From Backyard Chickens to Black Mottled Brahmas: Bronwen Brune w/Queen B Farm Poultry Journey
Join us on the Poultry Nerds Podcast as we sit down with Bronwen Brune w/Queen B Farm in Missouri to discuss her incredible journey from accidental backyard chicken keeper to dedicated breeder of Black Mottled Brahmas. Bronwyn shares her experiences, from dealing with aggressive roosters to mastering complex poultry genetics to create a new, stunning variety. Learn about chicken math, breeding strategies, genetics of mottled feathers, overcoming common poultry challenges, and the reality of creating show-quality birds from scratch. Perfect for both backyard enthusiasts and serious breeders aiming for poultry excellence!
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Jennifer: 0:00
Welcome to Poultry Nerds. We are here today with Bronwyn Bruney from Queen Bee Farm, and I have already asked her middle name does not start with a B'cause that would be too convenient.
Bronwen: 0:15
So welcome, Bronwyn. How are you? I am doing great. Thank you guys so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Jennifer: 0:22
Sure. So tell us about your farm, where you are. All the good stuff.
Bronwen: 0:26
Yeah, so we are middle-ish, Missouri. More towards between Columbia and St. Louis, Missouri is where we land. We just started all of this shenanigans about 2017 or so whenever we moved out of suburbia and got our little patch of dirt. It started with hey, that outbuilding would make a great chicken coop.
Carey: 0:52
Oh God.
Bronwen: 0:53
And my husband was like yeah, I can do that. And then like several years later I was like, you know what else would make a good chicken coop?
Jennifer: 1:00
chickens did you start with in that little one building?
Bronwen: 1:03
Yeah. Probably 15 ish, I feel is the right answer. Okay. And then chicken math took over. It was on accident. I didn't mean it.
Carey: 1:13
what happened was it was
Bronwen: 1:16
definitely legitimately not on purpose. I had no intention of being where I am. I more or less just. Went with what circumstances provided me and ran with it. But it was definitely not my intent. I had some poultry background. I grew up on a farm. We didn't have poultry. Okay, so do you guys know Elmira Duff, the little cartoon on the Looney Tunes, who likes to love and hug and squeeze everything. Yeah, that's me in a nutshell. So whenever I was little and grandma had chickens, and of course they were just, production chickens. I was like, these birds look like they have a hunk of ham on their head. And also they won't let me catch them and squeeze them and love them. So I really didn't have any interest. I was more of a kitten barn, cat beagle puppy. Kind of kid growing up, I was, used to these birds. They don't like me. They don't allow me to squeeze them. So I didn't really have any interest. So fast forward to now, I had no idea that this would ever be anything that interests me or that I would even enjoy. So yeah. And then. Next thing you know,
Jennifer: 2:25
here we are. So growing up we had I, I thought for the longest time that they were laggards, but then dad told me one day they were white rocks, but it doesn't matter. They were just maniacs that tried to eat me all the time. Yes, I swore once I left home, I would never. Have chickens again.
Bronwen: 2:44
Yeah. Mom and dad had some geese at one point in time and scared the daylights outta me and they would chase me out of the barn. I was trying to feed the cows and couldn't. I was little and my dad finally stood behind me and was like, you are going to walk into that bar. Did I remember crying my face off? I was so scared of'em. I was like, I'm never having any kind of poultry,
Carey: 3:03
but like geese bite
Bronwen: 3:04
there.
Carey: 3:05
had him bite me on the leg when I was a kid.
Bronwen: 3:08
when you're only three feet tall, they are very scary.
Carey: 3:12
Yeah.
Bronwen: 3:13
Yeah. I never thought like I said, I'm a barn cat beagle, puppy cow kind of girl. Grew up as a poultry person, so I didn't have this on my Bingo card. So what kind of animals do you have now? so we dabbled in ducks for a hot second and that was also not on purpose. And I don't really have a ceiling for the number of chickens I can maintain, but I absolutely have a ceiling for how many ducks I wanna have. I just don't have the setup, right? Like I don't have a natural water source. So it was constantly, flipping out kitty pools and all that mess with keeping up with them. And I only had two or three. And even that was. Way enough. So we passed on the ducks. So just chickens right now. We have dogs, we have cats. The list is still incomplete. I need to retire before we can expand.
