Breeders or Multipliers?

(Deutsche Version)

We have V in the following colors: Buff Columbia (hen) and Blue Buff Columbia (rooster). This is a good breeder, from this starter-flock one 5 year old Lady still lays regularly! Also this breeder must have taken good care of his males, for Fridolin is a wonderful rooster in character. V has also fed his flock super-well, his birds are all heavy and tall; the rooster is huge, weighing in at 14.22 lb on the baby scale. This breeder has already given up because of the Avian Flu hysteria, what a loss!

From W we bought only one lady, she's a Blue Buff Columbian, but not pure. She has wrong cushion markings, wrong feet color and wrong hackles for starters. Nevertheless this hen is our biggest girl and although she is over 4-years-old, is still laying! Frida is the alpha-hen of our main-flock. W fed his birds well, but his roosters are asocial monsters;-( He kept them separated in way too small of pens without any range/run attached to the cage/pen. The big male birds can't even stand up straight or take a few steps, they only get out a few weeks for hatching-egg-production.

These two lines are related somehow, I don't know how, but they originate from the same blood-line in the first place.

From A we bought 1,3 Darks and 1,2 Partridges. In Austria we say 1,2 meaning 1 rooster with 2 hens. Sadly our Partridge cockerel died in a thunderstorm and we lost one Partridge female due to an apple falling from the tree right onto her head, what a shame;-( We also bought some Light hens from this breeder, but they all are way too small to breed from and one looks kind of dirty-white with lots of black markings in her back and cushion. Many of her birds have leg problems, one has a crooked keel. We plan to use these birds only if we need to. This breeder is more a fancier, she feds her flock well but pets the birds;-( A does not breed with an aim in mind, so she has no real bloodline.

From S we've got Blue and Black hens, but we know by now from this multiplier that he has inbred heavily. We bought 7 hens, we only have 4 left;-( From the remaining 4 Ladies, only 1 Black & 1 Blue hen are almost big/heavy/tall enough to include them into the gene-pool - if they don't show signs of inbreeding depression until next year. Our unfortunate discovery was that he is a real BAD multiplier, he doesn't even have contact with his birds: he has employees to feed, cull and raise his birds, and he is CHEAP! He only has Brahma in Blue and Black (perhaps) because they are the most expensive colors here. We consider S to have kinda bloodline at least, all his birds are from the same source.

H is our first choice breeder for he has heavy, big, good looking birds. We bought 7 Partridge hens from him. His wife breeds Bantam-Brahma and they both feed very well. These breeders keep their birds with love and they have told us lots of medical things, thank you very much! As we talked to him on the phone today he stated that they have to cut back extremely, he is currently hatching only 9 eggs. Guess why - yep - the Avian Flu hysteria, he simply hasn't got the space to raise more. This is the only real blood line with records and pedigrees, and a very good line! We bought all the offspring from his last hatch: 1 female and 4 male chicks, Berta is raising them right now. Unfortunately we have discovered this year that he has "short legs" already in his flock, nevertheless his birds are WAY bigger than every other Brahma we bought so far.

From B we bought 2 Blue Partridge hens, but one died and the other one is so weak I could cry! She's running in the elderly-range already even though she was hatched in 2005;-( Alma has only around 4.5 lb! But she's eating and seems quite happy, so we try to make her a beautiful life as long as she's with us. But I don't plan to let a rooster ever ride her, he would for sure flatten her. He was the only breeder in Austria for this color. At the time we bought our birds, we thought color was the most important thing. This man doesn't treat his birds very well. He doesn't consult veterinarians on the one hand, but neither does he put ill or hurt birds out of their misery. He even tried to sell a bird with horribly bruised legs and toes to us because he knows that he's the only one breeding this color. He has no runs, only pens even for the females. With a total of 200 sold hatching-eggs the year before he was the biggest Austrian Brahma-breeder, he too has stopped due to flu-hysteria. Update: The second hen from this flock has died in her first year, too. We don´t consider B to have a real bloodline, he buys new breeding birds every year.

In U we thought we have found a breeder from Germany who has lots of space for 80 birds and many different colors of Brahmas and feeds his birds well, that's what he said to us. Reality is different, though. When we visited him we were shocked! He has no coops, he has no runs, he has no pens, he locks up all his 20 (yes, he lied) birds in several used and scruffy, tiny dog kennels 3x6 ft each. His birds are confined all the time;-( The kennels have no interior equipment and a concrete floor with no bedding, they reek of rottenness. They look like a horrible prison for any creature. His birds only get Layer Mesh, they have no dust bath, they seldom see the sun peeking through their cells, they are treated like shit. Those poor birds really suffer, seeing this made me cry. He's no breeder, He's not even a multiplier, He's a crooked salesman who shows you faked pics and sells the lowest quality birds you've ever seen. Sounds exaggerated? Well, a picture says more than a thousand words: his bird is the shabby, small and dirty pullet to your right. To your left my wife holds one of our own Lights (a cockerel) for you to compare. Out of his 70 hatching eggs we only got 6 chicks;-( Needless to say we're not going to breed his birds if possible. We consider U plays in the same leage as B, meaning he has no real bloodline.

(left: our bird (cockerel), right: Uwes bird (pullet))

If you're interested in the full name and/or contact-info of a specific breeder please don't hesitate to ask, we'll be glad to help if we can.

 
(Deutsche Version)



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last update: 09. Feb 2010