Talking Orpingtons’ w/Sara Batz
The president of the United Orpington Club joins us to explain the inner working of the poultry club
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Carey: 0:01
Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Carey Blackmon, here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. We're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.
0:14
Mhm.
Jennifer Bryant: 0:22
We're here on Poultry Nerds podcast with Sarah from the United Orpington club. I always want to say national. It's United. Yeah. It's
Sara Batz: 0:32
United.
Jennifer Bryant: 0:33
Yeah. So tell
Carey Blackmon: 0:35
how when clubs you not
Sara Batz: 0:36
well, and the, here's the story about this. Okay. This is a little nerd trivia'cause I'm all about that kind of thing. When I started during C-O-V-I-D-I had a whole lot of nothing to do. I was sitting at home getting paid to not work. So I'm like let's do some research. And it always, I always wondered why it was the United Orpington Club, like why that name? And what I discovered is, there used to be in late 1890s into all the way into the 1920s, there were a dozen different Orpington clubs. There was a white, there was a straight, there was a rose comb white, there was a black club. Orpington club black rose comb, a black white comb. There was buffs. There were all of these Orpington clubs. And so sometime in the late 1920s to the early 1930s, they all merged together and became the United Orpington Club.
Jennifer Bryant: 1:28
How neat is that?
Sara Batz: 1:30
Yeah. I thought it was cool. The earliest I've found mention of the as it is, the United Orpington Club is a show that was advertised for 1932 in. Pittsburgh. So there's this kind of gap between where in the poultry magazines of the time where they stop mentioning all the various Orpington clubs and come down to the United Orpington Club. There's like a five, six year gap that I haven't quite figured out when was the actual founding of the club, but that's where we get that United Orpington Club.
Jennifer Bryant: 2:03
In that time frame, we've got the Great Depression and a couple of world wars, so maybe, there is a gap there.
Sara Batz: 2:09
Eh, chickens were far more important than any of that.
Jennifer Bryant: 2:12
We're coming up on a hundred years in the club, then.
Sara Batz: 2:15
Yeah, for sure, and I'm hoping we can do a big blowout of some sort because I think it will be fun to, that it has been in some level of operation. That whole time it there's been ebbs and flows where it's been more active than not but yeah, I just think it's cool. It's one of the longer been around longer clubs as far as breed clubs go.
Jennifer Bryant: 2:37
So how many members does the club have?
Sara Batz: 2:40
We average around, I think we're at like 115 or so. It's where it stays. Sometimes it'll go up a little bit, sometimes it goes down a little bit. But that seems to be over the last 10 or so years, the trend is around 120 people. as active members.
Jennifer Bryant: 2:58
So for people who are not familiar with a breed club, would you tell them why it would be a good thing to join a club?
Sara Batz: 3:06
So your breed clubs primarily are there to support the breeders and to advertise the club. To get people to know about the breed. So we have a website, which we actually a couple of years ago, just upgraded. We had this really old 1990s style website that wasn't compatible with anything because it was so out of date. So in 2021, we started a new upgraded. Our website. And then we have district directors throughout the country and we have shows to promote the breed. So one of the things that I Encourage our district directors to do is to go to as many of the shows as they can and to have a club table there with we provide a banner, the host, the National club does provide banners to each of the district directors if they want them and set up a club table because the club table is our visual, right? People see you, they come, maybe they come just out of curiosity. Like I've never been to a poultry show. What's it like? Or maybe my kid's in four H and now we want to get into APA or something a little bit bigger than just four H. And so having that club table there, it gets people to see that. that you exist. Otherwise, it's just walking down the aisles and looking at cages of birds, right? So the club table puts a person, a face to the club, and then that helps us to interact with the community and get people to know that we exist and that we've been supporting breeders and people who just like it. You don't have to be a breeder to be a member of a club, right? So the money itself, the dues pays for our website. It pays for our annual awards at our national meets. And it pays for any advertising that we do. Like we have an ad in the poultry press. We have we usually put a page in the APA yearbook as well. We didn't do one this year, but we generally do one every year in the, in that. So that's what the deuce pays for. And it helps us to Do those outreach type things like buy banners for the district directors or pay for those awards for people who participate. We're also twinned if anyone's familiar with that kind of concept, we're twinned with the Australian Orpington club. And so we have sent awards to them over the last couple of years for their nationals and they've sent awards to us. We publish things back and forth in each other's newsletters, LinkedIn websites and stuff like that. So it's our outreach there to the Australian Orpington Club as well. And that's been something that's been ongoing for longer than I've been in the club. So probably 15, 20 years now, they've been this little sibling or we're their sibling, however you want to look at it. That we interact with each other in that regard. Again, it's to build understanding of the breed standards, what is an Orpington, what isn't and just get people to. Interact with us and be supportive of the breed itself. It's one of the mid range age of breeds, right? When you look at all of the breeds that are accepted by the APA it's probably age wise kind of in the middle there, it's not some of these. breeds like the dorking and the old English, but it's also not some of the newer breeds that you're going to see out at a show. Keeping it visible so that it doesn't go into some of these problems that some of the other breeds have over the years. I just did a thing on Crevacours yesterday that I posted on Facebook and that breed has really struggled. It's still struggling because there just aren't enough people that know about it and want to breed it. So Orpingtons have been popular for a very long time but it still goes to that same ebb and flow of popularity like other breeds do.