Jennifer: 4:03
Please do it in the mean, I know
Bronwen: 4:06
just live on
Carey: 4:06
the edge. Who needs sleep?
Bronwen: 4:08
I don't know how that goat got in the. That's weird. So that's how this whole thing has evolved. But yeah, so far just dogs, cats, and the birds outside.
Jennifer: 4:18
Alright, so the reason why we brought you on today was because you are creating modeled bras from scratch.
Bronwen: 4:29
Yes. I did that.
Carey: 4:31
a, that is a science project. Isn't it? I need to know how that works. How do you get that? Okay. So
Bronwen: 4:37
it started with a mean rooster that was really the catalyst for all of this. When we were picking out our first flock, my daughter and her best friend were sitting down and they were flipping through the hatchery catalog My only request was that it was Missouri Tiger themed. So I want black and gold chickens. That's it. Get black ones, get gold ones, get black and gold ones. That was my only requirement. And so they picked out a menagerie of birds. Everything was good and they were like, we need to pick a rooster. I was like, yeah, we need to pick a rooster. So then eeny miny mo landed on a rooster, picked it, everything was fine. He was a little bit of a spazz growing up. And then he got mean just like most hatchery roosters do. I'm not even gonna say the breed'cause it's not even important, but. He was a menace. And for a year or two. My mom had a flock at this point. She got birds just a few years before I did, and she got several breeds, but she got some buff braas. And I was completely in love. My inner Elmira duff was all about these birds. Like I could just scoop'em up and kiss'em and hug them. And my 30 something year old self was so happy. I was like, this is it. So I was like, I definitely wanna get more of those. So that's what hooked me into bras. And I definitely included them in my black and gold menagerie. And then this mean rooster, my mom had a mix or something mean rooster. And so I just assumed that's how it is. Like they're just jerks and you just have to go out with the tennis racket and that's how it's,
Carey: 6:02
one way to do it.
Bronwen: 6:04
And so then I was like my friends down the road got a large foul black coachin. And so again, my inner Elmira duff was like,
Jennifer: 6:14
oh,
Bronwen: 6:15
I need that in my life. And so I went on the search for a large foul achin. Just because I wanted a nice rooster'cause he was nice and found a lady in Columbia, Missouri actually that raises modeled large foul black cos, which is pretty hard to find unless you're Jamie Mats or some of his folks. And I was like, yes, I will take him. So literally I only wanted him'cause he was sweet and she. She said, he is modeled. I was like, cool.'cause I don't even know what that means.
Carey: 6:42
he was like, okay,
Bronwen: 6:44
that's nice. Is he big? Yes. Is he black? Yep. Cool. Check. I'll take him. So I bring him home. He's the sweetest thing ever. He is like a front porch dog. I was in love and the Rotten Rooster. I was like, oh, that is absolutely enough of you and nobody needs to tolerate this actually. And I made it like my mission. To make sure everyone knows that nice roosters exist. That was like my whole thing. Like I am going to cross this big sweet boy with my buff brass, which I love so much, and I'm just gonna create giant, heavily feathered sweet birds. That was my absolute goal after Mizzou tiger themed birds. And so when I, whenever I asked questions about it, I was like what color will they be? And someone told me. Chicken colors are like melting crayons. So if you take a black crayon and you melt it with a yellow crayon, you're gonna get black birds. I was like, oh, okay. So sure enough, when we bred them together, we had black chicks and I was like, P works just like melting crayons. No big deal. So that's how that first generation. Started, they were solid black. All of them. They had vulture hawks. I didn't know what that means. They were split to modeling. I didn't know. I didn't know what that means. Some of them had leakage. I didn't know what that means. I didn't care. It wasn't my goal. And so in the meantime, I'm like just perpetuating these sweet birds, speckling'em across the counties next to me and a family from Illinois comes and they said we would love some hatching eggs. I was like, sure.'cause they fell in love with Bucky, who was the large