The Tennessee Whitney w/ Rebecca Lynch
Find out all the insider info on Rebecca’s new project, the Tennessee Whitney. Find out how and why and all the details on getting them in the APA.
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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.
Intro: 0:14
Mhm.
Duncan: 0:23
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Jennifer: 0:41
All right we're here today with Rebecca Lynch of Thieving Otter Farm to talk about her new chicken breed, the Tennessee Whitneys. Hello, Rebecca. Hello. Tell us about your farm and what you do.
Rebecca: 0:56
So I'm primarily known for raising quail. I'm a quail addict like
1:01
Jennifer and Carey and,
Rebecca: 1:04
but I started out in chickens and I'm somebody that likes genetics and likes to play around with things. And so a while back I decided it would be really cool to, to create my own chicken breed. And cause I like a good challenge. And so that's where the Tennessee Whitney's came about. I actually, so this is a silly reason to correct, try to create your own chicken breed. But right now there's only one chicken breed in the APA that was developed by a woman. And that's the Buckeyes. And do you know what? I decided I was going to be number two. I was going to have the second chicken breed. So yeah, that that's my silly little goal with that.
Jennifer: 1:46
Hey, we all have to have our reasons. How long have you been working on them?
Rebecca: 1:52
I've been working on them for about five years now. And I got into them by accident. So I'm going to admit something. I had a friend, this was way back before I was super concerned about biosecurity and stuff. I had a friend that wanted me to raise a bunch of chicks for her. She didn't have a brooder and she didn't, want to do the whole chick thing, but wanted the chickens. So she ordered a bunch of chicks and he'd ordered some Wheaton Morans and there was a chick in this box of Wheaton Morans that looked different. And as I grew these chicks out for her, I went, okay, this is not a Wheaton Morans. I don't know what this is. But it's not a Wheaton Morans. And she didn't want it because it wasn't a Wheaton Morans and so I thought, okay, cool, I'll take this chick. And it turned out being this gorgeous silver Wheaton chicken that looks body style, type, looks like a Brahma. And so I went to that hatchery and I looked at all their chick pics and there's nothing there's nothing that looked like this chicken and when she grew out, they have no adults pictured that look like this chicken. So I emailed them and I went, what is this? And they went, Oh, it's a Wheaton Brahma. I was like, Okay. And or no. I take it back. I'm sorry. They said it was a light Brahma and it wasn't. But it looks like a silver Wheaton Brahma. And so I went, okay. And didn't really know what it was. And they, the hatchery couldn't tell me. And so I started doing some research and looking around and looking at pictures all over the place. And I've been in chickens for over a decade and I'd never seen anything that looked like her. So I thought I'm going to see if I can make more of her. I I started getting in some groups on Facebook for like chicken projects and colors and stuff. And I came across a breeder in upstate New York who was working on salmon brahmas. And I thought this is close to the type. Of this particular bird. I liked her type and confirmation and those salmon Brahman's Brahmas were close enough. And I thought I'm going to get a rooster from her and see if I can continue on with these silver Wheaton, whatever this thing is. And I purchased, I made at the time, my most expensive rooster purchase ever of 150 for this beautiful rooster. And had him. Mailed to me and you know what? That was like the best thing I've ever done. She breeds for temperament and this rooster, I named him Russell Crowe. And he was the start of the line and I could not have picked a better foundation for this line with that rooster. Being salmon, he wasn't quite, the coloring I was looking for, but it was the closest I could come to. So the next problem was Silver Wheaton. Everything that I've read says it's not really a thing. Silver is, Silver and Wheaton are, they're not really compatible together. So without going into major genetics and stuff. So that led me down the path of trying to go, okay is it actually going to be possible to recreate this bird? Or am I just going to be wasting a whole lot of time? And I came across an article somewhere from Grant Brereton I think I said his name in the UK. And he was saying that there's a specific gene that can make silver wheat impossible. And I'm like, okay let's cross our fingers. Hope I have that gene because I really like this bird. And that's how it got started. I paired them up and sure enough, I started getting silver wheat and offspring. And so I have been breeding, I think I'm on my fourth generation. I'm producing the fifth generation now. And they're not yet breeding true. So I'm still getting there. It looks like there's some recessive white in there and a little modeling in some of them. So it's going to, it's going to take work. I'm starting with birds that who knows what the first one was and the second one was a cross as well. So I've got a lot of genetic soup going on. And then in the meantime, not only am I working on color, but I'm working on confirmation, effects, temperament, production, all of those other things that are really important as well.