Jennifer Bryant: 7:01
So also as a member, you would earn points if you decided to show. Correct. Those points would accumulate for club awards, not just awards, right?
Sara Batz: 7:12
Yeah, so as a, for membership you get we do newsletters, so we try to put one out every quarter so you get that. We do have a members only Facebook group. It's not as active as I would like, but it's there if you have questions or looking for a breeder to mentor you or something like that. It puts you into that master breeder. Points program and we do send out awards. I just sent out a whole bunch of awards for master breeders the couple of weeks ago. So we do keep a running tally of that and we do have an awards program for master breeder of the various varieties as well as the annual breeder of the year. But primarily, honestly, if you're going to be part of a club, the point is to support the breed. to keep it in the public's eye, to keep it growing so that it doesn't go extinct. It's pretty much that's really what the core is that you're supporting the breed more than the club itself.
Jennifer Bryant: 8:13
That makes sense. So how many different varieties of orpingtons are there accepted into the APA? Four.
Sara Batz: 8:22
So buff, blue, black, and white are the four in largefowl and bantam. So they're accepted on both in APA and ABA. And those have been accepted since basically the beginning. The last variety that was accepted in 1923 is the blue. The rest were accepted basically at the beginning. Buff came, I think black and white came first and then buff. But as I mentioned at the very beginning, turn of the century, there was still an argument over should it be a rose comb or should it be a straight comb. So those kind of things didn't get ironed out until 19, 1907, I think, is when they were the black was admitted. So it's relatively new as far as APA goes. Now, if you go and look at the UK, where's obviously where the Orpington comes from. If you look at their breed club there they have a lot more varieties that are accepted. They have Bard the Jubilee that was created for the Queen's anniversary. And they have two or three other varieties, totally spazzing. Spangled is one of them modeled, I believe as well. So those varieties are accepted there. The issue with getting a variety accepted here, and there's been consternation about how, why lavender isn't been accepted for years. As long as I've, as long as I've had Orpingtons, I've heard the argument of why isn't lavender an accepted variety? Because nobody's working on it sincerely enough. The APA has rules on how to get a variety or a breed accepted. And of the people that I know that are working on them, it just doesn't, they don't get consistent enough. So it takes a lot more to get them accepted. And so that's why we're still at just the four varieties. I know there are people out there that have some of the other rare varieties. But again, you have to have so many people breeding them for a certain length of time. It has to be petitioned to the APA in order to get that variety accepted. And there has to be consistency across all of the breeders as far as what the birds look like. So if you've got hatchery looking birds and then you've got, what people like to call the English looking birds all showing up at a show, you're not going to get the birds approved. Because there's no standard in the consistency or no consistency in the standard. So yeah, so we just have four. We're not cochinsins.
Jennifer Bryant: 10:48
So that leads to the next question I see a lot from people who are new to chickens is people go to the box stores and they buy Orpingtons out of the bin. And so we refer to them as hatchery or utility birds. Standard bred is what we call our birds because you really shouldn't call them, in my opinion, exhibition quality because you just don't know until they grow out and you take them to a show. But standard bred, right? Because you're breeding to the standard. So for somebody who is new to Orpingtons, How would they know if they have hatchery birds or if they had standard bred, and if they wanted standard bred, where do they find them?