foul modeled coach, and they're like, oh man, we would love his babies. I'm like, everybody wants his babies. I know he's the best. So they took hatching eggs, they hatched them. In the meantime, she's keeping up with me, she's sending me pictures and she sends me a picture of a buff bird that has modeling. And I was like that doesn't make sense because I thought it was like melting crayons and all of these birds are black, and so tell me how black birds made this bird. And so for the next like six months amongst chasing kids around ball fields and all the things, I was like, what in the world? How the heck did I do this? How is this even possible? And he grew and I was like, what in the world? So finally I figured out how I did it, why I did it, the genetics behind how it happened. I. And I don't know, I sent her with like a dozen, 18 maybe something like that. Eggs, just backyard mutts. And she only had one that looked like him. She would not sell him back to me. And so I was like if I did it once, I can do it again, right? so then I was like, I still have all the birds that made him, so I'll just do it again. So that set in motion my. Short walk off the deep end. And so at this point I'm like trying to figure out how I'm going to turn eggs in the middle of the night and a styrofoam incubator that's still air. And I'm like doing all these dumb things and asking stupid questions and face planting and learning and all the things. And I finally figured out. That this was actually pretty hard and that one bird that was hatched out of those 12 or 18 eggs was a unicorn. And going forward, this was gonna be pretty miserable to try to repeat that, but I was just determined and dumb and so I was like, I'll just keep going. So that second generation, I hatched just a bonkers load of birds trying to find another. Buff bird that was modeled. So basically all of these birds were black, but since they were a cross between a black and a buff, they were still carrying all of those genetics. They were all split to modeled. So now I know I only had a 25% chance of getting any modeled birds out of that cross in the first place, which was low. And then on top of that, even less that would be. Buff modeled. And on top of that, even less, that wouldn't have vulture hawks.'cause at that point I realized if I'm gonna raise Brams, I need to extinguish the vulture hawks.'cause that's a dq. So really we're talking like single digit percentages on what I would actually produce that fell within my criteria.
Carey: 10:59
Nothing major.
Bronwen: 11:00
Yeah, no big deal. Like I'm just. Carrying along, like sprinkling birds across everybody's backyard. Nope, this one won't work. But during that process, during that second generation, I was producing some number of black modeled without vulture hawks. And I initially, I was just discarding them.'cause I was like, that's not my goal. And then eventually I was like, you know what, maybe I could just use these second generation black modeled as a byproduct of this effort, trying to get Millie flour and split off another project. Like I'm creating them. They're sitting right in front of me. They don't have vulture Hawks, they're black. They're fully modeled. Maybe I can use that. So at that second generation is when I split and was like, okay, there's the Millie Flo effort, which is. Abysmal and long and hard and makes me feel like a failure most days. And then there's the modeled. And so I was like, okay. And so at that point, I only at that second generation, I only had two pulls out of, I don't know, probably 200 birds. I hatched outta that second generation. It was a lot that were fully modeled. Black, no leakage, visible Anyway. No vulture hawks. And so those two girls are what catapulted the entire model project. So that was So
Jennifer: 12:25
can I ask a question?
Bronwen: 12:26
Yeah.
Jennifer: 12:27
So the coaching was the male, what was the hens that you were using?
Bronwen: 12:32
Buff Braas. And they were hatchery quality buff bras. Looking back like they're terrible. They were not good stock. They were like hatchery, but maybe just a little below hatchery quality. There's other hatchery quality buff braas that look definitely better than what I started out with, for sure.
Jennifer: 12:51
Okay, so you've got, now you're at the end of this. Second generation and you've got two pulls and you still got your male.