Jennifer: 6:27
So would it be a new color Brahma or is it completely separate breed?
Rebecca: 6:31
Completely separate breed. So I used, we don't know what the hen originally was. She could have been a Brahma something. Could have been some sort of mix that occurred by accident at the hatchery. Who knows? And then while the male was Brahma, he was actually, because it was a project line that she was working on, in order to make the salmon Brahmas, she had done a Fabarol's Brahma cross. So there's salmon favaroles in there as well. My goal is to make something unique. I don't, while I like brahmas, I'm not super, I like, the type is not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm going my own avenue with them. What are some of the characteristics you're breeding for? So as far as looks definitely the color, the silver Wheaton color. So what I mean by that is it's a bird with a Wheaton colored body. And it's got a dark neck and tail has, I'm going for a peak home right now. The, so it'll be a while before I get all the straight comb out of that. That's not super easy. Going for feathered legs. And the size along the lines of a Brahma, I'm looking for a dual purpose bird. And then. temperament. So my original name for this line, before I started calling them the Tennessee Whitney's was gentle giants. And that was an unofficial name, but these birds are just as sweet as can be. My roosters, I've never had to watch my back with my roosters and they're big. They're really big. They're not as big as your coaches, but they're big. But yeah, I want a nice docile bird that people can have as, As a family, chicken dual purpose and not have to worry about their kids getting mauled by the rooster. So that's important. And then as far as, as far as laying eggs, they, they laid a just normal light brown egg. And about average for a dual purpose line. They're not the best layers in the world, but they're not the worst either. So I'll be focusing on trying to get up the production of the eggs a little bit more. What about skin color? They've got yellow legs and normal skin tone.
Jennifer: 8:50
Got it. Okay, so for people who aren't familiar, the pea comb is dominant and the single comb would be recessive. In order for single comb to show up, you have to have two copies of it. Now, on a kind of a tangent here, my understanding is on the buckeyes, they still see the single comb every once in a while. Because it's really hard to breed out. It is.
Rebecca: 9:14
Yeah, and the hard thing when you're starting from scratch, and you're making your own line there's so much you have to pay attention to. I need to make sure that I'm not accidentally breeding a defect into my line, that's going to become part of that line and hard to get rid of, or, impossible. I actually had that happen. I was working on a line. I wanted to create a super like iridescent, shiny black chicken that was almost like a blue purple color. And I was working on that and working on that. And somehow. White showed, started showing up in the tail feathers of my roosters. And of course it didn't show up until they were like, Oh, six to eight months old. So I'd throw them out. I'd be looking at, Oh, these are great. These are beautiful. What is that tail feather? And I finally just realized that no matter what I did, I couldn't remove it. And no matter what I did, that was going to be a fault.
Carey: 10:12
Let me ask this. Yeah. When they come in as a still a juvenile with the white feathering in the tails, does it go away when they molt?
Rebecca: 10:23
No. No, it just
Carey: 10:25
comes back after the molt.
Rebecca: 10:26
Yeah. It actually shows up when they were hitting full maturity.
Carey: 10:30
So yeah,
Rebecca: 10:31
I'd grow them all out. They'd hit that full maturity and you'd start seeing the white feather and after the molt, it would be even more apparent. And so it was, and I didn't have a single one without it. And I kinda, I went back to my very first cock bird and was like, Oh, there it is. Oops. So that's the thing, when you're creating a breed you really have to be careful and select there's so many different things to select. People right now are asking me, what do you, what are you doing? Why are you still getting straight combs? And it's I'm not worried about combs right now. I got to worry about everything else.
