Making a difference in the Polish Breeders Club

By Jim Parker, USA

The Polish Breeders Club has entered its 8^th year and it continues to grow stronger each passing year with a wealth of members that is unsurpassed in knowledge, enthusiasm, and experience. I will be writing a series of articles that I hope will peak your interest in this fantastic breed and will prompt you to throw your hat into the show cage of these birds.

Our first newsletter that we put out was filled with articles of one of the oldest varieties of Polish recorded, the Black Crested Whites. While the interest in this variety peeked here in the states in the late 90’s I would like to give some history of this variety and will tell you about a man from the Netherlands that has devoted most of his adult life to them.

The person responsible for the push to get the Black Crested Whites in the Standard of Perfection in 1996 was Clark Kidder. He wrote an article that I still read from time to time just to see where we are at now. Obviously there was a lot more interest in these birds then as they had enough breeders out there to get a class together to get them qualified. Sadly the club hasn’t had a recorded Black crested White in a show hall in over two years. The amount of serious breeders working on the large fowl can be counted on one hand and the bantams can be counted with one finger. This is extremely sad when you realize that this breed has been around for as long as it has been. Recorded mentions of this breed can be traced as far back as 1475. That is a long time.

Mr. Kidder talked about a lot of the same issues in the Large and bantam that I still am dealing with today. He states,” That there is not a problem with the size.” I wish this wasn’t a problem, but with so few breeders out there for so many years, the size of the large fowl is considerably smaller than other varieties. The crest size has taken a beating too. I recently went to a breeder’s house and the birds had decent size but the crests were horrible. The females had small crests and the males’ crests were more like Mohawks. After a year or two the crests would start to turn white. The chicks would come out in so many different colors too. The ideal chick comes out Smokey Gray. He was getting most of his chicks’ solid white, solid black, or stripped like a Silver polish. He even stated he had occasional brown chicks.

While I too have experienced all the above, most fanciers do not want to hatch out 50 chicks just to keep 5 good ones. This breeder sold out the next year. McKinney Govero hatchery sold the Black Crested Whites an actually had fairly decent ones to start out with but the hatchery closed its doors. I only know of two hatcheries that carry them now.

Mr. Kidder explained that keeping the black confined to the crest and the smut out of the tails is a major challenge. This is definitely a troubled spot for these birds. Mr. Kidder also explains that lots of progress was made with the help of a breeder flock of over 80 birds. Don’t we all wish we could keep this many breeders of one color. I think this really showed his devotion to the color. Yet another problem was brassiness.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Are you ready to start breeding one of the hardest birds ever? To be honest I haven’t even hit all the trouble this variety runs into. The ear lobes need to be whiter; they tend to show a bluish tint. And it even gets better as you will run into the hatches of Blue Crested White chicks. While these are stunning, I wouldn’t want to tackle this project at all. I have experienced a lot of the same victories and a lot of the same trials that Mr. Kidder experienced. Soon after the Black Crested Whites were entered into the standard, they nearly went extinct yet again. Mr. Kidder sold out and the great enthusiasm he brought to this new color was nearly extinguished. Only a few brave souls carried on with them. If it wasn’t for these select few, they would be lost again.

My interest really peaked when I started the club in 2000. A man emailed me from the Netherlands named Luuk Hans. He was the secretary for the Dutch club and also formed a group called the International Network of Poland Clubs, INPC for short. He invited the Polish Breeders Club to join and we’ve been a member ever since.

Luuk was an avid fan of the Black Crested Whites. He told me that the first time he ever saw these birds was when he was 10 or 11. He stated back then in the 60’s and 70’s that there was only one breeder around and he only had the large fowl. He dreamed of having these in the bantams and when he was old enough, he started his quest. He knew the birds were a balancing act of black and white. So Luuk engulfed himself into books on genetics and realized rather quickly that he may have bitten off a bit more than he could chew.