Sara Batz: 11:31
This is definitely an argument that comes up and there's as many opinions as there are breeders about them. The stance that I've taken as, since I've been president is that all Orpingtons are English. You'll hear that, you'll hear I want English Orpingtons. Unless you're going to pay to have them imported, they're all going to be from the United States. So the question I always ask people is, what standard do you want to breed to? Do you want to breed to the French standard, the South American standard, the, or the South African standard, the Australian standard? Each one of those standards is slightly different, right? Some of them have core similarities, but there is, there are variances. When you're talking about where you're purchasing the birds from, that's going to be your key. If you're going to Meyer or you're going to cackle or any of the big hatcheries in this country, right? You're going to get that. Hatchery look. They're basically all the same shape, just with a different color, right? And there's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely, if that's where you want to start, if that's where your budget allows, if that's what you aspire to, brilliant. All, I have hatchery birds at my house. They all have their purpose. They all have their purpose. So what you want to look at is do a Google search. Go online. Go on Facebook. Go on to the different groups. Because there's tons of Orpington groups online. And then start looking at the birds that look the way you want them to look. Some people like a fluffier bird. Other people don't. That's fine too. It's preference. And then connect with those people that are breeding the birds you want to look at right now. As far as how do you know if they're exhibition versus just a backyard bird? Does the person exhibit them? It's as simple as that. If the person doesn't bother to even take them to exhibit them, then you know they're not really focused on the things that are going to make it qualify for that. I know plenty of people who don't show their birds and again, there's nothing wrong with that's personal preference, but if you don't take those birds, and compete against other birds of the same variety, the same breed, then you are staring at what you have and you get what we call coop blind to what you're looking at, right? And so you may start to think, oh, that tail angle is good because that's what I want to look at, but is it measured against the standard? And if you don't own a standard, how are you measuring it against the standard? That's a key thing. I'm not advocating that everybody go out and buy a 75, 80 book. That's not always in the realm of possibility, especially if you're not looking to be a show person. But if you don't understand the difference between the tail angle that's required in the American standard versus what's required in the UK standard, then you can't say this is this, and this is that. You have to at least know those parameters. And now on our website, on the club's website, we do have a link to the UK standard. Because a lot of people will come to me and they'll say your birds aren't English because of this or that or the other. And I'll say to them, do you know the difference between the two standards? Because if you can't tell me the difference between the two standards, then how are you telling me that my birds don't meet one standard or the other? Or anyone's birds for that matter. It's not a matter of trying to argue. It's a matter of the facts of the, of what it is, right? The. Orpington Standard by the APA has a very specific degree of tail angle for the male and for the female. It's written, it's black and white, right? We're one of the few breeds, I believe, that have that specific of a tail angle. So if you don't know that, then how do you know what you're breeding towards? All of these birds, if they're Orpingtons, they're English. They fall under the English classification. And I get a lot of pushback on that. But it's the fact of the matter is they are English class birds. So therefore they are English. Now, are they bred to the English standard? That's a different question, right? So when you're looking at these birds and there's a weight category. If you put your bird on a scale, you put your hen on a scale and she weighs six pounds, she's not an Orpington, not to the standard, right? Your female should be eight pounds and preferably a little bit larger. One of the things I found over the years is if I'm breeding from two light of females, even if they are within the weight, 20 percent variance of the weight and they're on that lower end, I'll start losing size. And I'll start losing that in in my females and my males. So I prefer a larger female. My females are usually nine to 10 pounds on average. My males tend to be 11, 12 pounds on average, right? You don't want them too big, but you also don't want them too small because it's very easy to lose size. And I think that's one of the things that people don't understand about hatcheries is they're breeding quantity, right? They're fulfilling the orders that they get these. copious amounts of numbers and you don't think about or they don't have the ability to concentrate on those kinds of details. So what ends up happening is you, your birds, your bantams always want to get bigger and your largefowl always want to get smaller and they meet somewhere in the middle about that six to nine pounds range depending on the breed. So you've got to pay attention to your size. You don't want your bantams too large and you don't want your largefowl too small. That's just part of breeding, right? That's just part of paying attention to what you're doing. But when, if you're looking at Orpingtons and it has a hatchery name attached to it, you're not getting what you think you're getting. You're getting basically a you to tear you. That's not the word I want.
Jennifer Bryant: 17:32
Utility.
