New Video of the Red Pharaoh Chickens
Quick little video here for those who haven’t seen it. This shows a Red Pharaoh Rooster and two Hens at the age of about 15 weeks. The girls are laying, they lay very lightly tinted brown eggs. They are about the size of a typical medium sized chicken egg, much larger than a pure Fayoumi.
The Red Pharaoh Chicken is a cross of a Egyptian Fayoumi Hen and a Rhode Island Red Rooster.
Not trying to sharpshoot but you’ve got a typo at the beginning of the video, elegant, you’ve got elgant.
How would I ever survive without such help?
Lol… no idea. I mean it is a HUGE deal to mistype something
The birds are beautiful though. How often are the hens laying? As often as Rhode Islands?
Jack, you mentioned being interested in partnering With someone on raising these birds in the future and selecting for certain traits. If you’re interesting in really testing their resilience/self-sufficiency I would be interested. Don’t have a background with chickens or the infrastructure in place but have the space and interest and follow directions well. May be too early for that kind of trial but it did pique my interest. Thanks.
Scott
MSB and PermaEthos Founder
The RIR x FAY cross is beautiful, that’s for sure. And I interested to see how your project turns out as compared to others. That particular cross has been going on for some time (since before the 1980). There are various papers that have been put out in such scientific publications as the International Journal of Poultry Science regarding the cross and what the results have been. Here are a couple that might interest you as you work on your own project.
A Study on the Laying Performance of Cross (FAY × RIR) Chicken
under Different Plans of Feeding:
http://www.pjbs.org/ijps/fin37.pdf
Genotype diet interaction in Fayoumi and Rhode Island Red layers and their crosses:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2713283/pdf/1297-9686-19-2-267.pdf
Egg production performance of RIR x Fayoumi and Fayoumi x RIR crossbreed chicken under intensive management:
http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd16/11/rahm16092.htm
Wow papers like that hurt my head. What I got out of it is that
1. The RIR Rooster to Fayoumi Hen is a better egg gain than the Fayoumi Rooster to the RIR hen.
Good that is my direction.
2. That I really question the first paper because it reports that the Fayoumi Crosses and the Fayoumi pures both lay bigger eggs than the Rhode Islands. Man I do not know what type of fricken RIRs they have in Asia or some sort of supper sized Fayoumi but that just isn’t how it works. A strait fayoumi in my experience lays an egg about the size of a bantam hen. I’ve not weighed eggs and gotten scientific on on this but the cross lays an egg a bit smaller than a pure RIR but that is a nice improvement.
3. All the work done with this cross is in Asia. That explains why there is so little info on it and again the numbers given for Rhode Island pure bred birds in at least one paper make me question the actual genetics at play.
4. All the work has been done with nothing but the F1 cross. No out breeding or attempt to create a reproducible result and therefor a true new breed seems to have been done. Good that is my goal. I like to do things first.
This is typical of the so called “scientific approach” rather than the true development of useful animals and land races practiced by farmers for centuries before everyone thought you needed letters after your name (or to never make a typo) to be qualified to do it.
In spite of some of the tone I do thank you for the info and any more you can point me at, I will up the caffeine, fire up the printer and wade though all the fluff to find what ever usable information I can in it.
this is a technique based on understanding which works very well for young kids who haven’t yet developed the mental maturity to deal with abstracts so need to have the physical objects to understand how numbers work. It is totally inappropriate for older kids who have the capacity to understand abstract concepts. Simple memorization which used to be the norm, is what people used to be taught and that will work as well, but is harder in some ways to retain.how much memorized stuff do you retain? ,so understanding the concepts of math at an early age is useful.
Once you get into higher math it’s…I think..mostly theoretical so would be impossible to use this technique anyway…how would you represent in physical terms e=mc squared? Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach, and those who can’t teach, teach teachers is too often ..not always by any means, but way too often.. the case in public education.
Jack
Can you make an JPG or equivalent of your with details on your breeding program so far?
Details so far?
I crossed a RIR Rooster with a Fayoumi Hen. We lost 6 chicks to a rat that got in the brooder. What is left is 1 rooster and 2 hens, you just saw them. They are a bit bigger then the Fayoumi, they leg eggs that are a bit bigger as desired. You just saw all three that exist. There are no more Pharaohs or details at this time.
The reality is with only one F1 trio we don’t and won’t know where we are for a time. I have to now breed the rooster to his sisters just to even know what an F2 will be like. Even then I need some others to know if it will be repeatable.
