The Moonshiner's Leghorns

[KF0002]

I'm glad I'm not dealing with chicks yet. I'm still trying to get playing musical pens for adults done.
Did some counting heads today to see which groups would need which pens. Wish I had a row of about 2 dozen huge pens.
I collected rubber bowls and soaked and scrubbed most of those. Funny there seemed to be so many and so much work just doing them. By late season I'll be thinking I ain't got enough bowls WTH.

I feel that. We always seem to need more pens, more water bowls, or more water cups no matter how many we build/buy. I like the hanging 1/2 gallon cups or the black rubber water bowls, depending on which pens the birds are in. I order the hanging cups from Pinion Hatch Farm on Ebay and I like them probably the best because they can be hung off the wire and elevated to where the chickens don’t scratch as much dirt or straw in them. The drawback to them is they will freeze and crack in the winter unfortunately so my husband melts plastic from old cups to repair them.

I would love to have at least 12 more single/trio mate pens also! The musical pen struggle is real.

 

[KF0002]

I got called back in to work!

 

[KF0002]

The same thing happened with the Isabella to who was it Cackle?
I remember them coming out and selling out then a couple years later they didn't become available again and were soon discontinued.
I talked to them about them and they said they couldn't get them to hardly survive shipping at that point.

Yes and that is so stupid because Isabella is so easy to infuse with fresh Brown Leghorn blood then those offspring backcrossed to Isabella to freshen the line. Brown Leghorns seem pretty hardy so I’m not sure why anyone would have trouble keeping an Isabella line vigorous.

 

[The Moonshiner]

Yes and that is so stupid because Isabella is so easy to infuse with fresh Brown Leghorn blood then those offspring backcrossed to Isabella to freshen the line. Brown Leghorns seem pretty hardy so I’m not sure why anyone would have trouble keeping an Isabella line vigorous.

Cause their mindset is to produce as many Isabels as fast as they can because that's where the money is. It's not in the splits.
There was a couple people working on making what became known as the opal legbars on this site years back.
One was super cool and a good friend. The other was more of an acquaintance that I knew from Isabella talk. That one was in it for profit imo. She wasn't a genetics guru and sometimes had questions. She wanted to get to the opals then breed breed breed. The project used isabellas and CCL.
Some of us with Isabella was still trying to deal with the shredder gene and wingpatch issues so I explained it should be priority to go back to CCL to help with that but imo the biggest reason to was to lock in the blue shell genes instead of having all these birds with only one copy. With blue being dominate to white I always thought that was gonna be the real challenge.
Of course it fell on deaf ears when chicks started selling and of course those first several years buyers were breeding opal legbars and finding out quite a few end up laying white eggs and weren't happy.

 

[The Moonshiner]

I got called back in to work!

That sucks.

 

[KF0002]

Cause their mindset is to produce as many Isabels as fast as they can because that's where the money is. It's not in the splits.
There was a couple people working on making what became known as the opal legbars on this site years back.
One was super cool and a good friend. The other was more of an acquaintance that I knew from Isabella talk. That one was in it for profit imo. She wasn't a genetics guru and sometimes had questions. She wanted to get to the opals then breed breed breed. The project used isabellas and CCL.
Some of us with Isabella was still trying to deal with the shredder gene and wingpatch issues so I explained it should be priority to go back to CCL to help with that but imo the biggest reason to was to lock in the blue shell genes instead of having all these birds with only one copy. With blue being dominate to white I always thought that was gonna be the real challenge.
Of course it fell on deaf ears when chicks started selling and of course those first several years buyers were breeding opal legbars and finding out quite a few end up laying white eggs and weren't happy.

That is why I will never make money selling chickens, because I will never mass produce for profit at the detriment of a line and I care about the wellbeing of the birds. We take pride in breeding toward health and vigor. I would never sell a bird as a pure this or pure that if there was a potential for throwback genes from an outcrossing popping up like white egg genes in a blue egg line or vice versa. That is why my crele leghorn project will take so long because I don’t intend on taking shortcuts and risk the line retaining any crest or blue egg genes. Its just a hobby for me and my hubby, something we enjoy doing together and it is a huge outlet for stress while also adding stress, so its complicated. lol

 

[KF0002]

Some of us with Isabella was still trying to deal with the shredder gene and wingpatch issues so I explained it should be priority to go back to CCL to help with that but imo the biggest reason to was to lock in the blue shell genes instead of having all these birds with only one copy. With blue being dominate to white I always thought that was gonna be the real challenge.
Of course it fell on deaf ears when chicks started selling and of course those first several years buyers were breeding opal legbars and finding out quite a few end up laying white eggs and weren't happy.

So outcrossing back to Brown Leghorn in Isabellas and CL in Opals helps to improve the wing patch issue? I wanted to try some Isabellas but I hated how all the roosters looked with their patchy wingbow and saddle.

 

[KF0002]

 

[The Moonshiner]

View attachment 4107713

So true.

Hey you probably go through a little feed there. What do you do with or how do you keep up on getting rid of empty bags?
I burn most of my trash. This last winter was cooooold so I wasn't to worried about getting those burned at the time. I was just throwing them in a pile in an out of the way corner of the barn.
Of course now that pile is about the size of my truck .
I'll get them burned in stages but sure seems like it's gonna be too much like work. This isn't the first time so I'm just curious.

 

[The Moonshiner]

So outcrossing back to Brown Leghorn in Isabellas and CL in Opals helps to improve the wing patch issue? I wanted to try some Isabellas but I hated how all the roosters looked with their patchy wingbow and saddle.

Some say it will while others say it won't. I'd heard breeding lavender back to black was how you worked to combat the shredder gene.
When I first got into isabels they were a mess. I got opinions both ways and mostly from experts that hadn't even dealt with it.
I just kind of went it alone. Breeding back to Browns seemed like a plausible idea and at the time a lot of them laid tinted eggs because they were still caring a few Brown egg genes. I figured worse case it would help with that so what the hell.
To me the Wing patch deal was linked to the duckwing pattern because I'd never seen it in other lavender Birds.
I back crossed as much as I could for several Generations. It seemed to work for me. I got rid of the wing patch issues and eventually it seemed like the shredder problems too.
It was said that it was linked closely to the lavender Gene so it followed it around. In my opinion it was linked but it could be separated and that's what seems to happen after I produce so many birds.
I seem to have them completely rid of it for a while but for some reason every now and again it comes back somewhat mostly in the tails. I only have lavender silver duckwing right now so if it ever gets bad again I'll just start over bringing back to Silver duckwing and try to eliminate it completely again.