Sara Batz: 17:35
It's going to be a decent layer. That's going to be a pretty bird out in your yard. A couple of years ago, side story on that a couple of years ago, I was surfing for something and there was a hatchery down in Texas that he was advertising black warping tens, which is very rare, right? I've seen some of them now have, are starting to advertise blues and lavenders and stuff like that. But again, look at the type there. There's still the, there's still hatchery quality birds. Any who they had. Advertise Black Orpingtons, and I'm like, okay, click, because I want to see what that looks like. And it was an Australorp. And I contacted him, I said, I don't know where you're sourcing your Black Orps from, because I know most of the Black breeders in the country. But what you're advertising, the picture that you have on your website is an Australorp. So you're already starting from the wrong point. And they're like, Oh thank you. We'll get it changed. I don't know if they ever did. But point of the story is that you're dealing with folks who are not necessarily well versed in the breed themselves. They are trying to fill a demand, right? So they're going to source birds that may not be the top of the line. And in order to fill that demand versus caring whether or not it actually meets the written standard of what it should look like. It's same with some of the imports, right? I'm not trying to smash anybody's name here, but. Back when I first started, importing birds was still a really big thing. And there were a lot of people spending money to do it, but they were, again, it was quantity over quality. How many of these can we churn out and send to people and make a profit on it versus let's import the best stuff. So what they were importing was some of the lowest end stuff from the countries they were importing it from. Because those were the people that were willing to pay the money to get it imported. So a lot of that new people don't pay attention to that. And unfortunately they do get burned very easily. They spend a lot of money on hatching eggs. They spend a lot of money on chicks. And then they don't get what they thought they were supposed to be getting because they didn't do the research into where it was coming from.
Carey Blackmon: 19:53
They got somebody's culls.
Sara Batz: 19:56
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's not to say that I don't sell culls. Most breeders I know sell culls, but for me, a cull, if I'm selling you a breed quality cull, it is a bird that doesn't have any DQs. I would breed it myself, but I have something better than I'm keeping, right? I'm not selling you a show quality bird. I'm just not. I may sell your 4 H or a 4 H show quality bird, one that will probably, not to toot my own horn, but I've seen this other breeders do the same. You sell a kid a bird that's going to wipe the floor with all the other kids that show up to county fair because those kids are buying hatchery birds. Because their parents are buying chicks in February to be ready for the late summer Whereas you had a parent come to you and buy bought a properly already mature or maturing bird That's gonna be miles above what that kid the other kids are bringing in. It's not because that bird is something I would keep Because it wouldn't, otherwise it wouldn't sell it. But yeah, they're buying culls. And unfortunately, people have to stop before they start purchasing things and start thinking about why are they getting it. What is it they want out of it, right? If you just want a pretty bird in your yard that's going to lay you breakfast every couple of days. That's fine. But if you want something that you can go somewhere or that you can start your own line with and breed and be Close to that standard or be at least closer to that standard then yeah, you're gonna spend a little more money You're not getting show quality eggs. There's no such thing You're not even getting you know, when you're talking about eggs and people buy and I found it I bought hatching eggs It's not a criticism, but they buy hatching eggs expecting that they're going to get, a showstopper and if anything hatches at all, you're better off to buy a started bird that you at least can see which way it's going versus, I hatched hundreds, absolutely hundreds of birds a year and I might keep 50 and I average. Of the different breeds that I raise, I average about 600 hatches a year. That's only cause I don't have a bigger barn.
Carey Blackmon: 22:14
You have actual exhibition birds. So the ratio that you have is better, for somebody that's ordering hatching eggs and hoping for the best. If they order a dozen and all 12 hatch out, you might have one that meets that quality.
Sara Batz: 22:30
If you're lucky, if you're lucky.
Carey Blackmon: 22:32
Yeah.
Sara Batz: 22:33
Yeah. And, I do also do a lot of projects. So I raise a bunch of stuff because I'm just trying to get all of those genetics to fall, as many of them, the right ones, as many of them on a bird as possible, and so that's a numbers game. Any, it just is none of my birds are perfect. None of my birds are even, if you take this picture of the standard and you lay one of my birds, eh, they're close. But they're no means finished. So that I can just take those two finished birds and breed them together. And boom, I'm going to get perfect chicks every time. And even that doesn't work, right? Cause you're, again, you're talking about genetics. When you're talking about how many genomes that a chicken has and you have to get all of those right ones to add up together. And that's just. the probability of it happening every single time is slim to none, right? So even those breeders that have those perfect winning birds every single time doesn't mean that when they breed them together, they're getting anything worth reproducing because that's not always the case. It's just not. The genetics of it is more complicated than that. And it's like, I used to have racehorses. I didn't race them. I had broodmares. But you can take a winning horse and you can take another winning horse, and you can breed them together and that thing won't outrun a fat man, right? Not to insult any fat people out there. I'm no slim person myself. But what I'm saying is, just because this is a top winning father and this is a top winning mother, you breed them together doesn't mean you're going to get anything worth looking at. get a good Sunday dinner. That's about it. Because again, it takes understanding how those genes fall together. And if you're mixing lines that's always a huge risk there too, because not all lines cross. I learned that hard lesson in rabbits, right? I took some top winning recs and I bred them to some other top winning recs and everything that came out was, dinner. Because genes don't always mesh together well, or you'll get those recessive start popping up that you didn't see it in this line and you didn't see it in this line. But when you bred those two lines together, now all that stuff from 10 generations, 20 generations ago, bubbles to the top. And now you've got a whole bunch of stuff you got to get rid of.
