High Roost Ranch

High Roost Ranch has added some new blood, varieties, and breeds to our collection of exhibition poultry.

Black East Indies-a nice show pair of BEI's from Larry LeGeese. This is a new breed for me so I'm learning about them as I go. But I'm fascinated by their deep emerald feather sheen. If nothing else, they are awesome eye candy!!!

Pastel Call Ducks-a nice trio from Robert Hardina. I really like this color variety!

Blue Fawn Call Ducks-after an extremely disappointing purchase from Cierae Endsley, I returned those birds and found much better quality. I guess buying with a name stamp isn't always the way to go if you want to progress in a breeding program.

Grey Calls-I picked up two pretty darn nice 2011 drakes from Mike & Jenny Linton. Nice short, fat bills on nice cheeky round heads for these boys. They should take my greys up quite a few notches in quality.

White Calls-I added a nice pair of whites, a 2011 drake with a 2010 hen, from Jim & Patti Zimmerman, along with an extra 2011 white drake. I went through what he had available, and made my choices with his guidance. Lets hope I did good.

Dark Large Fowl Brahmas-I finally, after 3 yrs of searching, have found quality replacement darks to restart my breeding program while at the Crossroads of America Show 2011. This pair came from the east coast. They seem happy and content to be in Minnesota. 

Light Large Fowl Brahmas-a nice young trio of LF Lights from Killmallie Farms. I just got them, so they are settling in and finding their niche here at High Roost Ranch.

Bantam Light Brahmas-I was extremely fortunate to acquire a gorgeous pair of Light bantams from Spence & Williams while at the Crossroads of America Poultry Show 2011.

Cornish Bantams-who would have thought that I would have ever had these in my flock. But they've peaked my interest to the point that I just had to try some. So... I now have a really nice pair of young darks, along with a white and gold laced pullets and an extra dark cockerel. I am amazed at how heavy these birds are. They are massive, massive, massive!!!

Modern Bantams-I've added some new birds over the last couple months. A brown red cock and black cockerel from Tom Anderson, and birchens and brown reds from Mark Peterson.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF HERO, THE MALAYSIAN SERAMA

It breaks my heart to announce that Hero, the love of my life, my buddy, my foundation sire, the bird pictured in my photo at the top left of the page, passed away on June 29, 2010 after a short and swift illness. I believe it was cancer. He was seen by a Veterinarian at the onset of his decline, passed all the medical screens for obvious illnesses, yet two days later he passed away in my hands. Showing no outward signs of illness, Hero quickly declined in body mass. He spent his last days sunning himself on my bathroom floor or sitting by me in the house. Loosing him devastated me and I haven't been able to post this until now without loosing control emotionally.

I cannot express how much loosing this wonderful bird has hurt me. I miss him like he was a family member. He wasn't just a chicken, he was so much more than that. Everywhere I took him, he turned heads. Even those who weren't Serama people fell in love with him.

He possessed nearly everything a true Malaysian Serama should be. Massive chest, showiness, perpetual pose, extremely personable, tiny in size but massive in body.

He leaves behind Ransom, his silver pumpkin son from 2009, to continue his legacy, as well as Cash and Bro, his full brothers, to also perpetuate this great bird's attributes. And I was fortunate enough to have hatched a silkied chick from him to infuse Hero's fine points into my silkied serama line.

Hero, you were the best bird I have ever had the privilege of owning, or knowing. I love you buddy, but then again, you know that with all the love and kisses you allowed me to give you. I hope Heaven is treating you well, and one day, we'll meet again.

I am excited to say that once I fixed my incubator issues (I decided to go with a Genesis 1588 foregoing the autoturner), that we are back in the hatching business. 2009 was a dismal year for hatching chicks for me. No matter what I did, I could not get a good hatch rate. With incubator issues, I managed to hatch call ducks but not many poultry chicks. Something about the environment and the incubators I was using just didn't jive.

So it's July 12, 2010, half way through the year. I have a good assortment of Light, Buff and Dark Brahma chicks, one Rosecomb (so far), several Malaysian Seramas (many from Ransom, a couple from Hero, and all look to be of excellent quality), and a whole bunch of Araucana chicks (I have the prettiest double tufted, rumpless silver based chick growing out). I've culled early on due to my upcoming move, only keeping back select individuals that I will be using for specific breeding programs when I get to Minnesota. While I have gotten a late start this year in hatching, we are doing good to make up for it. It's thrown off our cockerel and pullet show prospects, but I can live with that.

The only down fall this year has seen is my issue with my Calls. I have not successfully managed to hatch and keep going a single call duck this year. This year appears to be a total loss in the call duck department. Only my Blue Fawns are still laying, everyone else is in molt. So very, very disappointing. If only I could hatch and grow out one little call duck... is that too much to ask?

