend who has a line of semi wild garden chucks which have had some illustrious additions over the years. One (Cecil) had a large upright comb, split at the back only, and the other (Buttercup) had a small crown more like a rose comb with a dip in the middle. The first I was more excited about because he was a colour I liked, a lovely yellow with black lacing on the wings. The other was more or less white. I like to think he is yellow/white.

It is Cecil who did most of the breeding last year. I think Buttercup only produced one not particularly interesting blue hen. He was shut up with hens whereas the yellow and black (and some blue) Cecil was, and is, the garden rooster. He is a very well behaved sweet natured bird.

So, the first breed mating was between Cecil and Hockney, and it produced a mixed batch of cockerels two of which I kept back for this year, and a few quite large hens, mostly splashes, Half of the birds had vulture hocks although in the hens they were all disappointingly small. Also half had crests, larger in the hens, and swept back like a roadrunner or a waxwing. Unfortunately none had crowns.

The other factor that made me think of trying to launch a breed rather than just experimenting for myself was a young cockerel I bred from one of next door’s eggs last year. This was a Sablepoot, a breed I hadn’t heard of. But then I saw a program on the TV about backyard chickens, where the breed was recommended as one of the best pet garden chickens, and I thought, well if people are busy making and popularizing crosses why shouldn’t I? Hmm what would I like it to look like? Wouldn’t it be lovely to launch something spectacular?

The picture at the top shows the proposed breed characteristics, although I am more likely to start with laced, brown red or blue red than with the black/red in the rather idealized picture. The next picture above is of Cecil, the father of almost all of last year’s children.

And this is Blacknose, my favourite of the hens I bred last year, although she is nothing like the proposed breed! She has a crest and vulture hocks, but there the resemblance ends. However she has a deep even ‘splashing’ and I think this colour is very attractive and I shall certainly be breeding it on if not incorporating it in the new breed. Also this type are good layers whereas the new breed almost certainly won’t be.

Have I created any of these fantasy chucks yet? Have a heart!

Hi All,

It’s all happening out there. yesterday there was a thunderstorm hanging around all afternoon. No lightning, just thunder, and one blast, wasn’t very close because not very loud, but it shook the whole house! Must have been a thunderbolt somewhere. One year we had one that punched through a church roof across the valley.

Anyway, the weather is a bit better today, although there is not enough sunshine yet to take my little indoor babies out. I have seven little new crowned and crested, about a week old now. They are getting very bored in their cardboard box. Their cage in the garden isn’t much bigger but they really love watching all the other birds running round the lawn.

My breeding is a mixture of natural with mum, and a fairly small incubator. This year there has been more rat trouble than I have ever had before, and it wasn’t safe to leave any babies up in the pens with mum. They have all had to be brought down into smaller safer pens with mum, which means a lot more work so I’m rushed off my feet.

Oh I suppose a bit of background is needed. I think I said I live near Canterbury. I first started up with an enthusiastic neighbour and we raised a flock of geese for the pot. Didn’t work so we each bought our own ornamentals; water birds because that was what my neighbour prefered. I had pairs of Egyptian geese, mandarin ducks and widgeon, and she had Shelducks Caroliners and I think barnacle geese. which were later followed by Snow, Emporer, and Barheaded. Neither of us had a body of water big enough for anything to swim in! We used bungalow baths. Large dog baths are a more accessible alternative nowadays. It has to be something lightweight so that it’s easy to tip out and refill.

It seemed a long time before I realised that I prefer other types of birds to water birds. Perhaps if there had been a lake I would have stuck with ducks, and I still have three East Indians, which are getting on now, and the girls are practically white! But I turned to my very favourites wich are pheasants. Unfortunately most pheasants need very large expensive aviaries, and I have to manage on a shoestring, so I could only have golden. I had alway had some chicken of course. I bred a few barbu d’anvers. I think these are a fascinating littl breed. They have faces like little owls and they look at you with both eyes. They are genuinely friendly and love to be fondled, and they will even sit on your lap and purr! I had one that insisted on laying in my bedroom. Actually in the bed at first! Come to think of it I was having rat trouble then, and they were laying in the hedges and actually … but more of that next time I shall try to put up a photo. Bye for now.

Bear with me please? Computers and me don’t get along. The world and me doesn’t. It changes too fast. Do you know, rushing around in your fast cars, and sitting in your offices with ersatz air, just how fast it is changing? The rate is exponential. So many things that were standard just ten or so years ago are now anachronistic. Lawnmowers for instance, have been replaced either by ride on tractors for the rich, or little strim blade things you can use with one hand, for the poor that aspire to a lawn. Most people do not bother to plant things. They just use containers, rich and poor, and throw them away at the end of the season.
Modern houses are hermetically sealed, and a dehumidifier is becomming standard. It is no longer possible for anyone in a built up area to hear someone screaming in the street. Only through the walls and floors does one hear the heartbeat of the neighbours music.
I notice this because I live in a tumbledown house with its original windows and glass so old it has become rippled, but I have fresh air and the sound of the wind in the trees and the crow of a cockerel to wake me in the morning.