Carey Blackmon: 24:48
I'm a huge fan of line breeding.
Sara Batz: 24:51
Line breeding. Yeah. Once you've solidified what you want. Once you
Carey Blackmon: 24:57
get your birds what they need to be and get it all the mess tangled out, I've seen people that have good looking birds and they're like, I'm, I need to bring in new blood. I need, I'm looking for a rooster and I'm like, no, that's not how that works. You're fixing to start all over.
Sara Batz: 25:18
Yeah.
Carey Blackmon: 25:19
Don't do it. Keep it clean. And then there's
Sara Batz: 25:22
other things like my friend Angela and I, whatever we've done over the years, our birds cross really well, right? We've had, we've sold individually birds. Like I sold a male to this one person and she sold females or vice versa. And then they're producing stuff. That's really nice. There's something about what we've done in our individual breedings that cross well, but that's not always the case. It, it just, this is where. Finding someone who you like what they're producing and developing a relationship with them and understanding what they do to get where they're at is going to be beneficial if you want to do more than just have yard birds.
Jennifer Bryant: 26:08
I want to circle back for one second because we are geared towards newer chicken keepers. When you were talking about the English, you classify everything as English what you're talking about is under the classifications under the APA how we show. Correct. Cochins would be Asiatic, the Morans are continental. Continental,
Sara Batz: 26:33
I think. Yes,
Jennifer Bryant: 26:35
they're continental. Orpingtons fall under the English class. Correct. When you were talking about English, you weren't talking about what we see on Facebook, the standard bread, the hatchery, and the English Orpington. You were talking about the classifications.
Sara Batz: 26:48
Correct. And so what ends up happening is people will will try to lessen one over the other. Oh I want English Orpingtons or you breed to American. Okay. That's fine that if that's the way you want to do it, but understand that Orpingtons as a whole are English. They come, they the breeder was the creator was from. Orpington, England. It's a real place. There's no H in it either. It's a real place. Kent, it's in Kent, in Orpington, right? When we talk about classification of chickens just like in AKC, when you're talking about dogs, right? If you have a pointer, it's in the sporting group, right? If you have a, whatever, a Cocker Spaniel, it's right. They have their own groups, right? Just like chickens have their own groups. Like you said, Asiatic, Continental, Mediterranean, English, right? So Orpington falls in the English classification. Now, when we talk about what you want to raise, what standard do you look for, right? Do you, when you look at this person's birds and it's Fluffy and it's got no real tail and it's got a short back and whatever. Okay. Now you're looking at more of an, or the European style of bird versus the American style, which tends to be a leggier, tighter feathered bird. Depending on which judge you ask, because some judges prefer the bird I have which is a little looser in the feather. My birds clearly have a back, they have a tail, they have a tail angle, but they tend to be a little fluffier as we like to call it in in the Orpington world, we have fluffier butts. But which is why, again, knowing the standard is important, right? Because our standard says that for Orpingtons, they can have fluff. It can't be excessive, right? Excessive is relative, right? All of these terms, when you look at the standard, unless it's got a specific number It's relative a shorter back, a moderately long shank. All right. Those are in relation to the bird itself. Does it look out of proportion to itself, right? The one thing that the Orpington has in the APA standard, and it was taken out in the 2014 standard, but it has since been put back in under extreme protest from myself is what we call the two inch rule. And what that means is. It's not excessive fluff as long as at least two inches from ground to the bottom of the fluff The amount of leg is shown. So if you have at least two inches of leg showing you can't be penalized in the show hall For being too fluffy, whether a judge likes it or not, because some judges want them to look like Rhode Island Reds. They want tight feather, tight body bird. That is not what the Orpington is meant to be. But there are other people who want to see that very heavy, all the way to the floor, can't see their feet feathering, which is what the European trend is. Now, that being said, that's not what the standard in England says. That's not actually what the French standard says. That is what breeders have started breeding to. that extremity, right? That going over the top with