# American Games



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

These are some I am trying unload to free up some pens. They have been fun to work with and all have been trained when younger to come when called. I will post pictures of others later when their feathers are finished coming in.


----------



## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

That last boy is wild looking.


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

He is homozygous for toppy making for the major feather doo.


----------



## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

I'll bet PJ's eyeballs fall out when he sees him.


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

This to me is even prettier. I am trying to fix the line to breed true. Hen side of this guy essentially white with a black tail. Most have blue legs and toppy.


----------



## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

I'm a sucker for black and white birds. He is stunning.


----------



## Biring (Sep 24, 2020)

Show us some photos of your game hens!


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

robin416 said:


> I'll bet PJ's eyeballs fall out when he sees him.


They are handsome! Can you walk us through your lines and what you are breeding? I have BB Red Jungle Fowl, Pioneer Gingers and BB Lord Derby. My Derby line is Knowsley stock and has a continuous lineage from 1611. My father brought them to the States in 1986.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Closed Flock said:


> He is homozygous for toppy making for the major feather doo.


Yes, fairly unusual. Do you have a lot of blue legs?


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Biring said:


> Show us some photos of your game hens!


Yes, we'd like to see some of your hens.


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

Give a little time as I am very busy doing house and yard work. Only one of my lines carries the blue leg trait. What you might really get a kick out of is I have some mill fleur colored game pullets, not spangled, but actual mill fleur. All this funny stuff popped up when I bred a grey toppy hen into my brown-breasted brown red line. The grey line is about 87.5% my stock through line breed where I selected for the introduced silver, toppy and blue leg alleles each generation before I started inbreeding to fix desired traits related to looks. This project is 6 years in now.



I have been staying away from using terms ginger and pumpkin with color variants because their are multiple ways genetically to make them.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Yes, that's fine, I think folks would like to hear about the different types of breeding methods you are using. I'm interested in how you track your genetics, I usually use a yellow pad notebook, my memory isn't what it used to be. It's amazing how much genetic material is in there, (your birds), and when specific traits are going to appear. I am trying to to recover a white head/white feet gene which was intentionally bred out around 1900 in the BB Earl of Derby line. Good point about the Gingers and Pumpkins, there certainly are multiple paths to get there. My Pioneer Red Gingers are from a Red Jungle Fowl and Irish Red Ginger cross from about 1780. That cross was actually fairly popular in the 1900-1920s here as a general purpose chicken. Medium station, bigger than Banties but not as large as full size birds.


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

Line breeding has been used with three game lines all representing the same strain. When bird being bred back to is retired, I consider a couple of his best most recent male offspring that are bred to high quality females from the other two lines. The best of those are then line bred to the male that produced what I think is the best offspring to start the process all over again.


Records are kept in a lab notebook. Next one will be write in the rain and be stored in a low humidity location. The marking systems are used with brooder reared chicks. Those are first marked with colored sharpie markers. By about 5 weeks when down is being replaced by feathers, Jiffy wingbands are applied which are permanent. As keepers (potential) are selected going into their third feather set (first adult) leg bands are applied. Birds kept long-term unless with very unique appearance have redundant marks with color indicating line and unique numbers. I not banding more than 50 birds in a year so small scale. The white / silver allele birds are not being marked because they are simply a color experiment.


----------



## Slippy (May 14, 2020)

I'm impressed!


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Slippy said:


> I'm impressed!


Yes, impressed!


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Poultry Judge said:


> Yes, that's fine, I think folks would like to hear about the different types of breeding methods you are using. I'm interested in how you track your genetics, I usually use a yellow pad notebook, my memory isn't what it used to be. It's amazing how much genetic material is in there, (your birds), and when specific traits are going to appear. I am trying to to recover a white head/white feet gene which was intentionally bred out around 1900 in the BB Earl of Derby line. Good point about the Gingers and Pumpkins, there certainly are multiple paths to get there. My Pioneer Red Gingers are from a Red Jungle Fowl and Irish Red Ginger cross from about 1780. That cross was actually fairly popular in the 1900-1920s here as a general purpose chicken. Medium station, bigger than Banties but not as large as full size birds.


