RARE FEATHERS. January 2016

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1 RARE FEATHERS Rare Feathers January September

2 PATRON TBA PRESIDENT Ellis Dick VICE PRESIDENT Dave Brown SECRETARY Jill Weaver TREASURER Corinna Woods PROMOTIONS OFFICER Deanne Ledger WEBSITE ADMINISTRATOR Isaac Walker SHOW MANAGER Corinna Woods 2

3 TRBPC Meeting at RSL Club Next meeting will be on Friday February 5th,2016 at 7.00 p.m. at the RSL, Glenorchy; in the yellow bowls/croquet room. Please note the slightly earlier time of 7 pm. ARTICLE CONTRIBUTIONS Don t forget, anything of interest for the newsletter would be very much appreciated. BREEDERS DIRECTORY If anyone would like their name in the directory please send an with the relevant information to the secretary, or phone or post. All our newsletters have a membership form which can be used to update your breeds you now keep, etc. (it is beneficial to everyone if contact details, etc. are kept up-to-date) Our directory raises quite a few dollars for our club and I am currently up to ninety different breeders listed in the directory. Anything with feathers can go in the directory, pheasants, x-breeds, cockatiels, it doesn t matter what. A lot of people with chooks and waterfowl also keep other birds and it would be good to see our directory eventually become a much sought after booklet. Keep in mind when requesting what contact details you would like to give that it is important to give your locality so people have some idea where they need to travel. (Your actual residential address is not necessary). 3

4 A Day at the Sprent Fair Once again I trotted along to the Sprent fair. It was just down the road and my daughter-in-law was one of the organisers so I thought I had better put in an appearance. Maurice Young came along also. Ellis and Lorna Dick were invited to come and judge the chooks but were unable to attend. The Sprent school asked me if I would prepare their show birds for them, which I did. I had the assistance of two students who asked a lot of interesting questions from do they mind being washed to why they had feathers on their legs (they were Langshans). The Langshans received a first and a second and a buff leghorn received a third card. Maurice kept me company for the day as I ran a sales table for our club. I was surprised when I had a tally up that the table turned over nearly $200 for the day. Maurice brought along some Hamburghs and Langshans for display and I took some Japanese Bantams, silver penciled Wyandotte bantams and some barred New Hampshires for display. The school is a farm school, so they had ducks, turkeys and peacocks there for people to see too. Picture and article by Jill Weaver. Maurice Young in the background. 4

5 AGM outcome Our AGM was well attended with some new faces and some old faces. There were seventeen members present and two guests. On behalf of the club I would like to welcome Ellis Dick a long time member, on becoming our new president. Also I would like to welcome Deanne Ledger back as our promotions officer. Deanne took a back seat for a couple of years but is now having an input again. Dave Brown also was an active member of the club when it first began and it is nice to see him back involved in the club as vice president. Judi Walker did not run for president again as she found it difficult to dedicate herself to the club s needs as well as all her other commitments. Thank you Judi for all the effort you put into the club. We do not have a patron as yet due to Posie having too many commitments this year to continue on. If anyone has any suggestions please let us know. Isaac will continue to look after the website for us but will not have such an active role in the club anymore. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Isaac for all the work he did fixing up the constitution and attaching the code of conduct. Isaac also lodged the changes with the Department of Justice for me. If anyone would like to see the updated constitution just ask and one will be posted or ed, or download one off our website. Corinna s pet chook with chickens. 5

6 MEMBERSHIP DRAW As the membership draw was so successful last year we will once again offer a gift to be won at our next annual show in August. (Remember this will be in Devonport this year). All financial members will go into a draw to win a prize. Members will need to have renewed their membership on or before our annual show. (Membership falls due on June 30 th every year with a two month lee-way allowing membership to be paid with entry fees at our annual show.) This year the prize will be a serving plate with stand. Approximately 30 cm in diameter it will look lovely on a stand or better still with a pavlova sitting atop! This design can be found on many other things, such as teapots, cups, trays, oven mitts, etc. making the prizes of more interest. The prize will be given out at our annual show, the draw taking place during presentation when the raffle is drawn. Any financial member not in attendance, if they should be lucky enough to win will have their gift posted or delivered to them. Pictured below membership prize. 6