I won't be keeping all the youngsters I've hatched, so please check back this fall if you are looking for some good quality started stock from proven show birds.

I still have an incubator full of eggs, and this morning it looks like popcorn went off in the bator with the chicks that have hatched. Chocolate/Pumpkin Seramas, Blue Moderns, Araucanas, and Dark, Light and Buff Brahmas, with more to come in the next couple of weeks! Woo hoo!

Last year, on good faith, I loaned the above bird out to a fellow SCNA member to use, and got him back last week. This is the condition in which he arrived home. In a year, this Serama cock bird went from vibrant and healthy to crippled and on death's door. Scaley leg mite, the worst case I have ever seen in person or in photos. Why??? I cannot help but ask WHY was this bird tossed into a pen to be ignored and forgotten about when he could have been returned to me since it was obvious he had served his purpose. Scaley leg mite to this degree does not happen overnight. This bird will likely loose several toes, but in one week of aggressive treatment, he has made dramatic improvement. His legs are now half the size they were in several places on his shanks and feet. Such a simple thing to cure, to PREVENT getting to this point. People, you cannot just ignore scaley leg mite, it doesn't cure itself!

I have learned a hard lesson, that no one will take care of our birds the way we do. And shame on you, the person who had my bird, and treated him with such disregard. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, and I have serious doubts about your integrity over this incident. You may come across great on paper, but this situation tells a different story. I hope for the sake of the rest of your flock that you do the right thing and actually take a look at your birds. IF you cannot do that, have your other family members look. And if that is impossible, perhaps for the sake of the birds, you should get out of the hobby all together if you have no more concern for an animal's welfare than you've shown with the condition of this bird. I am angry, I am shocked, and I am greatly disappointed that you would treat an animal and someone else's property in such a manner.

Never again will I loan a bird out to someone!

While at the Southern Serama Classic show on October 3, 2009, I was visiting with my fellow Serama-men, Clarence Pauley. Clarence had a bad luck incident the evening before the show when he'd set one of his cages on the ground at the back of his pickup truck. Another person who didn't see the birds in the cage accidentally backed over the cage with the birds in it. Looking at the cage, one would have thought there was no way all those seramas survived that totally mushed and crumpled cage. Well all did, except one hen. Talking with Clarence, I had an interest in one of the other females, and asked him about the hen and that's when I heard the story of how they survived. All were up and walking around, but one hen in particular was acting strange and was really, really pale in the face. I picked her up to check her out, and wow, was I in for a shock. I noticed a bit of blood on her lower leg, and when I picked up the wing, there was a huge gaping hole in her side, behind the breast muscle, encompassing her whole left side basically. One look and I thought oh no, this has simply got  to be a mortal injury. I could after all see very well into the INSIDE of her chest cavity.

Photo taken a few days after I brought her home:

I brought her over, showed her to Clarence, and he was certain she wouldn't make it and was going to humanely put her out of her misery after the show ended. It was about 3 pm in the afternoon, she'd lived this long with her chest wall being riped open. I felt so bad for her. Michael Schmidt patched her up with Neosporin as I held her, and we put her back in the cage. He too thought she should be put down because it was such a severe injury. I bought her cage mate hen that I was wanting. And I kept going back to check on this little hen. I felt so bad for her, and even more so, was amazed at her desire to live and ability to have made it through the day with that injury. A human it would have undoubtedly killed, but not a chicken, they are tough as nails. I made the decision that since this hen wanted to fight for her life, that I wanted to give her a chance. Clarence graciously let me take her home to see what I could do for her. Thank you Clarence for not just wringing her neck, this is a very determined and tough hen. I'm thinking a good name for this girl would be Ms. Grit.

I wish I had taken photos that very first day, but she really was so messed up that I was kind of thinking I'd be burying her and didn't want the photos as a reminder of what she went through. After she made it through the first 48 hours, I became more optimistic. I continued to change her bandages every other day, using a Nitrofurazone ointment w/special tissue regenerator ingredients in it, covered with a telfa pad and a vet wrap bandage around her.

I'll let the photos tell the rest of the story.

The first photo I took, several days after the injury:

Taken October 14th:

Taken October 16th, her first day out of her ICU cage for a minute's worth of excercise.

Warning, if cruelty to animals offends you, then you may not want to watch this video. But I hope if you are a table egg consumer, that you will take 4 minutes of your time to see what happens daily behind the scenes when egg-producing chicks are hatched at the World's largest hatchery, the Hy-Line of Spencer, Iowa. I hope this video disturbs you as much as it did me, and that you take definite steps to make these practices illegal instead of common place in the industry.