One goal Luuk set out with was to not outcross to another breed. He wanted to stay with Polish. He didn’t want to fight type and color. What’s the old adage, build the barn and then paint it. His original cross was with a White Crested Blue bantam bred to a Bearded Self Black cock. He then bought a trio of large Black Crested whites and learned the art of artificial insemination; the male was much too large for the females. With this cross he was able to start his bantam line. They were still big at first but the results were very encouraging. Luuk also said he got many, but surprising, colors from the initial breeding pens. For me, it was the very nice Columbian birds that I got from my birds. They were absolutely stunning but they would go directly to the farmers market so I didn’t get tempted to work on them.

Year after year Luuk gained ground on his ultimate goal of a great Black crested White bantam. And every year he would take his last years results and show them at their annual meeting and would ask all the old time breeders what they would suggest. He heard a lot about out crosses and a Lakenfelder might fit the bill. But there would be side effects to this like the combs, wrong color of legs and ears. Luuk preferred to choose something that most breeders won’t do. He chose the long way. He did occasionally use a self white, bearded self black, and even a cuckoo Polish. It was his balancing act of the black and white. If the color got too dark he would use a lighter bird. If they became to light, he would cross a darker bird. Luuk was able to get eggs before Clark Kidder got out of the business and hatched out three birds. One of them had the proper BC White color and used that bird with great results. From this one man and his tireless efforts with the Black Crested White bantams, he was able to help populate the countries of Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. In 2000 or 2001 they were recognized in Switzerland and have since been recognized in the Netherlands. All of this due to one mans dedication.

With great surprise, there was a post on a genetics board about these birds. The question stated that this variety was the weakest of all colors of Polish and would get sick very easy. The body color was not a clean white and they had a dirty cast or had yellowing on the back feathers. The males were either very light or very dark and they all had the same undercoat of slate grey. The males even carried alot of black in their tails. They were wondering how to correct these problems as best they could. Here was the reply.

They did not know of any way in which a recessive white could be coupled with a black crest, nor could dominate white. The Black Crested Whites are silver Columbians with emulating intensifiers most likely. They probably don’t have anything to do with white but are rather silver. It would be very unlikely that one could find a strong, hardy and clean BC White as most strains are all fairly recent recreations and are not well set in any of the examples most have seen. They are a young breed with a very complicated genotype; many birds have been kept which are inferior just because they are so very rare. To strengthen them will be a big undertaking. They suggested two ways to help out the breed. One way was to hatch every chick available and keep literally only the birds which never get sick for breeding and have the right coloring. This would be ideal but the base to work from was horrendous. The second way suggested was out crossing to a breed chosen for vigor rather than type. Such breeds may include anything from very resistant Silver laced Polish to Dark Brahma, Columbian Rock or Wyandotte or to very strong Lakenfelder or Vorwerk. The important part was to select the hardiest most resistant Columbian bird you can find, cross it to the BC Whites and then select the hardiest F1 birds to breed back to the parent. You would have to keep crossing back for several generations, always picking for hardiness and type from the f2 forward and in the pure birds. The general consensus was after 5 generations, they would be improved.

After taking in all these suggestions and with extensive talks with Luuk Hans and Al Westling, I decided that I would make a cross and then cull hard for not only color but type and hardiness. I started with the Bantam first and crossed them with bantam Bearded Silver laced Polish. The results were amazing and after almost ten years of breeding them, they are getting very close. I will make a cross on the bantam Silver Laced again this year in hopes of bringing the size down some more. I have been able now to breed birds with about 80% correct coloring. The only off colors I get now are the rare Columbians and Solid whites. Occasionally I get a bird with some lacing in the crest or hackle. But with using a Silver Laced, this is expected.  I no longer get the brown birds or solid black. I haven’t gotten a Blue Crested White in a few years. By using a bantam Polish I also did not have to fight type at all, it actually improved the variety right away. The Large fowl is coming along too. While I’m several years away from getting them how I want, they are still here and not extinct. If it was easy, everyone would do it, right?

