The American Buttercup Club finally has a new and updated website! Check it out: 

http://www.americanbuttercupclub.org​

The American Buttercup Club is dedicated to the preservation, promotion, and improvement of the Sicilian Buttercup breed of chickens in both large fowl and bantam forms. They have events, show meets, a breeder's directory, and much more information about the breed. 

We entered all of the bantam Buttercups that were exhibited. 

Note the interesting differences between the two females pictured: the second bird has a clear hackle (neck feathering) that is pure gold and free of black spangles, and a more widely spread tail. However, the first bird has a more even ground color - a more consistent gold color over the entire body, which is less distracting to the eye. While the first bird has a great hackle color, the buff color varies elsewhere, and distracts from the black spangling, making it less eye-catching.  

As you can see, a breeding program is a long process, where the genetics of an entire flock are fine-tuned, with the hope of eliminating bad traits, while combining the good traits from different birds. 

Below you can see the entire lineup on our bantam Buttercups, as well as some of the turkeys we entered. 

Again, Bridget Riddle from California supplied the large fowl Buttercups exhibited at the show. Below are a few photos. 

Fall is the start of the poultry show season. This is for two good reasons:

Firstly, most folks hatch their birds throughout the spring. Breeders are usually too busy during the raising of young birds to go to shows. Besides, summer is a busy time anyway. These young birds will be ready to show when they are 6-8 months old, or in the fall and throughout the winter. 

Secondly, and more importantly, most adult birds molt sometime during the summer. Molting is where birds shed their feathers and grow new ones. It makes sense for birds to undergo this transformation during summer, because there is plenty of food to fuel the growth of new feathers, it is generally warm so they won't freeze from a feather shortage, and breeding season is over, so they don't have to impress anyone. During molting, birds look terrible and mangy. After molting, they look brand new and shiny. It makes sense to have poultry shows when birds have recently molted and look their best. 

Our next fall show will be November 21st in Chehalis, WA. It will be hosted by the Washington Feather Fanciers club.

​Meanwhile we will continue to watch our young birds finish growing, and select our breeding birds for next year. 

We will be attending another show tomorrow, Saturday, October 24th. It is the Stevenson Poultry Classic, in Stevenson, WA.

The American Buttercup Club is doing a "Special Meet" at this show. A special meet is where multiple members of a breed club get together and show their birds, and special awards are arranged. Similarly to last week, we will be entering our bantams, and Bridget Riddle from California will be entering her large fowl. 

Stay tuned for photo updates from the show! If you're in the area, consider stopping by! 

This weekend we exhibited our birds at the Pacific Northwest Poultry Association (PNPA) show in Vancouver, WA. 

We entered seven of our Buttercup bantams, as well as three of our turkeys. Our Bronze turkey tom took champion turkey, which is a promising start for our turkey breeding program. 

We were not the only exhibitors to bring Buttercups, though we had the only bantams. 

Bridget Riddle, another member of the American Buttercup Club, brought her large fowl Buttercups. 

As we mention in our "About the Breed" section, Buttercups originated as large fowl, or regular sized chickens. They were well known for excellent egg production. It was later that the Bantam version was established. 

We have included a few photos of the large fowl Buttercups that Bridget brought to the show.

Bridget brought both males and females from her large fowl Buttercup stock. One of her pullets ended up on Champion Row, taking reserve in the Mediterranean class!

​Her birds sported great combs and coloring, as can be seen in the photos. Note the smooth center of the comb, and uniform points around the perimeter.

Next weekend we are going to another show in Stevenson, WA!

At this next show, there will be an official Buttercup Meet, officiated by the American Buttercup club. We will be bringing even more birds to that show, and will post updates with photos.

Stay tuned for blog posts on this upcoming show! 

After a long trip, we finally arrived at the show in Red Bluff, CA. 

We entered our birds and finally got to meet Larry Stallings, another Buttercup breeder and an APA certified judge. 

Someday we plan to start breeding large fowl Buttercups as well, but currently we remain focused on our mission of improving our bantam Buttercups. Larry brought both large fowl and bantam Buttercups to the show. 

After a great show, a banquet, and a wine auction, it was finally time to head home. 

Before leaving, we traded bloodlines with Larry, which was the primary objective of traveling so far to the show. There are very few bantam Buttercup breeders, so it is important for us to share bloodlines to keep genetic diversity up and help improve the quality of our birds. 

I hope in the future we will begin to travel to more out-of-state shows. It was a unique experience.

We entered our birds in the Red Bluff poultry show put on by the Northern California Poultry Association. The show was in March, 2015.

