The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: CameronS on November 21, 2009, 07:02:06 pm
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Just wondering, what are these birds like for laying?
what are their characteristics?
Thanks
Cameron
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You'll find some decent, if basic, info on the RBST website on them. I know a few people semi-locally keep them and I'm quite likely to be going for Scots Dumpies myself whenever I get around to building a run et al. They're also kept at Palacerigg Country Park (Cumbernauld) and at Culross Palace, which has been very useful for me to be able to observe them for a while.
The info on eggs I've picked up on so far is that they're decent layers, but not as frequent as modern hybrids and their eggs, while medium, have a lovely creamy flavour.
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i'm hopefully going to collect two 6-8month old birds today. I'm not going to breed from them as they are apparently "Long Leged" therefore not correct to breed from, but out of interest, how rare are they?
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They're considered "at risk" at present... which means between 300 and 500 known about.
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Oh, well we now have two of them ;D , unfortunaltey i won't be breeding from them, as i have no Cockerel and they are both "long" legged
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Does the same breeding criteria not apply to all species - breed long legged to short legged and you get some long, some short and some correct length - then breed on from the correct length. If they are an 'at risk' breed would some allowance perhaps be made for leg length? Just asking - fairly novice on hen breeding.
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Cameron: I'd been considering 4 Scots Grey for a while as the thought of having around 2% of the world's (known) population in my back garden appealed somewhat .. but I was studying them at Palacerigg Country Park and noticed how much they ran about, using a lot of space and I don't think my run will be large enough to let them do that .. the dumpies are a little more.......... Annie like ;D
Annie: I've been wondering the same, but I suspect there'll be regulations (enforced or simply by custom) which would consider such an ongoing variation to be a different breed if allowed to continue. After all, the dumpie was created by selectively breeding smaller, shorter legged, scots grey ... uhm, someone correct me if that's not quite right.
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the dumpies are a little more.......... Annie like Grin
CALUM????????? Is that an insult or a compliment (fat frump, or cuddly Mum?)
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Cute, cuddly, lovely personality ... and like to have a rest and a natter instead of running around constantly ;)
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We were told that it was a basically a fatal gene that the short legged varaitly carry that causes them to be - dumpy, and that it is that deadly that one in 4 chicks carrying it, die in the egg, and that large breeders run some long legged ones with them to try and keep stocks healthy.
ours are going to be extremly free-range so have plenty of space, even if they don't need it ;D,
scots Greys are next on my list, Next year maybe when i get my other huts
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Cute, cuddly, lovely personality ... and like to have a rest and a natter instead of running around constantly ;)
Why, thank you, Kind Sir! (http://smileys.on-my-web.com/repository/Love/bear-176.gif)
I'll take that as a complement then? (http://smileys.on-my-web.com/repository/Surprise/surprised-013.GIF)
You got out of that by the skin of your teeth, didn't you?(http://smileys.on-my-web.com/repository/MSN_Emoticons/MSN-Emoticon-006.gif)
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We were told that it was a basically a fatal gene that the short legged varaitly carry that causes them to be - dumpy, and that it is that deadly that one in 4 chicks carrying it, die in the egg, and that large breeders run some long legged ones with them to try and keep stocks healthy.
That sounds like our apparently lethal bobtail gene in Brittanys - stats show that in a supposed litter of 8 from two bobtails, 2 will not implant having a double dose of the gene, 2 will have the normal full length tail gene, and the other four will have one of each gene so will be bobtails. So we mate bob to bob to get 67% bobs. If we mate bob to long we get 50/50 tails and bobs. But sometimes Mother Nature throws a spanner in the works! A friend in Norway had 8 pups from a bob to a long tail and got - 8 long tails! Not a bob in sight!!! And the people who don't want to take the chance, mate tailed to tailed and produce tailed dogs that they can dock of they have a gun licence
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The Scots Greys definately are active - you should see the speed ours go at. I'm sure they must have bred the dumpies so that they were easier to catch ;D
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We have two hens one long legged and one short legged both were hatched from the one batch of eggs bought on ebay and we had another two that were dead in the shell. They have the most fantastic personalities and in the summer the short legged one moved out of the chicken house and in with a family of pheasants which live in and around a fallen tree next to our field. She used to walk down in the morning with a hen pheasant and both would lay their eggs in our nestbox have breakfast and then leave. She has moved back in for Winter though.