None of this could have been possible if it wasn’t for a few breeders. When you hear the Black Crested White Polish mentioned, please think of this varieties champion, Luuk Hans. One mans dream has helped this bird exist in Europe; he’s also helped in ways he never knew about in this country. And of course none of this could have happened with out the formation of the Polish Breeders Club and its contacts.

So what do you think? Are you ready to help pull this color out from the extinction barrel yet again? Will you rise to the challenge and raise one of the most challenging birds around? You may not ever get one to win a big show or even best of breed. You may spend years being mocked or ridiculed for showing the “odd Ball” stuff, but you will keep them around for your children to see and their children and so forth. Remember, the breed you save might be your own. With prices of gas and feed going up, we all need to stick together. Join and support your breed clubs! Until next time, this eggs been laid. God bless,

Jim Parker

Newsletter Polish Breeders Club USA

Dear fellow chicken nuts:

Well, for me in Virginia it has certainly been the “long, hot summer”!  And yet, this has been the healthiest summer in my experience with chickens.  I have decided this must be the fans.  Of course, Dr. Peter Brown has always said that ventilation and air flowing through coops was important.  But I was particularly impressed by the experience of my Orpington colleague, Nikki Reidel.  When I visited her in Michigan to pick up some of her wonderful Blacks (she now has Bill Meyer’s line), she told me she was renovating her coop to put in more windows and screens.  Fearful of the cold in the hard winters of the northwestern lower peninsula (non-Michiganites, just trust me, that is a cold place!), she had built her Orpy house to shelter and protect from the wind.  But she found her birds started getting sick.  Her rebuild project was to ensure that air would flow.  Now I do have windows with screens, and open eaves (covered with heavy welded mesh wire, of course, to keep out predators) in my large building, so it is pretty cold when temperatures drop, but the real problem in Virginia is summer heat.  So this year, I bought additional fans.  We are not talking huge industrial size fans, but many small twenty-dollar models, some rotating ones on pedestals to put moving air in every corner. I have been running them a LOT – even at night, for those weeks when nighttime temperatures did not go below 80.  I did this because of the prolonged heat – but it suddenly hit me that I have had no illness in months and months.  Aha.  Maybe I am a slow learner, but the extra fans are the only thing I have done differently.  So there it is, folks, a reminder that moving air through our buildings is beneficial.

A word about courtesy is the other issue on my mind.  If you were following our web site this summer, you may have noticed some heated discussions.  I love discussions, and encourage diversity of views.  However, some of these postings included rather rough comments about other people.  The website is our public face, and I am sure all of us would prefer that we avoid squabbles.   So I have asked everyone to restrain themselves, put their best foot forward, and emphasize amicable and courteous discourse.  OK, everybody??  There is still plenty of room to disagree. 

Tollbunts:  From the reports I have so far this year, we are doing very well at expanding the pool of these birds.  Thanks again to Marsha Peterson and Tim Clark for hatching so many.  My own hatches picked up as the weather grew warmer, and I now have hatched quite a few from my Orloff input cross.  I also had a mating last fall of a white frizzle female with a half-Orloff half-Tollbunt – and the resulting frizzles are pretty nifty.  They are one step on another route to tollbunt frizzles, with many more steps to come.  I have taken some pictures of which may make this newsletter or the next.  Isn’t it a funny thing that our chickens are so lovely, but it is so hard to get a really good picture???

 They are one step on another route to tollbunt frizzles, with many more steps to come.  I have taken some pictures of my pure Tollbunts, and some of the tollbunt/orloff crossing.  Can you tell which are which? I also threw in a couple of pictures of my gold laced. Isn’t it a funny thing that our chickens are so lovely, but it is so hard to get a really good picture??? 

Hope to see all of you at the fall shows.  If I could just give up this day job, I would have more time to do everything right . .