Well, then at least the line breeding isn't too hard to track...until you get a bunch of lines going.


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

Poultry Judge said:


> Well, then at least the line breeding isn't too hard to track...until you get a bunch of lines going.


I have only 4 gamefowl lines. Must know limits. I have over shot a little as another project to develop a breed may need to be abandoned or I will have to abandon a unique strain of American Dominique's.


----------



## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

I think the biggest challenge to programs like yours is space. Keeping them all in separate areas to keep the program straight.


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

Hen is female side of mostly white male in post #5. Both juvenile offspring are pullets and out of male above so he is heterozygous for silver allele. Praline colored pullet is same pattern minus silver allele.










This pullet is a sport from same line. She is very close to being a silver quill although she lacks the dark brown or extended black allele needed to make the speckles to occur over more than just her back and tail. She is likely the silver version of her sisters that are mill fleur.








This is a pullet that is similar to hen in first image of this post.


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

robin416 said:


> I think the biggest challenge to programs like yours is space. Keeping them all in separate areas to keep the program straight.


For me it is labor. I have the acreage for free-range rearing immature where most will be culled. Roughly 70 pens are available for holding birds singly or in pairs, especially on male side. Females can also be held in modest groups using five 10 x 10 dog pens.

I am a single parent with two younger children plus a full-time job. It is labor.


----------



## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

I don't think I've ever heard of the variety called praline. 

It's one of the reasons I got out. Hubs worked away from home, I had the house, the acreage and all the rest to handle on my own. It just got to be too much. But there is an age factor too on why I got out.


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

robin416 said:


> I don't think I've ever heard of the variety called praline.
> 
> It's one of the reasons I got out. Hubs worked away from home, I had the house, the acreage and all the rest to handle on my own. It just got to be too much. But there is an age factor too on why I got out.


Color of brownish pullet does not match any colorations I am aware of. Alternative name is butterscotch, especially when down coloration is considered. At first I thought I was messing with some sort of wheaton until back tracked to look at pictures of chicks immediately after hatch.

I am not all that old, but very much on the upper end for having kids of the age mine are. I will be postponing retirement by a decade to ensure kids finish schooling.


----------



## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

I thought it might be but I needed you to confirm it. 

The fact you have two school age kids adds to the labor you've undertaken with your breeding program. What would help a ton is having someone to help mentor your efforts. Not an easy thing to find.


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

Chicken part I have down. Kid part not so much. Chickens are a cookbook procedure requiring basic knowledge of genetics and iterations of breeding to get allele complex of interest realized.


----------



## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

LOL You're most definitely a parent. Only a parent would recognize they don't have the kid raising part nailed.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Closed Flock said:


> I have only 4 gamefowl lines. Must know limits. I have over shot a little as another project to develop a breed may need to be abandoned or I will have to abandon a unique strain of American Dominique's.


Four lines and a breeding project is still a lot of work!


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

Poultry Judge said:


> Four lines and a breeding project is still a lot of work!


I am cheating a little. Two of the line are bred only on alternate years. I have gotten into trouble raising stags where I had too many to eat and then had too many to pen when they got to fighting. The young ones require pens just like the adults.


----------



## Biring (Sep 24, 2020)

Too many to eat? I’m struggling to get my head around that concept. So is our dog.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Closed Flock said:


> I am cheating a little. Two of the line are bred only on alternate years. I have gotten into trouble raising stags where I had too many to eat and then had too many to pen when they got to fighting. The young ones require pens just like the adults.


I was wondering how many you were hatching and when you were culling, still lots of birds!


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

Poultry Judge said:


> I was wondering how many you were hatching and when you were culling, still lots of birds!