their breeding. And so that's what's showing up in the show halls. And so that's what the judges are having to judge and place. And then so that heavy feather bird wins. And then people go, Oh, this is what it should be. No, it's not. Not if you actually read the standards. And if you look at, if you go to the UK website and you look at the birds that they have Pictured as far as the drawings, just like the APA has, as far as what's the ideal, it looks a lot like our birds. There's not that much. What's happened is over the years, the trend has changed. And so those shorter backed, real tight, V looking from the neck up, back up to the tail, and then all the feather covering their feet, that's a trend. And that's what breeders have been breeding towards in Europe. And so a lot of people like that here. Again, there's no, not judgment one way or another, but you have to understand what you're wanting to buy. In order to know who to buy it from. And then using things like I want English Orpingtons. No, what you want is the heavily feathered fad that's currently running through Europe right now. Interestingly enough, this is an argument that is as long as this breed has been in this country. Literally, if you go back to the early 1900s poultry magazines about Orpingtons, The same argument. Oh, these heavy feather birds are going to come over here. They're breeding in cochinsins. They're gonna ruin the Orpington It's been an argument for literally a hundred years Literally, if not longer, so there's nothing new under the sun in poultry. Nothing at all It's what a person prefers Buy what you like to look at because you got to feed it.
Jennifer Bryant: 32:18
Take your bird to the show. Just find a show close to you. I think the most I've ever paid for a show is three dollars a bird.
Sara Batz: 32:26
There's some that'll do five, but usually they're double cards. But yeah, it's not an expensive adventure.
Jennifer Bryant: 32:33
Take your clean birds too. Clean. And don't just take them out of their sand baths. Take them, give them some fluff and some cleaning. And take them to the show and just watch what happens and see what else is there. And I think that's the worst that's going to happen. You had a little fun on a Saturday morning and decide it's not for you. Don't go back, but you may just decide, hey, these are my people. We get to just sit around and talk chicken all dang day,
Sara Batz: 32:58
which is the fun part. I don't, this is why I don't show any other animal because any other animal requires me to be more involved with the actual showing part. Chickens, nope, clean it, put it in a cage, now let's sit around and talk about chickens for two days.
Jennifer Bryant: 33:11
Exactly, yeah. Is there anything, oh, I do have one more question. We talk about the breed standard, is that on the website or do you have to buy the standard from the APA?
Sara Batz: 33:25
Okay, so it is not, there are some parameters like weights, Is listed on the website. The APA owns the publishing rights to the standards for breeds here in the United States. So therefore we cannot reproduce that. So you can either buy a standard from the APA itself, or you can go on like eBay. or even Amazon and buy an older standard. I would caution if you're going to buy a standard that's much older than say 20 years or so, make sure that it includes all of the changes because over the years there have been certain years where changes were made that might not be reflective. If you buy a reproduced copy of the standard from 1934, you're going to miss some of the changes that were made in the fifties and sixties and even seventies. And they may be not minute, but they also could be something that's major that's going to change whether you breed for this trait or that. For the most part, the Orpington standard has remained fairly the same for a long time. The two inch rule, I think got introduced in, I want to say it was 56. I have standards just before and just after, and the ones before don't have it in there, but the ones after do. And right now, no offense to the APA at the moment, but there's a big brouhaha about the current standard. So I wouldn't rush out to buy it. There's a lot of errors in that. So your best bet honestly is to find a mentor. mentor. I've been living in northern Ohio too long. They don't pronounce the T in the town of mentor here. It's better. Find yourself a mentor that has been doing this a minute and ask them just to look at their standard, right? Maybe they can give you some pointers that way or not supposed to do that. Again it's an expensive book. It's an expensive book. And if you are someone just starting out it's, I didn't buy my first standard. I was probably 10 years into it because I just reproduced what I like looking at. And I didn't pay so much attention to the showing aspect of