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Scots Dumpies are definitely my favourite breed :love: they are really hardy, keep themselves out of trouble, can be excellent broodies and lay a decent number of eggs. I got a pair of white Dumpies from a chap on Lewis and they are stunning :D good choice!
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When we got ours they still had others needing homes, the ones left were mainley i think 8-18months old, mine are fantastic, setteled in extremly well, no problems, i'll pm the number to anyone considering, situated in Peat inn fife
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Hi - I am very new to this amazing site (thanks to Happy Hippy!) :wave:. I am not a genetivs expert but I believe the situation is that if two "dumpy" dumpies are bred, or two "lanky" ones, the result is either infertile or long- legged so it has to be a dumpy dumpy with a lanky dumpy...... then you end up with about 50% ratio of each ------ no wonder they are rare, they don't really help themselves! :D
The RBST website has a watchlist with the numbers of dumpys (ies??)...... however I am pretty sure that there are more around which aren't recorded.
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there must be something about the gow personaly i will stick to vodka
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there must be something about the gow personaly i will stick to vodka
;D ;D ;D Hey, I'm tee-total ! (mostly ::) but then, that doesn't help :-\ lol! ;D ;D ;D
Welcome Stuart :wave:
For anyone who doesn't know who you are - can you post a hello in the 'introduce yourself' section ?
Good to have you on board !
Karen
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i had trio scots dumpies once, they were rather flighty, kept them in run all winter, and left them out in spring to free range. they ran over hill and never saw them again! lethal gene put me off though.
i was told the reason the hens are chosen to have short legs is so they dont wander far from home, and the cockerals have long legs so he can protect his flock better.
scots greys are lovely but get them from good breeder. we hatched out about 5 different breeds of hatching eggs and only had probs with scots greys, 50% had deformed feet or splayed legs. apparently down to deficiency in parents diet. nice character though.
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Ho-ho! :D If they ran off over hill was it in direction of Scotland. The reason being that it is belived they were used to warn of xcellent info on http://www.scotsdumpy.co.uk/
:chook:
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cheeky, we live in scotland, but maybe they didnt like my accent, lol
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Ha - They were Gaelic speaking chucks! :D
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I have scotts dumpys and scotts greys and I do have to say i listend and rerd everything i could find out about them and though we want more so bought 2 incubaters and let a hen sit on them and out of 30 eggs we got 25 chics and 15 of them had short legs !
We sold some, the cockerals fattend up and eat. Thye are great to keep because of there wee short legs they go about realy slowly and quiely in days of old they used to be called creepers and used for gaurding camps as a alarm if someone was coming.
At the moment we have 1 large cockeral and 3 hens all short legs and 2 bantys and a banty cockeral and 1 scots grey banty cockeral and 2 banty hens.
Thye do stop laying about the end of october and dont start till febuary but well worth it lovely eggs and hey goo to do something for a rare breed.
Will be hatching somemore in the spring if anyone is looking for any (http://[img])[/img]
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Oooo Dundonald - I might be !
But then again if NLC close Palacerigg :'( I might buy all of theirs ;)
Please keep me in mind when loading the incy :wave:
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Im more in to the bartering happy how many dumpies for a piglet ???
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Erm, maybe more chickens than I've space for (only got a wee house area at the mo) lol!
I'm a huge fan of bartering too, I'm SURE we could come to an arrangement ;) ;D)
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Why doesn't anyone breed out the auto-inc-Dom lethal Creeper gene for a sex-linked-rec non-lethal dwarfing gene ?
This would still give long legged males and short legged females.