Bronwen: 13:00
Yeah, so I decided not to go back to him because my girls, even though they're granddaughters of his, they're still favoring a decent amount of coaching type. And I was like, Ugh, I need to somehow get away from the coaching type. Their cushions were a little wonky, there's still some things, they didn't have vulture hawks, but they certainly didn't reflect the proper braa type. So I reached out to Beach Bum down in Florida, and Amy was like. I was like, what do you have for males? And she gave me the rundown. I'm like, my girls need this. They need a better top line. They need longer legs. They need obviously a better p comb'cause we're still working through that. I'm like, but they have decent leg feathering from the coach and influence. But these are the things I need. And Amy was like, I think I have the guy for you. So she picked what I was looking for to compliment my girl's shortcomings and she sent this blue mail up. Which at that point I was like, I'll take black or blue. Like it doesn't really matter. But because she sent me a blue now that diversified what I have. She sent him up. I used him to produce that third generation. They were of course all splits. I went heavy cuing on type. Didn't care obviously.'cause they weren't showing any modeling in that third generation. I guess I feel like we're maybe. I could have done differently if I'm hindsight's 2020 if I would've known what I know now. Back in that first generation, some of those girls probably had better type that I wasn't focusing on at the time. At that point, those F1 black girls I was just looking for. Big, heavy leaf feathered, big girls. I wasn't focusing on any kind of type. So had I focused on that early on, I probably would've made bigger gains later on. But I was just living my elmira duff life. I just want sweet birds. So at the point that these third generation birds were produced, then I was really dialing in and I really focused hard on recessive genes. Whether it is eliminate recessive jeans or whether I need to, promote recessive jeans. One of my biggest things I hear people say all the time, it drives me bonkers, is, you gotta build the barn before you paint it. Oh, that's nice and all, but have you ever actually done this from scratch? Because if you have ever done this from the absolute bottom up, you cannot follow that mantra. You cannot. Paint a barn white. If you are not bringing the white bucket along with you as you go, you can't get there. You'll never get there. So whenever, like yellow shanks, for example, obviously these are black birds and or blue birds. Now at this point. They don't wanna have yellow skin. They don't want to. It is very hard to promote that yellow skin on a black bird. So that was hard. if I let go of yellow shanks, because it's a color attribute, if we're gonna go with that, and I'm just looking at type and I only select for type. I'm gonna lose that yellow shank. If I never select for modeling, I'm never gonna have a modeled bird, so it's not a one size fits all statement, in my opinion. It is a balance between type and color when you are working like this from the bottom up. When you don't have exhibition quality to start, when you're trying to claw for every little attribute you can with each generation, you're. Crossing a bird with a beautiful skull to a bird with a crow head, hoping that somehow somebody gets long legs out of the bed. Like you're really in the trenches of that. And it's just not a one size fits all statement in those cases. I understand why people say it, but, okay. Let me ask you a question. Yeah.
Jennifer: 16:47
The modeling gene? Yes. Is that a recessive?
Bronwen: 16:50
It is.
Jennifer: 16:52
Okay. do the male and the female both carry it?
Bronwen: 16:55
You got it. It is not sex linked. it actually doesn't inhibit or promote or do anything with any other color or pattern. It is literally a standalone gene that performs or doesn't perform based on whether it's homozygous or not. So your
Jennifer: 17:09
third gener, you said your, was it your third generation? Yep. Wasn't showing any model at all. Yep. They were all splits. So everybody was heterozygous.
Bronwen: 17:16
You got it? And I knew, say
Jennifer: 17:18
threat there.
Bronwen: 17:19
It had to be because my two girls were homozygous. Okay. And my boy didn't carry any modeling genetics from Florida at all. So the girls gave every single one of their babies one copy. Wow. So keeping records has of course, been a thing. You can definitely get somewhere with carriers, so you can make progress with heterozygous birds, whether it's heterozygous, lavender, heterozygous, modeled, whatever the gene is that you want to promote, you can get. There with heterozygous birds, but you've gotta really keep tight records, especially with lavender. I don't even talk about that because I don't even have lavender on the farm'cause it's I, but like modeling, at least modeling, there's an advantage there to other recessive genes. With modeling, you can see if they are a carrier when they're chicks. So you can see that chick down and that juvenile feather pattern. You can see whether they carry modeling or whether they don't have any modeling. You can see it.
Jennifer: 18:51
What are you looking for?
Bronwen: 18:53
So sometimes they just have tiny little white tips on their feet, or their wings are maybe on their head, but it's a certain snapshot in time that gives you that data. So as babies and as juveniles, you can see it, but the minute they start. To feather out into their adult feathering, it's gone. And you will never know that they carry modeling ever again unless you have them banded and for certain, as chicks they showed it.'cause it'll be gone in their adult feathers.
Jennifer: 19:21
So Jamie told me one time that in their armpits, if they have white feathers in their armpits, they carry the model gene.