things. I've actually only been showing, oh my goodness, since heavily, Like purposefully, not just the weekend day trip thing since 2017. So I haven't really been showing in the grand scheme of things that long. I just bred what I wanted to look at cause I had to feed it. And that's been my mantra with everything is breed what you like looking at. regardless of what anyone else thinks. Now, if you want to be serious and you want to start showing, then yes, you do need to do those other steps. You do need to find someone who knows what they're talking about, who is breeding birds you like to look at, and maybe is actually winning with those birds. Because there are a lot of people that breed pretty birds that don't actually Progress with them, right? They don't actually go anywhere with them. And that's not to say that every time somebody wins, it's because it's the greatest bird on the planet. It just happened to be the best bird there that day. What you want is to find someone who wins consistently, right? One of the most disheartening things I ever, realized was I, there was a breeder who I thought was like the pinnacle of Bantam Cochins. And I saw this person showing and yeah, the birds were fabulous. And then the next year I saw the birds that they brought and they brought a whole string of them. And I'm like, they are so inconsistent. Like literally just this variety, 20 some on birds and they were all over the map, right? If a person is breeding so inconsistently, they may be winning, but that's because they're bringing the best bird that shows up on a regular basis. It doesn't mean that their breeding acumen is all that great, right? There's a difference between being a good showman and being able to make a bird look really good. And being somebody who can reproduce that on a consistent basis. I know plenty of people who can show and they, their birds are conditioned. They win. But when it comes to the breeding pen, it's very lackluster. And that's where you have to get into. If you're dependent again, it's, what do you want to do? Do you want yard birds? Do you want something pretty to look at? Do you want to create your own line? Do you want to show? And maybe have some fun just on the side on the weekends, couple of weekends of the, out of the year, or do you want to breed something so that 20 years from now your birds are still around. And that has a lot of, that's an ebb and flow. That's a process we all go through, right? When I first started, I had six red layers that I had gotten for free. From a guy who my landlord knew who wanted to get rid of him because they stopped laying and I'm like, what do you mean? They stopped laying. He said they stopped laying. I'm like when I went to go pick him up, it's because they were on mud. They had no water and he was feeding them whole corn. No wonder they stopped laying. Within a couple weeks, I had him back up and they were, they laid for three more years for me. But we all start in our different places and that's what's important is figure out one, what you like looking at, what you want to have in your yard, and then do you want it to be. A hobby. Do you want it to be an expensive hobby? Cause that's, there's a big difference there. Whether or not you just want to have some pretty birds and buy some hatchery birds to replace them every couple of years, or do you want to start in the process of pens and separating and incubating and growing out? And cause It is an expensive hobby if you want to go that route. But if you are going to go that route, your best bet is to find someone who, again, is breeding what you like to see, is consistently breeding them, and doing pretty decent in the show hall if you want to go to that level of breeding. Because there is no purebred, okay? There is no purebred Orpingtons. If it looks like an Orpington, it is an Orpington. They don't do pedigrees. And that's one of the things I think for a lot of people who are coming over from dog world or horse world into chickens yes, they, their wallet likes it, but sometimes it's hard for them to wrap their mind around that. That we don't it's about what it looks like, not necessarily what created it. You got to figure out what you want to do and then go in that direction because there's all levels, right? Which is. One of the fun things about chickens, you can do any area that you can start at the lowest 2 chicks at a tractor supply and have a lovely yard full of pretty birds. Or you can start looking at breeders and spend 200, 300, 400 on a really good pair of birds. I've done both. Don't tell my husband. Don't tell
Jennifer Bryant: 40:34
him. He doesn't need to know how much. No, we don't tell them those things. Is there anything else that you want us to add in or was there anything you said you want him to edit out? Because he can edit it.
