Developing My Own Breed Of Large Gamefowl For Free Range Survival (Junglefowl x Liege)

[Florida Bullfrog]

Lots to update.

The terrorfowl chicks are out free ranging again. By day 2 of being penned they looked well. When I turned them back out they ran back to the dog fennel patch in front of the coop door but ignored it in favor of the grass underneath it. There’s been no losses that I am aware of and the birds continue to look healthy. I have another 31 growing out in a ground brooder. I’m going to keep these on fresh grass up until when I turn them out to free range. That might temper their urge to run to succulent toxic plants when turned out.

I obtained 5 new pure Liege from the local breeder who has supplied all of my previous Liege. They also had a brood cock pegged for the strew pot so I obtained him for my buddy. He’s quite proud of the brood cock.

Unfortunately, I had them packed too tight for transport and the brood cock sliced open the back of one of the hens. Then dung got in it. Pic is of the original wound after washing.

It is healing nicely. I am dosing her with Tylan and she also gets nitrofurazone twice a day on the wound. I think she will be fine. In the hospital pen she adopted a Cracker chick that was slipping in to eat her food.

Finally, the turkey hen lost all but one of her chicks. But that one chick is something else. He runs with her across the whole farm. They spend much of the day on my deer food plot on the far end of the farm with a wild turkey hen. I think that chick is a rooster. If that chick survives to adulthood, it will be an amazing free range survivor.

 

[Red Mangrove]

Extremely handsome broodcock. He looks like a mythological animal

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Updates.

1. Super chick (the terrorfowl being raised by the turkey) finally disappeared a few days ago. So he is kaput.

2. The wounded wheaten Liege hen healed nicely and is in a coop with Sherman the Thai x aseel stag I got from Bigtom Turkey.

3. Natural selection won out over the terrorfowl chicks after all. When the daily summer rains started a couple of weeks ago, they started to die by the day. In the end, 10-12 have survived (I usually stop counting at 10 with a couple more at least running around). That’s about a 10% survival rate. That’s what it originally was when I produced Gen 1 Indo and Gen 2 Azog. These are Gen 3. I just produced more than the previous generations. The survivors are the same 10-12 that never struggled to begin with. Its a nice mix of pullets and stags. I don’t have many pics yet, but as they grow out I’ll take plenty. This is a pullet that is typical of them:

I have no doubt now that the free range sickness is either a gut parasite or browsing toxicity that some chickens are prone to and others are not.

Here is a very important lesson: both Indo and Azog had the parasite/toxicity when they first free ranged and I babied them, giving them both ivermectin and other special care and they survived, never to have it again. Yet because they did get it to begin with, they produce offspring that are prone to get it. Only a small percentage of their offspring don’t ever get it.

I made a mistake by not starting this project by spamming hundreds of Gen 1s instead of the only 2 or 3 dozen I produced. If I had 200 Gen 1s and a 10% survival rate with chicks that never got the parasite or toxicity, I still would have 20 chickens to choose from to make the next generation. And its much more likely the next generation would carry more immunity (or avoidance if its a toxicity). I’ve done this with my Crackers (which I’ll update shortly in their own thread) and the offspring they are making from individuals that have never showed symptoms are exceptionally healthy with no intervention from me.

In other words, its not enough to have a chicken that gets symptoms of an ailment and survives. You want to breed chickens that never show symptoms to begin with. If a chicken gets sick, cull it. Period.

Which means…

Indo and Azog need to be culled. For now, as they provide so much hawk deterrence when one or the other is on free range, I am going to allow them to stay. I will out of experimentation and curiosity breed them to my new pure Liege to see if chick survival rates are different. But eventually they must be purged from the project. They produce too many chicks that succumb to the environment. Especially compared to my new generation Crackers that are thriving where the terrorfowl are not.

The next generation of breeders will be the surviving Gen 3s and what I produce off of Sherman. I will likely pair him both directly to Gen 3s and well as take his offspring off of the pure Liege and also cross them to the Gen 3s.

Once resilience is worked out, I have another hurdle. The more diverse the terrorfowl genetics are (meaning the more individual Liege and aseel are in the line), the more they level out to normal chicken sizes. I though some would randomly be Liege sized. But so far the survivors are coming out just slightly large for a gamefowl. Azog has stopped growing and is only the size of a Liege hen. Indo is slightly smaller than a Liege hen. Some of the Gen 3s may end up large but its too early to tell.

So those are my failures.

Some successes are that Indo’s predatory nature seems to be set. Gen 3s on other farms hunt down baby rats and do other carnivorous deeds above and beyond what their owners are used to seeing. Some show nocturnal hunting tendencies as Indo’s sister Shadow did. Also, the Gen 3s are a lot more resilient on other farms, both from hatching eggs and chicks started here, further confirming the environmental nature of what ailes them here. Some Gen 3s on other farms have come out a reasonably gigantic size.

So at this point I’m still working on what’s under the hood, and the best way to do that is spamming and culling. This project is still likely years in the making.

Indo is currently on free range. Azog is cooped. Indo can never keep sickles, always breaking them in a fight. I have to constantly keep him and Azog apart when entering a coop and the other being on free range, or they’ll charge past me and go at it

Its going to be a slow burn waiting for the Gen 3s to grow out.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

These are some of the Gen 3s drying off after a storm. The last pic is the most significant. The brown hen is a large American game that’s around 3 years old. The terrorfowl stag to her right, who is quite young, is already larger than her. He and a couple of other stags of similar size may end up being large birds.