7 Below is the new Code of Conduct that all members will be asked to abide by. Club Code of Conduct (by-law) This document shall detail the Code of Conduct required by Rule 30 of the Tasmanian Rare Breeds Poultry Club constitution, established to compliment and assist that document. All members upon signing as members of the Club shall agree to this code of conduct, per Rule 8, Section 1 of the same constitution and may be removed as members per the procedures outlined in the constitution for serious violation of this code. 1. All members shall abide by and uphold the Animal Welfare Act 1993 and any other act that may legally replace it. All members shall be expected to be held to the highest standards of poultry husbandry. 2. All members shall conduct themselves civilly with other members and attendees of any Club event. 3. Individuals may only act on behalf of the Club where they have been given the authority to do so by the management committee or greater membership of the Club in the manner(s) prescribed by the constitution. 4. All members shall strive to uphold club values and not work to the detriment of the club. 5. Members shall be required to be honest, ethical and civil in their breeding, raising and selling of poultry, and not perpetrate scams, knowingly and willingly misinform buyers about poultry they are selling, or otherwise act in a criminal or unethical way. 6. All members shall abide by rules and regulations required by any venue or host of the Club. This code may be amended by the members of the club at a general meeting organised as per the constitutions guidelines. Sufficient effort must to be made to notify all members of any amendments made at that meeting, who shall have 30 days from the date of the meeting to submit a dispute. Upon receipt of a dispute any amendments made at that meeting shall then be suspended until the next regular general meeting of the club, where members may vote again to reinstate the amendments and the member in dispute may make their case. Any amendments passed twice in such a manner may not be disputed again unless it is because of their illegality under any relevant laws of Australia or Tasmania or the constitution or by-laws of the Club. 7

8 JUDGES FOR THE 2016 National Congratulations to our new club president. Ellis has been invited to judge at the 2016 National Poultry Show. He has been asked to judge in four sections. Faverolles Bantam and Faverolles Standard and Dorking Bantam and Dorking Standard. These sections will be judged on the Friday. Also the following people from Tasmania were invited to judge. Denis Lyne was invited to judge Campines, Peter Spotswood Old English Game standard division 2, Tim Poley Old English Game standard division 3, Eian Rayner Sebrights and John Watson Frizzles. Congratulations to those people and I am sure they will do Tassie proud with their expertise. Dutch Bantams There are two people in Tasmania now breeding Dutch bantams. Already fertile eggs have been sent to the mainland, the little Dutchies being much in demand. Dutch bantams are even smaller than Japanese bantams, the adult males weighing in at just grams. We might even see some at our next annual show! Australia was very lucky with a yellow colour gene arriving at Avgen unknown in birds from Richard Pemble. Yellow partridge should not be confused with gold partridge. The yellow is a sport coming from a recessive gene discovered in the gold partridge. (For more information on the Dutch Bantam there is an excellent article in the Aug/Sept issue of the Australasian Poultry magazine.) GET WELL LORNA It is with much relief that the club would like to wish Lorna Dick a speedy recovery after under-going major surgery. Lorna underwent heart by-pass surgery on 12th December and arrived back home a couple of days before Christmas. Hopefully Lorna you will back managing a therapeutic shopping trip or two before too long! 8

9 I have it on good authority that Vorwerks are coming to Tasmania so I have copied an article I came across for those that do not know the breed. 9