Sara Batz: 40:49
No, honestly and. I'm fairly straightforward. It doesn't matter whether you see me here or at the feed store or at a show, you're going to get the, you're going to get the same spiel if you ask, I haven't really changed my story much and in this whole time I've grown a lot and learned a lot, in the time of doing this. When I first started, I just wanted pretty birds. I was on Backyard Chickens back when it was its own website. And that's where everybody hung out. Cause Facebook didn't exist. And I saw Orpington's and there was a lady down in Alabama who bred them and she had beautiful birds and I wanted those birds. And I've never quite raised the level that she was. She's since retired from breeding. But. I'm pretty pleased with what I have on average. And I do have people who think the same because I get contacted a lot about getting birds. I don't have very many to sell, which I, cause I, I'm not a hatchery. And I think that's one thing that probably a lot of new people need to understand. Is that if you're going to a breeder, somebody who does this as a serious hobby they're not hatchery. They're, they don't, this isn't, I'm going to go on a website and order 15 that, and I want it delivered on this day. That's not how it works in our world as far as when we're breeding for ourselves. Cause that's, I breed for myself. The projects that I do is for myself. And it's. not to be able to sell them around the country for, whatever amount of money. If I have something it's usually first come first serve and it's going to be the fall because right now I'm still hatching and most people I know are still hatching. They're growing out for the fall for the breeders that they're going to keep and then whatever they're not going to keep and use themselves, that's what's going to be for sale. When you're talking about purchasing birds, if you want to impulse buy something, that's what the hatcheries are for. If you want something of better quality, that's going to look like it's supposed to look, then you need to find a breeder and you need to have patience and you need to build a relationship with that person because what it boils down to is I get. Dozens of emails every month. I get phone calls. I stupidly put my phone online once And so I get random calls all the time it's the person who shows that solid interest wants to learn wants questions answered as far as How do I do this or where do I do that so on and so forth versus how much? Generally speaking for me, and this was the same when we had dogs that we bred and sold, if your first question to me is how much, I'll get back to you because to me, that's I work hard to do what I do. I spent a lot of time and money and like I said, I've been doing it for 15 years. That's a lot of my personal self into what I'm creating. And so I want somebody who's going to value that. They don't have to be a breeder. They don't have to want to go and show all over the country, but they need to value the effort and the work that I'm putting into my birds and most people that I know are the same way. If you're serious about wanting to have something more than a hatchery bird, then you're going to have to put a little effort on your end to build those relationships and make those connections with people.
Jennifer Bryant: 44:15
Yeah, I haven't been doing it as long as you have. We've had chickens off and on. Basically my whole life. But I have my cochins. I spent the money up front. My cochins has come from Jerry and Jamie Matz and my Orpington's come from Scott and Jerry. And I'm not overly happy with exactly. They don't look like I want them to look. So I'm fixing to do a sub line with from somebody else. But, people do travel quite a distance to come get my Cochins because they're never outcrossed. They're still technically Jamie's line. But I don't advertise. If somebody wants them and I happen to have some and they're willing to travel to come get them, I'll sell them. But if they don't, we just eat them. Yeah.
Sara Batz: 44:59
Because that's what it is. Or I've got, there's a little Amish auction down the road for me and those folks will buy them, fatten them up and eat them, so they don't go to waste, at least somebody can use them that way. But I think what happens when people are excited. And they're new and they want to get into something. That excitement tends to overrule a little bit of the process they should go through to make sure that one, they're not getting ripped off and they are getting what they asked for. And that's where the folks have to just take a step back and go, okay, what do I really want and where do I want to go with it? And it may take you a little while to figure it out. I went through all kinds of breeds. Oh my gosh, I drove my husband nuts. I bought the cackle hatchery surprise for probably five years running because I just wanted to figure out what I liked and what it always boiled down to is no matter what else I've had peripherally, I always come back. I've always had black Orpingtons. I've had barred large fowl cochinsings probably 10 years seriously breeding them for the last six or seven generations. The birchens, I picked them up about the same time, about seven years ago. And that was only because I couldn't find it. In a Orpington. And I didn't, I love the pattern, right? That's why I have Bertrand. Cause I love looking at the pattern, but I didn't want to dub. So I wasn't going into old English and I wasn't going into moderns. Although I've had a couple of moderns. I, the idea of dubbing just was not something I wanted to do, which in order to show you have to do for them, if you're talking about showing hens and cockbirds, you, they have to be dubbed and I just didn't want to, I didn't want to do all that. So that's why I have the Cochins. But if. You see me at a show and I'm prepping featherleg bandoms. You will hear me cursing. Why am I doing featherlegs again? Because they are a pain in the rear, right? You have to keep this feathers in decent condition. And even though I keep mine, mine don't run around in the mud and all of that kind of stuff. They're on the ground, but they're in a barn. They still, they break their feathers. You're cleaning poop and all of that stuff out of their feathers. Yes, it is a frustration, but I love the pattern. And it's a lovely pattern. So I have those birches and I have the silver blue and then I've been working the salmon's probably I'm on my seventh generation there too, I think. Because I saw them online. You can't get them properly here in the United States. The ones I saw were in England and I was like, that's beautiful. I want that. So I'm like, how do I make that? And that's what I've been working on. But again, I do that for me. So if somebody is interested in what I'm doing and they want some of my birds, for me, again, this isn't just me speaking here. If you want something that I've got, then you got to talk to me a little bit, right? It's not I'm just not, I'm not a store. I'm not a store. I'll sell it if I have it. But if I don't have it, then, that's just what it is. I've gotten to be that person. I used to think when I first started.
Carey: 48:07
Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.