Something else of import is how far some of them range independently. At random times I find them in the far reaches of the farm where none of my chickens normally go.

Finally, I saw two of the terrorfowl stags fight this morning, and then do it more like wild turkeys. They wrap their necks around each other before kicking. Has anyone observed orientals spar this way?

 

[Bigtom Turkey]

Mine do. I had a pen fight early on between an American and one of my Orientals. The American's feet were all tore to heck. But they Oriental's feet were fine.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Someone shot me a question about Indo last year. I don’t remember who and can’t find the message. If you’re reading this, please send me a PM. Seems like it was a regular participant in the thread. You’ll remember what it was about.

 

[hyldemoer]

I'm creating this thread as a journal for a breeding project I've been planning for some time. I would like to take my small junglefowl hybrids that I've been raising for the last year and a half and increase their size and attitude substantially. They've already proven themselves to be great survivors in the predator-dense Florida woods. But they're very small and their practical use for meat and eggs is limited. Not totally non-existant, but not ideal. I'd like to have a larger version that's three times the size and has some more anti-predator fire. A bird that can respond to a predator in other ways besides simply being agile and avoiding being caught. To some degree, this bird already exists in the American gamefowl (albeit not as large as I'm imagining). But I want to utilize my junglefowl which have proven their hardiness. I've been compiling genetic materials over the past year and refining my junglefowl. Here's where' I'm starting:

1. My junglefowl hybrids. Their info is located in this thread:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...ngle-fowl-in-the-american-deep-south.1309995/

Here is my chosen bullstag to sire my F1s:

View attachment 2380952

I have many junglefowl hybrid stags, but this one is my favorite that has survived two major rounds of culling. He has an athletic build and good feathering and so far I like his attitude. Human aggression was a problem in my first generation birds that I've seemed to have purged from the next generation. Of course only further generations will tell for sure. I call this bullstag "Number 1" because of a picture in which I labeled him "1" of several stags.

2. The Liege. I obtained 3 quality Liege pullets just recently. Originally I was going to avoid using the Liege in my project, but I've been so impressed with them I think they'll suit my purposes fine for my F1s. I actually wasn't expecting to find Liege on a farm near me, but low and behold I was surprised. Big thanks to hydlemour and Didby57. I don't yet have good pictures of the pullets, but this afternoon I took a quick video of one of the pullets right after a rainstorm in the breeding coop I'm going to keep them with until I get a hatch from them and Number 1.

I want to see how much of the JF traits will pass on to the F1s. So far the JF traits seem to dominate anything I cross them to, including leghorns, Wyandottes, and OEGB. The Wyandotte cross I have running around is the first one I've produced that involved breeding the JF to something other than a straight comb. I presume that I'm going to lose the straight comb on these F1s, but I suppose that also depends on what is floating around in the background of the Liege.

I have aseel on my farm I'm keeping in my back pocket in case I need to breed more fire into them, but I also understand that may introduce a whole slew of other traits I may not want. My brother is going to undertake a project crossing aseel to both Liege and the JF, so we'll compare notes on our F1s to see what we like best. My original plan was to use the aseel for my F1s to the JF, but my choosen strain of aseel isn't showing the size I want. I'm guessing the aseel I have are going to top out around 5lbs at the most. I also have access to some straight Americans if I decide the next gen needs them.

I'm thinking to get the look somewhat close to what I want, its going to take junglefowl x Liege, then Junglefowl x F1. I should get some straight combs on the next gen. It will depend on how much size will be sacrificed on the next gen of crosses. Of course, if I like the F1s right off the bat, I'll formulate a plan to lock the traits in.

I'd love for my final bird to look mostly like my JF hybrids just much bigger. But I also want a functional bird first and foremost so selection for appearance is secondary. A definite must is for my final bird to be able to launch itself high up into a tree to roost. I basically want the final bird to do anything a wild turkey can. I have a few JF stags with abnormally large wings I may have to cross in. I can see a definite difference in vertical take off between the birds with very large wings and those with normal wings. All of them can fly up to roost fine but the big winged birds can shoot straight up into a large pine to the branches of their choosing in the first flight. That's going to take bigger wings on the Liege and also shaving a few pounds off.

Thanks for the shout out!! We are so glad the Liege are working out for you. We are going to have more in a few months.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

This stag is shaping up to be my favorite Gen 3 bird. He’s not the largest stag. There’s one much bigger. But I like the storky but balanced look of this one. Sometimes I find him wandering and foraging far from home. When I move all the terrorfowl to the woods paddock, I may leave him out and let him develop on the periphery of the flock.

 

[Bigtom Turkey]

He looks very oriental like. Long legs and neck, low tail. Overall a nice stag.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

He looks very oriental like. Long legs and neck, low tail. Overall a nice stag.

Sherman is looking nice. He’s beginning to fill out. I think he’s going to look great once he molts. He’s crowing every day now. He started briefly several weeks ago and stopped. But has now started again and sounds more mature when he does it.

I am excited by both the vitality and size I believe he is going to impart to the line. He has far surpassed Azog and Indo in height and is beginning to match them in muscle.