Thursday, November 24, 2011

"In Pencil" 2012 Breeding Plans

These are all still "in pencil" as we haven't actually divided the pens or switched anyone around yet, but this is the plan so far.

Welsh Harlequins:
4 males, 8 females (3 trios of silvers, 1 trio of golds)
All bred together for the first portion of the year, and then around May, we may seperate the gold drake with our best silver hens to hatch gold breeder females from.

Indian Runners:
2 males, 4 females (2 trios)
All bred together for the breeding season, in hopes to increase the flock and give us a few more birds to go through and cull down to a decent flock.

Mallards:
5 males, 10 females
J.P. Drake x KS old hens, KS old drake x JP old hens, KS young drake x ks young hens, the wild greys will stay together as a pair, the J.P. gray drake will go in with one of the snowy hens we hatched last Spring from another line that is pied in hopes of producing all grey pieds. (Just for fun!)

East Indie:
Pair together

Pekins:
Still not sure on this project.

Calls:
Pair together.

Nankins:
Still don't know, probably won't decide until they begin laying anyway.

Largefowl Gamefowl Project:
Red Male x Black Modern Game Hens

Micah's Projects:
Birchen, Silver Blue, Blue & Black Modern Game bantams.
White & Splash Showgirl/Silkies

Friday, November 18, 2011

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Ducklings and Chickens


A white Call, three gray Calls & a Welsh Harlequin ducklings from several years ago.



Two pictures of the game-ish project cock I currently have. I love the color, but he's wild!!! Same one in the chicken crossing the road blog, but I finally caught him to dub him.


A cream light brown Dutch hen. We use to raise these wonderful little birds several years ago, and I love the breed, they are fragile birds, but excellent for children and great for 4H. (This photo is from the 2006 Crossroads National Show in Indianapolis. Hard the believe it was that long ago, but after the last one in October, it seems like just yesterday.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Why did the chicken cross the road...


Because he is wild! He escaped a couple weeks ago from a pen he was in, and I haven't been able to catch him since. Here he is near our house in the median of a four lane highway...Crazy bird! He is a crossbred cock-bird, but I really liked his pattern. Sort of a largefowl-Nankin looking bird.

Some Nankins...


I love this guys comb! There is a full body shot of him further down, but in a breed where there is often little attention paid to a quality comb, this bird has a pretty nice one. Its small, has nice DISTINCT points and an actual blade in the rear. (No spike like you often see from the rose-crosses.)



This is the hen that "started it all". She came from Mary Ann Harley's stock at the '06 Crossroads National, and I actually got her from a local breeder where a lot of my stock originally came from, and some still does, but she is the first Nankin hen I ever purchased, along with a rose combed cock bird that is still alive, but he lives at a 4Her's house not far from us.


Cock #27- rose combed, mostly red earlobe


Cockerel #91- single combed, completely red earlobe




Cockerel #43- single combed, mostly white earlobe.
I love his tail and sickles, but the lobe bothers me. Luckily the other single comb cockerel will probably end up as the single comb breeder for 2012, and this one will be a back-up "just-in-case" male bird.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Grown Out and Culled Out

With the Crossroads National and Fall-weather quickly approaching we have been spending a lot of time looking at the birds, handling them, moving them around, and even evaluating them up on the show cages. We have culled this year's babies down to what we are satisfied with holding on to, and what we want to show as young birds at Nationals. We hatched: 9 Trout Indian Runners, 14 Welsh Harlequins, 18 Snowy Mallards, and a bunch of chickens. We have decided to hold on to the following. 4 Indian Runners (which will be just a trio after Nationals.) a trio of Welsh Harlequins, 1 snowy Mallard drake, 2 Snowy Mallard hens, the pied Snowy hen from earlier posts, and our 6 bantam Welsummers as well as the largefowl Welsummer cockerel.
In the Nankin bantams, we are keeping the one rosecomb pullet we hatched this year and purchased five single comb cockerels and a single comb pullet. I saved out the single comb pullet and an older single comb cockerel and have already sold the rest of the older bunch, and then held another single comb cockerel that was about the same age as our rose comb pullet, so now we have on "old" breeding quad consisting of a RC cock, 2 RC hens and a SC hen. An young "older" pair of single comb birds and then a younger pair of 1 SC cockerel and our RC pullet. Can you follow that? 3 male birds and 5 female birds total in that breed.
The Welsummers turned out to be five pullets and 1 cockerel as well as one largefowl cockerel!!! So that was pretty cool! So now we have to wait as the rest grow out, fill out, and feather out to see what our birds will look like for the Crossroads show.
We do still have a few odds and ends for sale if anyone is interested! And we are starting to get 1-2 eggs a day again, so we should have eggs available for the people that have contacted me about Fall hatching eggs.
Thanks for reading,
K&S

Friday, September 2, 2011

AKC Standard Poodle Stud Service

We are pleased to announce that we will be offering stud service from our beautiful Chocolate Standard Poodle Keeney's Lord Cadbury. We will be offering AKC registration for Poodle to Poodle and if you are interested in other crosses, we are willing to discuss it. Poodle to Lab, Golden Retriever etc... I will post pictures soon. We are planning to begin offering him near the end of this year the beginning of 2012, so e-mail us for more information.

Monday, May 30, 2011

2011 Hatching Season

The ducklings and chicks that have hatched so far this year. There are Snowy Mallards, Trout Indian Runners and Welsh Harlequins in one brooder (they are outgrowing it very quickly!)
Then in the chick brooder there are bantam Welsummers, a largefowl Welsummer, a Copper Marans and a Nankin!




So far, we've had a very good hatch of Snowy Mallards, which almost makes up for the last two or so year that we haven't hatched any of them. This is really our first year hatching much of anything since having kids, so its nice to get back into the swing of things. We should have several nice birds to exhibit at the Fall shows and the Crossroads National in Indy in Oct. as well as some very nice "nice-but-not-quite" to sell at the National. E-mail if you are interested.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

2011 Breeding Season

Well our breeding season is well under way. We have all of our different breeds divided into breeding pens, and we are getting eggs and being patient until we get enough of them to make it worth plugging in the big 1202 incubator. (We are considering buying a small cheap incubator, if the ducks don't pickup...it seems a shame to waste the eggs.)

In other news, all of our Golden Retriever puppies were sold and went on to their new homes. We've heard very good things about them since they left here. We've made plans and an agreement with another breeder to purchase a new dog to add to our family. It will be an Easter present for our children. Stay tuned...We will post pictures as soon as we get it. I will say it is male and SO ADORABLE!

Hope to have ducklings in the next few weeks!

Check back soon!