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lol - im awaiting to see how many hens 4 a piglet - ;D - so many weaners go for so little, our 1st tammies were 18 guineas at market - can you really feed and worm the sow properly and cover your costs for that? especially with market fees and travel . last year up here it was hard to find hens for less than £25 yet 3 years earlier they were £8. ;D suspense is killing me lol :o :o
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well if you had been to lanark today somebody brought saddelbacks down from inverness not sold at £12 each large whites approx 180/200kgs £12£15£17 anda sow for not mutch more saddelback weaners at 40/45kgs not sold at £28 you have to remember they were wanting to get rid
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thats shocking :o
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well if you had been to lanark today somebody brought saddelbacks down from inverness not sold at £12 each large whites approx 180/200kgs £12£15£17 anda sow for not mutch more saddelback weaners at 40/45kgs not sold at £28 you have to remember they were wanting to get rid
Oh god, I'll probably get hung for this, but surely if you've got a pig that you couldn't sell privately it would be far more cost effective (and less hassle) to have it sausaged and either keep them for yourself or sell to friends ? You'd certainly get your monies worth then ??? Rather than doing a round trip of 400 miles for no sale ?BUT having said that, 'good' pigs and weaners sell no problem at Lanark - I've seen them make fantastic amounts of money (and not all registered either) But I've also seen some offered, that I wouldn't take, even if they were free :-[ Bad condition, falsly described ones and some rather aggressive ones -as someone who takes pride in their pigs (and reputation) I would never keep pigs like that and I certainly wouldn't sell them on to become someone else's problem.
Karen x
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well i must have missed that sale when fantastic amounts of money changed hands for pigs i have yet to see any pig that left its owner in pocket the best one was a pietrain gilt registered that made £135 and only because i pushed it on buyers will tend to buy private where they can see the pigs and their environment and make a decision then the 10 saddelback growers would consume two bags of feed per day and you would need to keep them at least sixty days you work out the maths
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Okay, so it was away back in April, there were some saddleback crosses that went for over £60 a time, another sale I saw a sow with litter at foot (9 piglets I think, around 2-3 weeks old, I'm sure she went for more than £300) but yeah, in retrospect, most do sell for much less than they could be sold for privately and certainly less than it's cost to rear them. Perhaps bad planning in terms of when they were selling the weaners (better chance of good money in the spring when people are looking) or maybe not enough advertising privately forced them into going to market. A market's not my first choice for selling piglets, but if you've no other options ???
For the saddlebacks - the sums add up ;) you'd be looking at roughly £1400 to give you your finished product (feeding, kill & cut) 500 Kg pork, so if the growers cost, say £80 you'd be looking at a cost per Kilo, to produce, of roughly £4.40.
It's not a massive profit, but surely enough to justify doing it (well, for me anyway ;) ;D ;D ;D)
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some pork producers get away with theft last xmas somebody was advertising pork the cost of the pig was £1000 going by our weights in the summer a central scotland producer was charging £500 for a 40kilo carcase great if you can get it but voting with your feet springs to mind
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Yeah, great if you can get away with it ! :o lol !
I'm not that greedy ;) I just want to be able to justify keeping them (to myself more than anything !) and help a little with the rare breeds and trying to convince folk to give the meat a try over white supermarket stuff !
It's ALL about the pigs with me (not doing it for the money) ;)
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aye but you still gota cover your costs, if your fulltime with rarebreeds, they (and you) still gota eat!
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aye but you still gota cover your costs, if your fulltime with rarebreeds, they (and you) still gota eat!
Definately agree with you, they do cover their costs and we either get a wee bit extra cash or plenty of pork (depends how we feel at the time :yum:)
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Well my to went I sold half of one to someone for £130 which covere3d the purchase cost and the slaughter i have bartered 10 kilograms for loads of fish and prawns with the boys on the fishing boats and we have loads for ourselfs.
I would happily do it again and princess piggy il happily swap piglets for hens or turkeys ???
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well id like to get a purebred turkey trio next year, havent decided what breed yet(might start new thread with topic), have loads of hens but interested in russian orloffs.