We figured if we are going to drive from Washington to California anyway, why not enjoy the view along the way? Below are a few photos of our trip. 

Technically, Blue Slate is created when a black turkey has one copy of the "dilute" gene, which causes the blue appearance. A Self Blue turkey is created when a black turkey has both copies of the dilute gene. ​

Therefore, a Blue Slate Turkey is actually heterozygous, which means it has two different genes in the same location, rather than two of the same kind. This is why Blue Slate turkeys do not breed true; the offspring will be 50% Blue Slate, 25% Black, and 25% Self Blue. However, if you breed Self Blue directly to Black, you get 100% Blue Slate. 

The blue color in poultry is quite fascinating. We will touch more on it in a future blog post. 

We are showing our birds today at the Cascade Spring Show in Monroe! This show is put on by the Washington Feather Faciers. We will be posting photos of the show live!

We will be exhibiting our bantam Sicilian Buttercups at two different shows in the next month!  Feel free to drop by these shows to see our birds or meet the owners!  We will have eggs and birds available for sale at both shows. 

The shows are as follows:

Cascade Spring Show
March 14th
Monroe, WA
This show is put on by the Washington Feather Fanciers, and is the closest APA sanctioned show to our farm.  Consequently, we are regular visitors to this show. 
If you are interested in entering birds yourself, the entry deadline is March 1st.  

Northern California Poultry Association Spring Show
March 28-29
Red Bluff, CA
This show is put on by the Northern California Poultry Association, and is also APA sanctioned. This will be our first time exhibiting at this show. 
If you are interested in entering birds yourself, the entry deadline is March 13th. 

We will post photos and updates live from both shows! 

This is the second week of putting eggs in the incubator, and we now have over 200 eggs incubating.  Hatching season is a great reminder of what great layers our flock of bantam Buttercups are, as we are never short of eggs. 

Our eggs this season are from three different breeding pens, each with a different bloodline.  We are in the midst of designing several new coops to start some breeding pens specifically dedicated to line-breeding for certain traits.  Check out the page on our breeding program to learn more about our bloodlines and how we set up our breeding pens.

Some of these eggs are already reserved for buyers, but there will be plenty of chicks available as the season progresses.  If you'd like to order some chicks, contact us! 

This incubator is a cabinet style model.  It has three egg racks with a time-controlled turning mechanism.  Tilting the eggs to alternate sides several times a day helps prevent the yolk from sticking to one side of the shell.  A hen would naturally turn the eggs as she shifts on her nest, and the automatic egg turner is an attempt to replicate this effect. 

Incubators also require water containers, as can be seen at the top of the photo.  Water supplies the humidity necessary for incubating eggs. 

The weather could not have been better this weekend.  Many folks complain about the constant rain in the Pacific Northwest, but when the sun finally comes out, the greenery makes this one of the most beautiful places in the world.  

We thought we might take advantage of the sunshine to snap a few more photos of our flock.  We will post more photos with analysis soon. 

Here are a few of our hens and pullets.  For those unaware, a hen is a female chicken, and a pullet is a hen under a year of age.

The pullet in the center has the nicest coloring of any of our current females. Note the uniform golden color of the hackle feathers on the neck. Many hens possess spangles in the neck feathers, or a brownish tinge like the hen to the right, and these traits are less desirable. 

However, a good breeding program must balance various traits to approach perfection. The hen to the right may have a less desirable hackle, but her spangling in the body is more clear and defined, and she has a larger tail and spectacular comb. 

Also note the leg color difference between the two birds: Buttercups are required to have willow green legs, and the hen to the right clearly has slaty blue legs.  Why is this acceptable?  Well let us first examine what causes leg color in chickens.

There are several different leg colors in the chicken world, including white, yellow, blue, and green.  The willow green of the Buttercup leg color is caused by a very dark under color, with an overlay of yellow skin.  A slaty blue leg is caused by a bird with the same under color, but white skin, such as a Polish. 

Like all Mediterranean breeds, Buttercups are bred primarily for egg production, and are required to have yellow skin.  Their yellow skin provides them with yellow pigment to supply to their egg yolks during egg production.  While they are laying, hens begin to go through a bleaching process as all the yellow pigment in their skin is used up.  Eventually, all their skin bleaches to white, and the dark under color of their legs shines through as slaty blue. 

The hen on the right has been laying for several months now, and the yellow skin on her legs has bleached to white, causing her legs to turn from green to blue.  The pullet in the center has just started laying, and still has plenty of yellow pigment in her skin.

Check out our page about the breed or our page on heritage breeds for more information!  Feel free to contact us or leave a comment with questions or thoughts!