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Post by stc1993 on Nov 20, 2023 1:31:25 GMT -5
The hen in the improved cracker picture look just like the wild chickens we have in Albany. The wild chickens are alot smaller though. This is one of my wild Crackers in their original state. How does this compare to your wild hens? The improved Cracker has been crossed with oriental gamefowl to improve size, muscle, and aggressiveness towards predators. That's them exactly. They're all over town. When we were living on the west side of town there were a lot of them on our block.
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Post by bullfrog on Nov 20, 2023 18:07:30 GMT -5
This is one of my wild Crackers in their original state. How does this compare to your wild hens? The improved Cracker has been crossed with oriental gamefowl to improve size, muscle, and aggressiveness towards predators. That's them exactly. They're all over town. When we were living on the west side of town there were a lot of them on our block. They could have been turned out in that state. Or, you could be seeing the process by which domestic animals return to their wild genetics when left in a feral state for several generations. The look of my Crackers is more or less what wild chickens look like in their native Asia. That process is well described in feral hogs. It happens with nearly all domesticated animals and plants if the first few generations can make it in the wild. The process is documented, but rarely studied or discussed, in chickens. In my book, I discuss an instance documented by the ancient Romans. There was an island off the coast of NW Italy that had a lot of feral chickens that the locals called "junglefowl." However, the leading agricultural experts of the B.C. era correctly deduced that while domestic chickens had been domesticated from the red junglefowl in India, the wild chickens in some areas of Italy likely weren't original junglefowl, but were instead feral domestic chickens that reverted to their wild build and behavior upon being abandoned by humans. Those wild chickens of northwestern Italy lived on through the Middle Ages in a feral state after the extinction of the Greco-Roman coop chickens and became the Leghorns we know today. A lot of people don't realize that Leghorns are often are good free-rangers.
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Post by stc1993 on Nov 20, 2023 20:28:22 GMT -5
Fitzgerald GA is the SWGA town known for wild chickens. I use to go thru there a lot working for Lamar sign co. Don't remember ever seeing any.
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Post by bullfrog on Nov 20, 2023 22:14:21 GMT -5
Fitzgerald GA is the SWGA town known for wild chickens. I use to go thru there a lot working for Lamar sign co. Don't remember ever seeing any. That's an interesting history. The Feds, in conjunction with the GFC and other state wildlife agencies, brought in a few pairs of wild red junglefowl from India. They set up a hatchery at Fitzgerald and shipped thousands of red junglefowl all over the South to stock for hunting, like how ringneck pheasants are stocked in the West. Chickens are after all, pheasants. Several thousand were released in Florida. None took and all the birds released into the wild died out quickly. No official cause was discerned, but I strongly believe (and I argue in the book) that it was lack of immunity to North American diseases that did the red junglefowl in. When the project failed, some were released (or escaped) around Fitzgerald and they interbred with local domestic chickens, which would have conferred immunity into the bloodline for many poultry diseases. Therefore the birds around Fitzgerald are hybrids between wild junglefowl and domestic chickens. Some pure red junglefowl from the project were given (or smuggled) to private breeders and biologists. Most of the birds were too finicky to disease and died out in captivity, but a few survived and bred and those became the source of what the chicken hobby and biologists call the "Richardson" strain of red junglefowl. In the decades since, wild red junglefowl in Asia have crossed with free-range domestic chickens and now most red junglefowl in the wild are hybrids. The Richardson junglefowl in captivity in the U.S. are now the most genetically pure red junglefowl on earth. Think what happened to American bison. There are actually lots of bison hybrids that look and act like bison, but genetically they have a lot of domestic cattle bred into them. It's just so happens that the wild genes dominate. So it is with junglefowl. The wild birds in Asia still look and act like red junglefowl, but they have a lot of domestic genes buried under the surface.
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Post by bullfrog on Jan 24, 2024 22:57:57 GMT -5
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Post by tonyroma on Jan 24, 2024 23:02:02 GMT -5
Damn chickens got some spurs!!!
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Post by stc1993 on Jan 24, 2024 23:41:08 GMT -5
I've seen quite a few roosters that look like the top picture. I have a cousin out of Columbus GA that raises roosters if you know what I mean. He loves them just like a favorite pet. LOL
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Post by bullfrog on Jan 24, 2024 23:51:35 GMT -5
I've seen quite a few roosters that look like the top picture. I have a cousin out of Columbus GA that raises roosters if you know what I mean. He loves them just like a favorite pet. LOL The top bird is a cross of these two: The small one with yellow legs is his father. The large one with black legs is likely a cousin (came off the same farm). Both breeds were historically used for sport.
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Post by stc1993 on Jan 25, 2024 2:47:31 GMT -5
That last rooster has some big legs and spurs.
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Post by cyclist on Jan 26, 2024 11:27:56 GMT -5
I want to eat real chicken, not the human manipulated monstrosities that are in our stores and restaurants. Dam organic chicken is 35$ or more. Gonna try some meat chicken/egg layer varieties.
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Post by bullfrog on Jan 26, 2024 12:09:38 GMT -5
I want to eat real chicken, not the human manipulated monstrosities that are in our stores and restaurants. Dam organic chicken is 35$ or more. Gonna try some meat chicken/egg layer varieties. The game mixes I raise end up being a lot like a game bird like wild turkey or quail in terms of flavor and texture. My favorite way to have them is to pluck the birds and smoke them at low temp like cooking pork ribs. The breasts are plump and tender. The leg meat is pretty tough but if you cook it slow or alternatively cut it off the bone and tenderize or grind it, its as soft soft as anything else. Dedicated laying varieties usually have scrawny breasts. Much smaller than the gamefowl in proportion to their body size. Meat breeds are bred to grow fast and will depend on you shoveling large amount or commercial feed to them. The end result will be healthier than store bought for the reason you’re controlling the variables instead of a factory, but you’re still subject to many of the flaws of mass produced birds; birds bred for unnatural growth and dependent on processed feed. You can help that if you can produce a lot of produce for them to eat. Some sort of heritage free-ranger will be what it will take to give you a mostly natural diet and meat with a minimal amount of manipulation. And it takes time to grow those out. If you raise them like I do, you’re looking at a couple of years worth of growth and reproduction before they’re self-sustaining enough to support a lot of harvesting. You treat them about like you would a flock of wild turkeys living on your land. You manage the flock for growth and health, then when numbers get very high you can open the flock up to widespread harvesting without sacrificing your breeding stock.
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Post by Crkr 23 on Jan 26, 2024 14:04:23 GMT -5
Mr BF, you mentioned that you had Marek's disease go through your flock. Is it possible that Marek's may be responsible for the declining wild turkey numbers in the southeast?
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Post by cyclist on Jan 26, 2024 14:12:59 GMT -5
Thanks Bullfrog, good info. I am not interested in breast meat, the worst part of any fowl in my opinion. Will try some heritage varieties and go from there, we are chicken raising novices but just about have the infrastructure ready and we have the space for them to roam and lots of good compost to go through.
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Post by mackeralsnatcher on Jan 26, 2024 15:45:45 GMT -5
They are some really pretty birds.
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Post by swampdog on Jan 26, 2024 16:57:56 GMT -5
One of the secrets to raising your own meat birds is to butcher them at a younger age. That’s how we did it growing up. We recently butchered roosters out of a buddies laying flock when they were about 2/3rds grown. Excellent fried chicken. I noticed most bbq chicken is smaller than what we can buy at the store. The store wants to sell you a huge fryer. They’re not very flavorful in my opinion.
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