Carey: 11:12
It's pretty easy to fix.
Rebecca: 11:14
Yeah. Yeah. I can worry about that later. Or, if it comes down to it, I could go, Ooh, you know what? I like straight comb. And that's the cool thing about creating your own breed. You can make it up as you go along, originally when I started some of mine, since the rooster was part fab rolls some of my birds were hatching with a beard and muffs. And I was like, Oh, cool. I could, and then I was like no, I really liked the clean face better, but it's my breed. I can decide that.
Carey: 11:43
Do whatever you want.
Rebecca: 11:44
Yep. Are they auto auto sexing by chance? So they're not auto sexing per se that would be, sexable at hatch. But the cool thing about them is as soon as their adult feathers start to grow in particularly, you can start seeing it in the wings when the wing feathers, start growing in you can tell the males from the females. So you can tell fairly early on the males are going to be a dark color and the females are going to be weak. Do you have to double breed them? Not so far. No. And if it turns into, I need to do that to be able to maintain this line, then I will probably just give up the line. I double mating is not something I want to get into. No. Explain double mating to people who don't know what it is. Double mating is where in order to maintain a line and you see this a lot in show birds, okay? You have to have a line where you breed towards your ideal rooster, and you have to use hens for that line that may not be ideal in order to make your ideal rooster, and then you have to have another line to make your ideal hen. And the roosters you might use to make that ideal hen line aren't necessarily your ideal rooster. You have to have two different lines going to try to make what you want. Does that sound about right?
Jennifer: 13:13
Yeah, that's right. And I'm trying, is it the well simmers that have to be double mated? Yeah, I believe that's one. And I think
Rebecca: 13:20
anything that is what are those like red, there's certain red breeds and I'm not talking about like Rhode Island reds, but what are those? All of my brain chicken information has been replaced by quail information. I used to know so much about chicken genetics, but There's certain red lines of birds.
Jennifer: 13:40
I don't know. I just knew the Wellsumers had to be ed. Yeah. And that takes up just, for people who dunno what that is it's twice as much breeding as you wanna do. If you're just getting started, that's like an advanced thing.
Rebecca: 13:54
Yeah. Yeah it's rough. I've been breeding for a couple of decades and I don't think I'd ever want to get into double mating. Props to anybody who does it. And I understand, the reasons behind it. But I think that if it came down to that with this particular breed that I'm working on, I would try to steer it in a different direction.
Jennifer: 14:16
So going forward you have to get a new breed put into the APA, they have to breed true. What other requirements do you have to do?
Rebecca: 14:26
Oh boy, I just looked at it not so long ago, but a lot of it has escaped my brain, so I might have to pull it up and look at it again. But, I believe you have to have at least five different people breeding that breed for five different years. And you also have to show the birds and you have to have, I think all four, you have to have young birds and old birds of both sexes shown, I think, is it four times?
Carey: 15:01
Yeah, so you got, they got to be shown at least four times. I think that's the only four in the mix.
Rebecca: 15:08
Okay.
Carey: 15:08
The five breeders that breed them for five years also have to be APA members for those five years while they're doing it.
Rebecca: 15:17
Okay. Yep. That's a good point. Am I missing anything? I know there I'll have to have a standard for them.
Carey: 15:24
There's some like minute things, but the most difficult ones are the ones that we talked about. The others are like technicalities and the way the paperwork is filled out and stuff like that. Got
Jennifer: 15:37
it. And it's still not a guarantee. We don't want people to think, Oh, we're just making this new breed over here and we're just going to sign a piece of paper and it goes into the APA. It's a very lengthy process. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah,
Carey: 15:51
because you have to get that to a board meeting, and once you get your paperwork to the board meeting, if one person don't like it, it's not happening.
Rebecca: 16:02
Yeah, and I think the other, I think one of the other things that you have to have is the bird to have a certain number of attributes that are different from, that make it stand out from other breeds. So that, that would be another thing. I think, what is it? Four different things that are different. I'd have to look that up. But basically you have to make sure that you're not just going, Oh, here's a slightly different color from totally, I'm going to call this gray leghorn jambalaya.