Bronwen: 19:28
Yeah, That could be. I've not found that to be the case. I still have my F1 girls here, a handful of them that are still toddling around and they are jet black to tip. there's not a single speck of white on them at all. Yeah, it is tricky. So the modeling was, I don't wanna say fall off a log easy, but like the modeling was not too terrible. The Millie floor has been. Like I said, extremely challenging and abysmal and at least the modeling has taken off. So at the point that those f threes were hatched and I was able to then, because they were only carriers for modeling that F generation back to that whole paint the barn or, build the barn before you paint it.
Jennifer: 20:09
And
Bronwen: 20:09
that F three generation, I really did focus on type only because there was nothing to focus on color. They were only heterozygous for it. it had worked out that every other generation I was focusing on one or the other to keep them moving forward. So that third generation, I really hammered down pretty hard on type. And then in that fourth generation, I was back to the original where, I was only gonna produce 25% that were modeled. And so again, that fourth generation was a ton of chicks to hatch. I really dialed in hard on the birds that reflected the best type and that were also homozygous modeled. I could have kept back others, but I really wanted to call hard and get there. And so at that point then I knew like I can stop worrying about modeling because it's perpetuated now everybody's homozygous and I don't need to worry about it, So basically from generation four on now, it's all about building the barn because my bucket of white paint has followed me all along the way, and I haven't lost it or left it along the way. But yeah I think one of the biggest struggles for bras and projects is. we only have three accepted varieties. There's not a lot out there to, you only have just a select small genetic pool of genes that you can use to create anything. And so it becomes tricky with this particular breed to create anything novel without out crossing. Same thing that Bumble Low Hollow Farm said, they get a lot of comments about those aren't real bras and these aren't purebred and all the things. And I was like, do you guys think a stork came and dropped these birds with all these colors on it? What do you think? How do you think that we got here? Like of course that's the only way to do it.
Jennifer: 21:53
You have to really understand genetics. So are you still getting single combs?
Bronwen: 21:59
Oh, absolutely. Last year I got a lot of single combs.
Jennifer: 22:02
So
Bronwen: 22:04
I made
Jennifer: 22:04
single combs are recessive yes. You have the two copies formed to show. Yes. Now I have coachings. I don't know if you knew that or not. Yes.
Bronwen: 22:13
Okay. Big old sweet boys and girls. I know. I love them.
Jennifer: 22:17
So the, where you were talking about, we were just gonna expand on some of the things you brought up. So the yellow skin. Yes. The black pigment of the feathers wants to leak into the skin and dull the yellow. It sure does. So it's very important To pay attention to those, any bitty tiny details.
Bronwen: 22:38
got it.
Jennifer: 22:39
So on the coachings, you look at the pads of their feet.'cause those are the first things that kind of gray out.
Bronwen: 22:45
Gotcha. Yeah, I've, I found that in that third generation, when I was really dialed in on type, I was picking apart my leg color pretty hard in that generation and calling out any of those grays. I just know, you've got two things working against you. Number one, it's recessive, but number two, exactly like you said, the black feather pigment does not want to be yellow. I learned at that point that it's not necessarily sex linked. But it is sex expressed. So Ty, I was finding my males are nice and bright yellow compared to their sisters, for example. The girls are really struggling with that pigment, but the males in that same hatch group look, decently bright. And it's not a sex linked trait, but it is sex express. So at that point I was like, gotcha. Okay. In that case. All of my males must have yellow that has to happen. And the girls, I gave a little bit more grace to if their leg color wasn't quite as bright just because I knew that was gonna be a harder road to hoe to get them there. But yeah, you're exactly right. It is tough on any blackbird that requires yellow shanks.
Jennifer: 23:54
modeled bras, you want yellow skin.
Bronwen: 23:58
You got it. That's the standard for bras. Yep.
Jennifer: 24:02
And then on the center and the outer toe. You got it. What about on the brams?
Bronwen: 24:07
Same. So they should not have vulture hawks, which I know is a big, sometimes there's a lot of conversation about whether cos have vulture hawks or not. The definition of vulture hawks, if we're talking milli, the du clays which have, or the sultans, which have the really stiff. Vulture hawks versus the cos, which have a much softer curl to their leg. Feathering. It's a combination of genes that creates vulture hawks and in the cos it's a softer culmination of those feathers. But when you cross a cochin to a bra. And the Brahma has no vulture hawks. You 100% get chicks with vulture hawks. So it's that combination of jeans that heavily feathered skirt that the cos have, and the fact that their feather quality is so soft. Yeah it, every single one of my first generation birds had vulture hawks and I had to weed it out with that second generation push.