Best, Sylvia Babus

Vice President Pen

Hello everyone, I would like to touch on a few points that I consider very important with regards to the Polish breed, in this article I want to cover the questions of Firstly is what is a poultry club? A poultry club is set up to breed birds to a specific standard. I know this club was set up with a Constitution that clearly states that the birds are to be bred to the Standard for Polish as required by the APA and the ABA. Now in saying that I know there are people that keep polish purely as pets.  This does not cause a problem provided they are not used for exhibition and provided they are sold as being a pet quality bird. The officers have been elected to keep the club to a high standard; this must also apply to everyone who is a member. Pet Birds are fine to have if that is want you prefer, but people saying there is room for both in the club, in my opinion, is not acceptable; the exhibition quality birds and the pet quality birds need to be kept as a separate option. Breeders of the pet birds should never try to influence anyone in the club as regards to standard or quality, comments from non exhibition breeders should not be taken as any part of the decisions made by the club. There are many public boards on the net that are set up for the basic poultry breeder. Again I am not saying members should not be able to keep pet Polish, but there is a time and place for everything, and the club is not this place – again, in my opinion! Jim has brought up the idea of closing the website message board to all non members, and he has my support 100%. If they are not paid up members of the club but still want to discuss the polish breed standard then pay your money and join the club, if not there are plenty of other places that they discuss and talk about whatever they like. I have worked long and hard to help gain a relationship with clubs from other countries, but we as a club need to show these countries that we are going to put all of our efforts into breeding the polish chicken in the best way we can. I know that there are members that say who cares what they think, well I for one care. It is very vital to our club to keep in good relations with those clubs, because if not for those clubs we would not have the birds we have today. There is a lot to be learned from breeders from other countries and we should not shut them out on the things that are going on in the USA. I hear quite often, well their standard is different from ours. That is a true statement to a certain degree, but the difference in the standards are so minor that if they brought a bird here to show the judges would not even know the difference. I know this to be a fact because I have seen it done at the Ohio Nationals. On the point of creating a standard for a bird, it should come down to respect for the country of origin, not what we like or dislike. Case in point the Black Crested Whites, I personally do not prefer this color as I consider that there are quite a number of points about them that I dislike. But instead of keeping them and trying to change the bird to something I like, I just don't keep them at all; it is all a matter of personal taste. I respect the creator of the color to say ok that is the standard, do I like it "no", am I going to breed them the way I want them "no" am I going to try and change the standard "no" so the answer is clear -- don't keep them. The Rare Breed Club of Great Britain is now as we speak trying to get some American breeds in the standard there. They have contacted me to help them get them in and they respected the country of origin enough to use our standard and ask for help from American breeders. With this a trust and friendship is gained, and to me at the end of the day that is what this is all about. If all the countries work together we will never have to worry about any breed being lost.

 Channing

Secretary’s Gentle Ramblings

Much has happened here on the farm the last few months but the most noticeable change was how busy this summer actually was. I couldn’t believe how fast things went by. On the personal front, I left my factory job of 20+ years and am now Mr.Mom. More like a taxi service for my kids. I have been able to spend a lot more time with the birds and that has been a great blessing and a some what curse. As I write this, I’m still hatching out select varieties and breeds of birds. I quit counting chicks at the 700 mark and that was months ago. I took my first batch of culls to a farmer’s market auction. I might not get much but all the birds go. I am most impressed with the amount of good colored bantam Black Crested whites I was able to hatch. Actually I couldn’t believe that I hatched that many. The color is just spectacular. Now I’ll focus on size of the crest and body type. I know what some of you are saying. “Build the barn, and then paint it!” That just doesn’t apply with the Black crested Whites. I worked on the color now for years and will start building the barn. One thing I did do very well this hatching season was to hatch out males.