I hatch between 60 and 80 chicks per line, but they are staggered over about 4 months. Most, but not all, the games are hen hatched and hen reared. A good 10 to 25% are culled by mother nature before weaned. Birds not showing good growth progression culled. Those showing less than ideal feather development even when immature culled. By fall I have at best 20 birds per line to select from and generally I keep only about 5 for penning over winter. I am selling tail end of balance now. Some of the 5 will replace older birds. Not all those kept ever get into breeding pens.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Okay, and you cull some for your own meat birds. Around here there is a pretty good market for home grown meat birds. My cousin takes pre-orders for about 300 annually that way.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

He does pre-order grass fed beef that way too. Some people from the city pay a premium to know where their meat comes from.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Closed Flock said:


> Color of brownish pullet does not match any colorations I am aware of. Alternative name is butterscotch, especially when down coloration is considered. At first I thought I was messing with some sort of wheaton until back tracked to look at pictures of chicks immediately after hatch.
> 
> I am not all that old, but very much on the upper end for having kids of the age mine are. I will be postponing retirement by a decade to ensure kids finish schooling.


Pralines, Butterscotch, Wheaten, Pumpkins, that's taking me back to listening to my Grandfather and my Uncle Frank. I was partial to the big Pumpkin crosses as a kid, but I don't remember the line, it was over fifty years ago.


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

Poultry Judge said:


> Pralines, Butterscotch, Wheaten, Pumpkins, that's taking me back to listening to my Grandfather and my Uncle Frank. I was partial to the big Pumpkin crosses as a kid, but I don't remember the line, it was over fifty years ago.


Pumpkin does not mean squat for me. To many ways to make what is called pumpkin and they often vary on the hen side. Trying to extrapolate from Old English Game Bantams caused me considerable confusion when alleles I mess with give similar color patterns on male side but very different female and down colorations compared to the OEGB's. I doubt that all the alleles out there have been characterized.

Fifty years ago I was into wheatons because was seeing them for first time as they where brought in through what otherwise looked like a golden duckwing cock.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Thanks for the update! OEG Bantams can certainly make you pull your hair out. Since the alleles skip, I have to trust my yellow pad and not my memory, but I have a system to track every egg, I imagine similar to what you do. I think there are folks on the forum who would like to hear about your breeding and what traits you are specifically looking for in each line. Goodness knows they are tired of my Knowsley stock Derbys, (since 1611 blah blah blah). Dan is on generation 14 or 15 with his Seramas and he works with Ducks and dogs too. We will have to get into Spring of 2021 before I can be sure, but I think I made a tiny bit of Lord Derby progress in 2020. They still breed true and the genetic library is still in there.


----------



## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

Except you still haven't done pics of them so we don't even know for sure they exist.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

robin416 said:


> Except you still haven't done pics of them so we don't even know for sure they exist.


I thought I did. I need to take some more pictures anyway! Including Turkeys and Peafowl so everyone can get a laugh from their shenanigans! Right now I could put those Turkeys in 3 or 4 times a day! When I do go get them, they either march themselves in the chain link door or fly over the fence and back in. Today, they had no interest in being in until everyone else got scratch feed.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Because, you know, those cat food dishes must be checked at least 4 times per day.


----------



## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

So you spend as much time chasing down turkeys as I do Guineas. 

I don't remember you doing any pics of the game birds. We've seen the two babies, fuzzy butt and that's all I remember. Or maybe you did. I wonder where they are on here.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

The Turkeys: at times they're pretty smart and other times...


----------



## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

Like the Guineas.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Exactly!


----------



## danathome (Sep 14, 2020)

Your birds are unique and beautiful.


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

Pullet below and her sister (not shown) I classify as mill fleur. A couple game fowl guys I know insist they are only spangle, but spangle has only two color on feather while the mill fleur has white, black and some version of brown. These pullets should have blue legs, but whatever causes the mill fleur pattern promotes the whitish look instead. The mill fleur birds, after first having a brown breast, go through a stage where they develop big white patches on their breast that later goes away.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Interesting, thanks for sharing! Nice looking pullet! I like the white legs, have you ever gotten white streaks in the beaks?


----------



## Closed Flock (Nov 17, 2020)

Not to 


Poultry Judge said:


> Interesting, thanks for sharing! Nice looking pullet! I like the white legs, have you ever gotten white streaks in the beaks?


Not to my knowledge.


----------



## Poultry Judge (Jul 15, 2020)

Just wondering, it's one of the traits I'm trying to recover in the Derbys.


----------



## robin416 (Sep 8, 2013)

She is a pretty bird. I'm with you, mille fleur.


----------