Jennifer: 24:59
So Abra is a harder feathered bird.
Bronwen: 25:02
It should be, yes.
Jennifer: 25:03
So you're, how are you gonna move from a soft feather to a harder feather?
Bronwen: 25:07
keep on going. I've definitely seen in my birds over the years a much fluffier cushion, if you will. So that speaks to that softer feather, and it just speaks to the overall type for sure. The cushion has been something, and I think it's not unique to me. I think it's unique to most project birds. That cushion is really a bear to get, like if you think about a light braa in that beautiful clean sweep that they see that nice flat sweep. And then you think, like you see some of these project birds where their wings are tucking in and they have a waist and then poof out comes their cushion. I had the same issue, so I went to the Ohio National and exhibited for the first time in November, which was fantastic. I've been to one poultry show before that, so this was my second poultry show, and I went to the Ohio National, brought 11 birds again, that short walk off the deep end part. And so I was like, I'm doing it. So I went and I was so excited. I was so nervous getting all my birds tucked into their cages, like a mom with their kid going to school on kindergarten or something. And then finally when I stopped. Looked around me at the other Brahmas that were in the cages around me. I was like, oh dang, I
Jennifer: 26:19
have a
Bronwen: 26:20
long way to go. Oh my gosh. And I, you think your birds look great, and then you look up and you're like, oh no. Yeah, they're trash. Okay. Gosh, there's just so much. And that rigidity of feather, the feather quality, being thin versus, a thicker feather quality. All of those things. Once I got my hands on other exhibitors, birds, of course, with her permission and they on mine, I was like, okay, yeah, I see what y'all are talking about now. Yeah. Such a eye-opening experience wonderful. Of course. But yeah, it was a lot to take in for sure.
Carey: 26:57
I saw your birds at the Ohio National and they stood up pretty well to the ones next to'em.
Bronwen: 27:07
Thank you. I appreciate that. But I. The ones that I brought were young. I think there are other birds that were puls in the exhibit hall were also the same age, and they just were not the right size. So I, when I went home, I was like, okay, we gotta get serious about amping up the size of these suckers. We've gotta get bigger and we've just gotta get there. the birds that I exhibited were just my fifth generation. in my first and second generation, once I decided that this is what I was gonna do, I was like, get there in what? A couple years blind ambition.
Jennifer: 27:41
I, as you're trying to get rid of some of the coaching stuff, and transform it over my odd question. I'm just wondering how long, how many generations before you got rid of the beetle brow.
Bronwen: 27:54
So bra are
Jennifer: 27:55
bras don't have that right.
Bronwen: 27:57
They are supposed to have it
Jennifer: 28:00
as heavy as a coaching.
Bronwen: 28:01
I'm probably the last person to answer that question specifically, but yeah, they are definitely supposed to be like resting Brahma face angry. Speed brow. Like they're definitely supposed to have that, heavy wide
Carey: 28:16
resting Brahma face. That's it. That's what we're calling it.
Bronwen: 28:19
They're definitely supposed to have that heavy brow. Some of the exhibition lights are so heavy, real similar to the coachings. I think maybe you don't see it as often in the exhibit halls because you're not seeing as many. Quality bras that have that attribute. But yeah, they really are supposed to have that. Big old knobby bonker head like they're can't see.