Carey: 16:33
See, the APA must also inspect the flock on the premises and the inspector must visually inspect all the birds and physically inspect at least 20 percent of the entire flock. That's a, that is probably The toughest thing to get to happen usually takes 10 years or more to complete the steps
Rebecca: 16:59
and you know that's an awesome challenge, you know to me that's part of it And if I can do that will be a huge goal, you know that huge success and I know that it's going to be difficult So that's part of, if I can actually meet that goal, that'd be amazing. My first step is getting them to breed true. And that's a fun challenge for me since I love genetics and I, I love that kind of challenge. So right now I had a huge setback last year. The first rooster that I selected was not as closely related to the group. Is the one I ended up using and The first bunch of chickens, or chicks that I hatched out were none of them were the right colors. I wasn't. Yeah, so I had to cull him. And he went to a really nice home. And went and chose another another rooster that was close, more closely related. That had more of the genes that I was looking for. And that's the generation I'm working on now. I'm actually right now back crossing him his daughters to him to try to get, a little bit more tight genetics and get them to breed true. So I'm getting about 75% the color that I want.
Jennifer: 18:18
And you're never going to, even my lines that are old lines, you're never, you're not going to get just showbird after showbird going out. You're just not going to. So you have to, you constantly have to pay attention to those genetics in order to, Like above Orpington, technically, yes. Everything that hatches is above Orpington, but is it the buff color that you're after? No, none of them are the buff color that you really want to see.
Carey: 18:49
And for me, the thing that I like about quail is when you make some changes, you can find out, a month and a half, six, eight weeks, you'll know with a chicken you're six, eight months.
Rebecca: 19:03
Absolutely.
Carey: 19:04
because the, that first set of feathers is not going to be what grows back after the molt. It'll give you a really good idea. But until it hits that first molt, you're not going to know a hundred percent.
Jennifer: 19:20
I think you're lucky at six to eight months. I've got a coaching up here. She is two years old and I put her in a breeding pen a month ago. And when I put her in there, she was solid black. She's not solid black anymore. I'm going to have some gray hairs woman. I am decided I'm old out here. And I went out there one day and I was like looking at her. I'm like, what happened to you? And she's I just dyed my hair last night. She's got white. She looks modeled. And I'm like, you were solid black a month ago. What are you thinking?
Rebecca: 19:51
And I imagine with your really large birds, it takes a couple of years for them to fully mature. It takes two years. And that's the same with these guys. They're the, especially the roosters, they're not fully mature and filled out until they're about two years old. So when you're, you're trying to select breeders very carefully because I don't have anybody else to choose from. I can't just, contact somebody. Somewhere else in the country and go, Hey, can I get some eggs from you? I need some new roosters. I need to freshen my lines or anything like, Nope, this is what I have. I make a mistake and I use the wrong bird for breeding. Like Carrie said, I may not know for a long time.
Carey: 20:41
Six months is very optimistic.
Rebecca: 20:43
Yeah.
Carey: 20:44
Six months is like your best chance. You're feeding that bird for a hot little minute before you figure out. Yeah,
Jennifer: 20:52
it's April now, and I was kicking myself a couple weeks ago. I'm like, man, I'm so late hatching chicks this year. I should have had them all on the ground by now. And then one day I sat down and I was like, but I won't even know what they look like for two more years. So what's an extra month? What difference does it make?
Carey: 21:09
Yeah. And they'll be well acclimated by wintertime.
Jennifer: 21:12
Yeah, they're going to start hatching next week, but still, I was like, you're just being too hard on yourself. You're good. You got two years.
Rebecca: 21:21
Yep.
Jennifer: 21:21
Well,
Rebecca: 21:23
and I had a set, I was going to start fairly early this year. I'm trying to do things differently, space out my hatches a little bit more. And I've got breeding pens that have doors in between them. Somehow one of the doors got open in between two pens and one of my other project roosters ended up in my Tennessee Whitney pen. So that sent me back another, six weeks
Jennifer: 21:54
of your other projects. So just give us a brief like recap of the mop tops. How are they doing?