10 LINE BREEDING With the new breeds of poultry being brought in by Avgen most people purchasing stock will end up with small numbers to work with and all of them will be closely related. With that in mind I thought it would be worthwhile to do an article on line breeding. Another name for line breeding is in-breeding or selective breeding. Genetically, in-breeding is the mating of two fowl, or animals that are related to one another. Selective breeding gives us certain desirable traits, cows that give more milk, sheep with more wool, chooks that lay more eggs and so on. The opposite of in-breeding is referred to as the out-and-out system. Line breeding is a good thing but must be done sensibly. For example: - Progressive Retinal Atrophy (PRA) in canines. Carriers have normal vision but if one carrier is mated to another carrier it is likely one in four will go blind. By in-breeding, these numbers will be affected thus; one in four will go blind and three out of every four will have normal vision, thereby in-breeding brings these recessive genes to the surface where they can be removed from the breeding pool. Unfortunately we cannot breed animals based on a single gene, they come in two packages, one in the sperm and one in the egg so while eliminating one pair of undesirable genes the offspring are slowing becoming more homozygous (having identical alleles for a single trait) which may quickly improve some characteristics but will also bring other undesirable combinations to the surface. It should be said that some of the best examples of poultry are owned by breeders that have line bred their poultry all their lives. D. H. Pierce claimed his Wisconsin Red Shufflers were line bred for thirty five years without any loss of vigour or type. Some old timers used the same cock over all their female offspring until the cock died from old age, this being as many as ten years plus. The more lines you have room to work with the better. Just two lines is the standard line breeding pattern, three lines is referred to as spiral breeding or clan mating, and four lines is called rotational line breeding. Whatever pattern is chosen there must be good records kept and all chooks made identifiable. Wing bands, coloured or numbered leg bands and toe punching are the norm. Cock fighters have been breeding birds for hundreds if not thousands of years using line breeding to select what type of bird they wanted. A good breeder of fighting birds would never breed away from his own birds unless that cock bird was one of his own blood line anyway. Well known breeder of game birds Tan Bark states good breeding is only a matter of intelligent selection of brood fowl (Tan Bark, Game Chickens and How to Breed Them, 1964, p. 27). Using the methods these breeders used one can still breed for type, fertility, egg production, etc. 10

11 A well-known form of breeding used was called three times in and once out this system was used to produce what was referred to as a pure strain. It works thus: first generation Hen Cock ½ hen ½ cock; second generation Hen to son, Cock to daughter ¾ hen ¾ cock; third generation Hen to grandson Cock to granddaughter 7/8 hen 7/8 cock; fourth generation Hen to grandson Cock to granddaughter 15/16 hen 15/16 cock; now in the fifth generation the 15/16 hen is put with 15/16 cock. Then choose the very best and start again. Off spring from these matings were known as seed stock and the very best of these would be chosen to spiral breed with. Thus were the breeders lines kept pure with no outside blood ever being introduced. 11

12 Ulverstone Poultry Pavilion The Ulverstone council had to decide what to do with the poultry pavilion at the Ulverstone showgrounds. Unlike most pavilions it is not owned by the show society but belongs to the local council. The decision was made (thank goodness) not to pull it down seeing how the shed was sound but to give it a new outer skin. The pavilion now boasts a completely new roof with full length skylights, all new windows, new sparrow proof ventilation covers, all new iron cladding right round in a nice blue colour and roller doors. The roller doors are great, gone are those old heavy, very rusty sliding contraptions. There is heaps of light pouring in every corner of the shed, the new clean windows are probably letting in twice the light of those old dirty, dusty ones. The pavilion is supposed to be completely bird proof, that time will tell. On a slightly lesser note nothing much has changed on the inside. The wheelchair access ramp has been left outside and there is talk of getting a permanent cement one, not quite as fancy as the one at Wynyard. The fuse box was condemned and a new one put on the outside of the building and I think we are getting new wiring on the inside. We also had some new plumbing installed with taps that can be locked (remove the top bit so they cannot be turned on). 12

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14 TASMANIAN RARE BREEDS POULTRY CLUB INC. MEMBERSHIP FORM Thank you for applying to join the TRBPC Inc. Please complete this form and post it with your payment, money order or cheque made out to Tasmanian Rare Breeds Poultry Club Inc., to:- Mrs. Jill Weaver, secretary 10 Fernybridge Rd., SPRENT. Tasmania Name Address City, State, Postcode Country Phone Mobile Fax Age (Please indicate if a junior) Adult (16 years or older) Junior (under 16 years of age) junior date of birth Do you want your details included in our TRBPC Breeders Directory? Yes No (Please circle) This information can be given out to people who are looking for the particular breed you have. (Please circle what information you would like given out) Mobile Home Phone web-site address Locality Membership rates: Adult member $15 Junior member $5 Family/Not-for-profit $25 Annual membership fees fall due on 30 th June, with a 2 month leeway until the end of August Please find enclosed a cheque/money order for $ Donation $ What Breeds do you currently keep? Please indicate size, Large or Bantam All members of the TRBPC Inc. are asked to actively support the clubs activities and objectives and follow the clubs constitution. 14