With that you know everything that is and everything I know.
I haven’t done things like weigh the birds and get % of size increased or done so with the eggs. They are bigger that is sufficient for the time. I am not trying to breed a show bird or even make this scientific, just good old fashioned farmer selected breeding.
Keep Your X bred RIR & F Rooster & Pullets separated from All Your other Breeds , sit the eggs You get from them , Breed them back to each other , & then breed parents to the chick’s when of age for 2 years . Get rid of the birds with traits You don’t want . Then You’ll have a Complete New Breed .
Yea that isn’t sufficient not at all.
I’m in on doing parallel development of this here in Arkansas. I have about 80 egg birds AgriTrue no GMO no Soy, and keep coming back to RIR, though I have experimented with freedom rangers and now red stars due to my push for sustainable foragers on pasture. I have small to large tractors, though prefer true free range. The naked neckers do well as meat birds, though a healthy pastured cornish cross does better than most people give it credit. Still would love a single good dual purpose. Your “pheasant” chickens might be a better direction for me for leader follower silvopastures. My goal is a more naturalized bird, working against eons of breeding them dumb. Where is the best place to start and work with you?
I don’t think they will ever amount to a main stream meat bird. Something botique perhaps, but they are still small. Not as small as a Fayoumi but still a bit smaller then an RIR which really isn’t a good meat bird.
My experience with Rangers is they are great birds, get massive but they don’t make a product that is highly marketable. Especially considering the additional time needed. They have red bloody looking legs and thighs even when well cooked. I put one in a slow cooker for 3.5 hours and it still looked bloody. It wasn’t it isn’t and it is cooked and safe to eat but markets are tough to educate on something like that.
I hate to say it but now with a few years of real experience trying different breeds you really should stick with either Cornish cross or heritage whites. The goals of meat and egg birds are very different.
I want my egg birds small, using light feed and laying large eggs.
I want a meat bird to grow big and fast and eat a lot because I am only feeding it 8-12 weeks.
Egg birds need to be lithe and swift of foot to evade predators.
Meat birds need to produce a lot of meat, that is muscle and that means not lithe.
I even tried some Buff Orpingtons this year. Nice birds, but they look bigger than they are, mostly feathers and a pain in the ass to clean. Really narrow breasts.
Honestly after my latest round of culling roosters the best meat birds of the culls seemed to be Sex Link F2 roosters. They are compact and pretty dense, the breast is decent sized though not as big or dimensioned like any meat bird. These I’d also say are not good market birds but if you had a flock and wanted to hatch your own birds and get cull roosters at least worth the effort to butcher for personal use, these are the best so far.
They are the result of a RIR rooter breeding a Golden Sex Link. http://www.strombergschickens.com/product/Gold-Sexlink-Chicks/Best-Egg-Laying-Chickens
Ah, can’t have it all then? I’m still interested in them as forage egg birds. Anything to out pace the hawks and coyotes which hamper a free range system. Poco a poco. All my birds are free range egg birds, except when I need to partition some off in tractors, like for breeding or coop training. Have great RIR rooster. Need to get some hens to compare notes and swap genetics. Do you have a recommendation on hatcheries for these?
I’m willing to work on this with you. I have some RIR roosters that are about 2 months old so I could get some Fayoumi’s in the spring. My son wants to start breeding and hatching chicks so this would work out.
Plus I’ve lost something like 30 chickens since early summer and I finally caught a culprit in the act, it turns out I have a hawk problem (see http://www.my10acres.info/2014/10/predator-problem-culprit-spoted/) Therefore a faster bird might help
I think the best way to trade genetics with fellow home scale breeders is by trading eggs, probably easier to ship.
These look really beautiful. I’m down by San Antonio. I think we will pick up some Fayoumi hens and give it a go.
Here’s a wiki link to an artist that is seeking to create “the” cosmopolitan chicken…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koen_Vanmechelen
Jack, have you considered bringing in additional genetics from birds that have other desirable traits? For example having your coop with the two red pharaoh hens, but also a couple small coops with additional possibilities like black sex link hens and one with brown leghorns and breeding your rooster with each of the three? Those are just two breeds that came to mind for food to egg conversion and general coloring, but take your pick with whatever desirable breeds you think of.
Also, kinda interesting that your hens have a plumage similar to the partridge pattern, and also similar to campines, which i believe have some fayoumi in their genetics.