Well over 80% to be exact. I hatched out over 50 bantam Mottled Houdans and I only got 3 females!!!  Is that even possible? Well, yes it is. I did some great leaps this year with two projects. First being the Large fowl White Crested Chocolates. Thanks again go to Josh Hoffman and Doug Kamer with helping me out with females. I was able to hatch a bunch out and they look great. I was also able to standardize the Black tailed reds. They still show some white in the crest but with proper selection, they should look good in years to come. The other project my friend Doug Kamer got me into was Large fowl Creles. These will be a challenge for a long time but one I will sure have fun with. The Tolbunt Hatches went very well this year. I had three separate lines and all hatched out over 50 chicks so I have a great base to work with. One line is very dark like the European standard asks for so this is very encouraging. I hope everyone out there got what they wanted hatched out and the quality will follow.

Now to some club business. The National. The 2007 Polish Breeders Club national will be held at the Ohio National in Columbus Ohio on November 10-11 2007. They have at least 5 national meets there so far but ours will be arguably the best. I have sent out emails and dropped the ball on sending out ballots for judges so be sure to call or email me your choice of judge. There has been a tremendous amount of emails about the judge of choice and there is a favorite leading the pack by a large margin. Here are your choices. Jeff halbach, Lewis Cunningham, Ralph Beamer, John Thomforde, Brian Knox, Erik Nelson, Henry Mager, and Robert Carothers. So get those votes in ASAP. There will be awards at the show and a great club meeting I’m sure. It is a great hall with single tier cooping and an outstanding sale area. This is my favorite show and we hope to have a good turnout. My goal is to have at least 100 birds. Anything above that is gravy. Our eastern district meet will be great as well with Delmarva holding that show a week later on November 17-18. Try and support one or even both of these shows. Anyone got an extra bed in Delaware? I would like to attend!

Who would like a Directory? It’s been years since we put one together and it will have well over 125 members in it. But I need your info. Please email/phone/write me some info. Ready? I need your address and Phone number. Obviously I have your address but I’m lacking several phone numbers. I also need what varieties you raise. You may list other breeds you raise. Please let me know if you will sell eggs, young adults, chicks, and adults. I need to know if you will ship or if they are picking up at farm only. I have gotten a great response so far with emails so please get me this info. If I have to call a lot of members, it will delay the directory. I want to have it done at the National in November.

    Our club’s web site is growing by leaps and bounds. Currently we have over 315 members on board and average about 80 hits a day. The new counter has us with over 80,000 hits. In August we had a day with 116 visits and the lowest day was 54. We have had over 30 hits this year alone from Russia. Africa had over 340. It has been a great tool and I look forward to seeing it grow in months and years to come. I think we should have it voted as our “official web site” the next vote we have. I will be adding the standards for the Polish, Houdan, Sultan, and Crevecouers in the months to come. There will be other downloads you members will be able to access. We are going to try and get the meet sheet on there and a friendly handout for new Polish enthusiasts. If you would like to see other things added or things taken off, then please let me know. This site really gets the Polish Breeders Club face out there.

   I would like to thank Marsha Peterson for heading up the page for the ABA yearbook. It looks great. Thanks to all those members who helped out. The club is also heading into the new age. Some of you are receiving this newsletter via email. All those that want it that way only needs to email me and they will also get it this way. There are several reasons I wanted to start doing this. First is to save the club money. We operate very close to the red all the time. The more members that will take the emailed newsletter, the more money the club can save. We could do a lot more with some brass in the bank, so to speak. Secondly, members will be sure to get their newsletters. There has to be 2-5 members every mailing that don’t get their newsletter for one reason or another.  I expect that email will prove more reliable.  You will be able to print out you newsletter and even save it to disk for future reference. How about printing one for new buyers of your Polish? Just a thought. So please consider getting your newsletters by email from now on. It will benefit everyone in the long run.Thanks go to God for guidance and to my wife for putting up with me and to you, the valued members. Without you, this club wouldn’t exist. So until next time, this egg’s been laid.