While my family has always had a small backyard flock for fresh eggs, I started showing exhibition poultry when I was in the sixth grade. I got started showing through 4-H. One year when I was filling out the entry form, I saw poultry under the livestock category. I checked the box, figuring I could find out what it meant later. So that year I took the layers to the fair and learned that what I really needed for showmanship with my tiny hands was not the six pound layer, but a bantam or miniature chicken. The next spring, we were in Tractors Supply for something, and they happened to have baby chicks for sale. I managed to talk my parents into letting me buy one, to be named Chicken Little. We studied and practiced together all summer and by time the county fair came, we ended up winning the beginner division of showmanship. Surprised and elated we were told that I could compete at the state fair now. Our superintendent loaned me an old copy of the American Poultry Association Standard of Perfection (APA Standard) to study for the competition the next week. I spent the week studying the book, and having always been good at remembering what I read, I ended up doing fairly well at the state fair. During this process I got hooked on showing chickens and showmanship. My parents decided that if I was going to do this, I needed to start with some good birds.
Chicken Little was a Golden Sebright, not a great one, but a great pet, and I thought she was gorgeous and I wanted more like her. So we bought a good trio for me to start with. I eventually added more birds, both from buying some and managing to hatch some chicks of my own. And while I loved the Sebrights, and still say that when she’s showing off, there isn’t much prettier than a good Sebright hen, they have their issues. It was through Sebrights that I first started learning about genetics. What I learned about first was not the dominant and recessive Punnett square you learn in freshman biology class. No, what I got to learn was about recessive lethals, genetic load, low fertility, and hormonal imbalances. Needless to say, Sebrights are not an easy breed to raise.
In studying the breed history for showmanship, I had come across a reference to a breed called Nankin that was supposed to have contributed the color to the Golden Sebright. Curious I looked them up and found out the breed had nearly gone extinct during the Victorian Era, and that the only ones left were the descendants of broody hens kept on English game farms. I also read somewhere that brooding hens have a higher hatch rate than artificial incubators. Putting these two facts together, when I saw my first Nankins at the first Crossroads Show in Indianapolis in 2006, I managed to talk my parents into letting me get a trio to use as broody hens for the Sebrights. However, after raising the two breeds side-by-side, I realized how much easier the Nankins were. I also started using them for showmanship because they have a much calmer disposition than the Sebrights which can be a bit flighty and panicky at times. Eventually, when I went to college, I needed to reduce my numbers to make them easier for my parents to care for. I ended up selling all the Sebrights and only keeping a handful of Nankins.
I like to think that the birds I have now are better than the ones I started with. The Nankin name comes from Nankeen cotton. A cotton variety that has a similar color to the birds’ color. The Nankins is a very old breed, and nobody is quite sure where they originated. One theory is that they are from Southeast Asia because the Nankeen cotton is found in China. Another theory is that they are a generic European breed that was always around in the background, and was simply called “Yellow Bantam” before it was renamed after the cotton. Today they are most closely associated with Great Britain. There is only one color of Nankin, but two varieties (Rose Comb and Single Comb). The rose comb gene is a single major gene and is dominant to the single comb. Most breeders will tell you to only breed rose to rose and single to single. I did this for a while before trying a cross between the two. Some of my best chicks have come from this cross. I did not notice any degradation in comb quality of the rose combs as had be prophesized. While I still mostly breed rose-rose, single-single, I no longer worry about it to much. My rose combs have carried the hidden single gene ever since my first trio, so I regularly hatch single comb chicks from rose comb parents. I consider this a bonus, as I can keep and show in two varieties and classes in the same amount of birds and space as I would with one.
Above are some pictures I took of the birds last fall. While they are normally kept in small groups in a barn, I photographed them individually outside in a cage under natural light. When I first got my birds, they were a lighter color. The standard(s) call the boys a red chestnut and the girls light chestnut. I am not sure exactly what chestnut should look like, but I prefer the darker birds. This has been in part because my first hens would molt after their first year and be extremely patchy, in that each feather was a different shade than the neighboring feathers and some were so light, they were almost white. My first year, all but two of the cockerels had white in their wings as well. I kept only the two without white to breed from and tried to keep the darkest males each generation hoping they would produce darker daughters. I also noticed a trend for the pullets with shafting (a light colored shaft in a darker feather) in the wing bows to be the ones most likely to be patchy as they got older. By selecting ones that had the least amount of shafting and patchiness and the darker boys, I eventually ended up with solid colored hens, but it took a while. Meanwhile the boys have gotten much darker, and some are almost too dark now. With the color issues mostly sorted, now I am starting to focus more on comb shape and earlobe color which I let slide a bit in trying to get better feather color. My first rose combs had more of a blade than a spike in the back. They still are not a great representation of a rose comb, but they are improving. My boys now reliably have red earlobes, but I’m still working on the girls. While improved, they are still a work in progress, and as any breeder or judge will tell you, there is no perfect bird!
Thoughts From a Wandering Hoosier 