Jennifer: 28:41
So if somebody doesn't know what a beetle brow is, that's like, where it like that was that guy from Dennis the menace. His eyebrows were really heavy and they hung down. Yeah. So like on my coachings, if you come up above them, like they're standing at your feet and you come down on them, they cannot see you. Yes. Their brow is. So heavy. Yes. Like they're blind. They up looking up, they should
Bronwen: 29:04
look like the red angry bird. Yes, exactly. So yeah they, that's how they should look. So in that respect, that should be something we perpetuate through the line. I think one of the harder things just in brass in general is to get that length of back. And that's something I've really struggled with. And that's just been a selection thing over time. Just keep picking the ones out that are just a little bit wider and a little bit longer, and over time you finally get to a place I hope. But yeah, I think that length of back is really another thing. I've got a, several with a shorter. Maybe they have a nice sweep and maybe they don't have that pinched waist and that fluffy cushion, but they certainly still have a short back. I think
Jennifer: 29:50
that's something that we work on a lot of breeds. This year I'm, that's one of my points on the Orpingtons, and so one of my mentors said that I need to put my hands on the backs. Of the boys and instead of standing to the side and looking at their profile where, how long is their back? You actually need to put your hands on'em. Feel their back and make sure that end of that bone continues on and it's not just being exasperated by the fluff, per se.
Bronwen: 30:23
One of my mentors Lisa at the Ohio National, she had her hands on mine as well, and she let me when you. Of course she was exhibiting hens, not puls, but at the same time, like just the mass of these birds between the darks. She and Scott were both exhibiting darks at that time, and just the mass on these birds was just incredible. She said, go into your coop and either be blindfold or do it at night so you're not biased, because I definitely have seen myself over the time and over the years. Get coop blind and be biased to my own. I had someone come to my coop one time and they're like I wouldn't use that one. I was like, what? What do you mean that one? Why do you mean not that one? it was one of my Millie floor pens, and she was like I think he has a squirrel tail. I was like, shut up. He does has he been there this whole time? What? How did I not, yeah,
Jennifer: 31:11
but you do get coop blind.
Bronwen: 31:12
You do? And Lisa recommended, she's go into your coop. With a blindfold or do it at night and just feel them, touch them, feel them. So you are not biased on who you're touching and what, like just then just make some decisions based on what you're feeling. I was like, Ooh, that's a good idea. Yeah, because even still, yeah.
Jennifer: 31:29
So one of the orpingtons that I ended up choosing to go in the breeder pen, which actually went in a couple days ago. He was one that I had actually thrown out to be put in the pot. And he was out growing out and after, you have these conversations with your mentors on what to look for and stuff. And I pulled up on the gator out to the barn and he's standing there looking at me and I was like, ha, that's what he was talking about right there. Yeah. So he doesn't have a lot else going for him, but I can use his progeny. For going forward.
Bronwen: 32:09
So I am super picky about my males. I actually don't make any decisions on my girls until I have solidified my males because I find that it is so difficult. To get the males. I feel like you are covering the whole pen. Poof. It's a lot of power in that genetic pool from your male. And so since my girls, my F two girls were only just a handful of generations away from a black, from a buff bra. Even though they weren't show, my girls weren't showing any leakage. I knew they were packing it. And so when I bred them to the beach bum guy that third generation, I got oodles of leakage out of those progeny. And so I was like, I'm not doing it. I'm picking it all out. So they were beautiful males, nice top lines, long legs, beautiful combs. I'm like, Do the pot. Do the pot. Do the pot. You're leaking. And out of that F three generation, I got two boys out of all those babies that did not show leakage. one Black and happened to be one blue. And at that point I was like, okay, We're starting clans. So that was clan one and clan two, and the black ones type was not good. It was not good, but he was crispy. He had no leakage. And I was like, we gotta work on that'cause that's gonna be hard to get rid of. And I knew it was coming from my girls. At the end of the day, once I've selected my males, I'm down to just a handful that are not leaking, that have decent type and all the things. Then I circle up my girls and pick, who's gonna compensate them. So this year I've been able to start a third clan. So finally now I have three clans going with clean mails. I understand that the right way to do it. To get rid of leakage is single mating. Just, I'm just, I'm not in it. I'm not in it. So I can do it. I don't know. Have the space, time, energy, all the things. I know it's the right thing to do and maybe someday. But I don't know. It's just a lot of girls in single cages and I don't know. I work outside the home full-time. This is just, this should be fun for me. And I resonated so much with your podcast with the United Orpington. Was she the present, Sarah? Yeah. I resonated so much with what she said and she was like, if you don't like what you're feeding out there, like you got, I've said the same thing, like the day that this is not fun for me or enjoyable for me. If this is not satisfying my inner elmira duff and I can't go out there and scoop up these birds and squeeze them and hug them, and maybe that makes me less. Of a breeder because that's important to me. I don't care. It's fun for me. And if the day that becomes not fun for me, like this is too hard for this to not be enjoyable, like not around in the winter and
Jennifer: 34:54
oh yeah. All the things we have to remember sometimes remind ourselves that this is our farm and this is our rules and we're the only ones really that we need to please.