Rebecca: 22:00
They're doing well. So the mom tops so that's another project. That's another breed that I'm working on. It's it's number two. It's my B game. The Tennessee Whitney's are my favorite. And I keep thinking about maybe discontinuing the mop tops and then I'll go out and I'll look at them and go, no, I love you. The story with those is again, because I can't do anything like normal people. I, it, Back a few years ago, I don't know, five, six years ago. Again, before I was concerned about biosecurity and super, worried about where I got my birds from. I answered an ad on like Facebook or something. Somebody was selling a bunch of their chickens. And it was basically come to my yard, pick out what you want. They're free ranging. We ran around with nets. I caught a couple of crested birds. Okay. They were just like barnyard mixed breeds. So I brought him home, stuck him in my barnyard mix. It was before I was really, considering breeding anything for reels and happened to get some hens that went broody and they hatched out some chicks. And I was like, these are really nice looking chicks. I like these guys. Again, the whole, Let's play with genetics bug bit me and I started seeing what I could do with them and start playing around. So yeah, these guys are not even close to breeding true. There's such genetic soup. It's not funny, but basically I am working on a crested line, not a super I like my birds to be able to see. So that's never going to be a crest like a polish or a silky where their, site is inhibited. This is just like a little eighties hairdo puff, like a leg bar. Yeah. Yeah. Like a leg bar. And I recently split my colors. So I'm working on a like a silver penciled and a gold penciled. So I've got two different, I'm starting to hone in on color. So with my Tennessee Whitney's color was the main focus. Color was what started the whole thing. Because I like that silver Wheaton with these guys. It was more like let's see if I can create a really friendly, good egg production line. And I this crest and Oh, look, that color looks cool. Let's add that in there. So we're just having fun with those really. What
Carey: 24:29
color eggs do they like?
Rebecca: 24:30
Medium brown. They're boring. Yeah.
Jennifer: 24:35
Sometimes the fun colors are just fine. I like to put a Buff Orpington over a Black Cochin and it comes out with they're black or they're like a grayish blue color, but then they have gold flecks in them. And so I call them black gold. For a couple of reasons partly because they looked like black and gold And partly because they were so pretty people really wanted to buy them you can cut that part out, too
Carey: 25:02
So Somebody wants to buy them. That's an important part.
Jennifer: 25:05
Yeah, and they're good broody mamas, orpingtons are great birds All right. What else can we talk about? with your birds How many pens do you have to do all this breeding?
Rebecca: 25:17
So right now I'm still in the beginning stages. So I, I don't want a huge amount of genetic diversity because I'm trying to refine my lines and trying to get, very specific things. So I have two pens right now of each of the mop tops and the Tennessee with these. And that's a rooster and four hens for each
Jennifer: 25:41
pen. Okay. So for new people listening, take this from as a cue that you don't need new blood every year. Then it actually sets you backwards. So in my case with the Orpingtons and the Cochins, I have never brought in new blood and my lines are very old. I think the Cochins are like 35 years old. and the Orpingtons are like 18 ish years old, I think. So you want to tighten the genetics. If you keep bringing new blood in, like in Rebecca's case, She kept bringing new blood in. She'd never make any headway in what she's trying to do.
Carey: 26:19
And mess it up.
Jennifer: 26:21
Yeah.
Rebecca: 26:21
It would make my genetic soup even soupier. The
Carey: 26:26
line of reds that I have is around 90 years old.
Rebecca: 26:29
Yeah. That's amazing.
Carey: 26:30
They've been line bred that long.
Rebecca: 26:32
Wow.
Carey: 26:34
None of them have popped out with two heads or three legs. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive all the new episodes right when they are released, and they are released on Thursday mornings. Feel free to email us at PoultryNerds@gmail.Com and let us know what you think of the show. If you're on Facebook, check us out at the Poultry Nerds and make sure to give us a like and a follow. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning and keep it egg citing. This is Carey from Poultry Nerds signing off. Feathers up, everyone.