Bronwen: 35:03
Yeah. It's just a bird. It's not that deep. Yeah. So I think if I had to go to single mating and I had to build an infrastructure to support that, yes I could. Would it be fun for me? Probably not. Oh man. I'm just not there. Maybe I will never be there. I don't know. So at any rate, I just try to select the clean males and keep like diluting out that leakage, I would say. Now finally, I'm down to about 10% of my boys. Out of every hatch that are leaking. So that's a far cry from where I was. I was more like 85% at the beginning. So I don't know. I'll just keep chipping away at it. I'm not in a race. I'm not winning anything. I'm just here for trying to improve, anyway, so let's wrap
Jennifer: 35:50
up a little
Bronwen: 35:50
bit. Sure.
Jennifer: 35:50
where is this project in the a PA system?
Bronwen: 35:55
Nowhere. Okay. So that's the other thing. This is the part that I was like, man, I've been thinking about it for several years. I hear a lot of people say, oh gosh, your birds are great. And all the things. I'm like, thanks. But there's imports out there that are also black modeled. So they obviously don't adhere to the a PA standard for Brams, but what's gonna set me and my efforts apart from anyone else who's been doing this I don't know, for me to let go of this product and allow my birds to go somewhere like I haven't allowed exhibition or any kind of quality, leave my farm. I'm just not there yet. I'm not ready, I don't wanna perpetuate, poor quality.'cause there's already, we're already struggling. The Brams in general are just not a super popular breed, so they're already struggling as a whole. I don't know. I told Scott when he was working on his golds, I was like, you go first. And I'm right behind you, buddy. Good job. I'm I think eventually I would really like to partner with breeders that are serious about moving this. Variety forward. I don't know if it's a pipe dream or if it's realistic, maybe. So where it goes from here, I don't know. The disadvantage to Brahmas and all the project colors that are going is that there is no standard that anyone is adhering to for any of these projects, aside from like gold. Of course, It's better now than it was. Three years ago, two years ago even. The community is growing, the support is growing. We are in each other's back pockets, supporting and advising and trying to get there. But truly, all the way up until this point there's varieties all over the place. There's lace, there's, pencil, salmon, all kinds of things, but there's no standard. And if we're not promoting, some kind of a standard to draw people to a middle ground, we're just willy-nilly making birds left and right. my goal would be to try to get these guys approved, but man, I just think it's such a stretch to even think that way. But yeah, it would be great if we could. It sure would be great if we could.
Jennifer: 38:02
We have seriously enjoyed having you on today. It was. Very eye-opening. Actually. I never really thought about creating a whole new variety from scratch.
Bronwen: 38:16
Yeah. It wasn't on purpose. I there was actually. During that second generation when I had a couple milli Flo Birds that maybe, were, yeah, that pattern is just, that's a whole nother topic. But during that effort, the imports were starting to arrive on shore and they were starting to really be sold out to whomever and had pockets to spend and with no agenda and no standard. And people were just reproducing and producing and selling all over the place. And someone had told me like, it's not even gonna matter that you're doing this because these birds are gonna be all over the continent in a matter of whatever amount of time. I was like, yeah, that may be true, and that person was not wrong. But all of those birds are not bred to the standard. And then that was the moment where when everyone went left and we're like, we're gonna do the import thing, I was like, I'm going. That's the only thing that's going to make any of this different than what you guys have just gotten from across the pond. So that kind of catapulted into this. Like I said, short walk off the deep end.
Jennifer: 39:19
There you go. it takes somebody to start it. Yeah.
Carey: 39:23
Yeah. You gotta start somewhere.
Jennifer: 39:25
We have seriously enjoyed having you today and hope you come back.
Bronwen: 39:28
I would be happy to come back. Thanks so much for having me. This has been great. I really appreciate it. All right. Talk to you soon. Okay.
Carey: 39:36
Bye.
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