Meetings

Next Meeting of the breeding group will be held by Zoom on Tuesday 23rd March @7pm.

9th March 2021 Marsh Daisy Breeders Meeting

12 Members attending

The motion for this evening was to discuss how to dispose of reject hens, that is those not suitable for the breeding pens for next year.

All agreed that Cockerels will be culled, however, hens will make good layers/garden hens.

Charlie Peck had raised the issue about keeping wing tags on reject hens. His view which was explored was that all tags and means of identification (including leg rings) should be removed from any birds sold as garden hens or sold otherwise than for the breeding programme.

IT WAS AGREED BY ALL THAT WHEN REJECT HENS ARE SOLD AS LAYERS THEY MUST BE DESCRIBED AS "GARDEN HENS" OR "REJECT PROJECT BIRDS" AND THAT THE NAME MARSH DAISY MUST NOT BE MENTIONED. This is to ensure that those birds are not used for breeding or indicated as suitable for breeding (as best as we can).

IT WAS FURTHER AGREED THAT ALL WING TAGS/LEG RINGS OR OTHER MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION MUST BE REMOVED FROM THOSE BIRDS SO THAT THEY CAN NOT BE IDENTIFIED AS MARSH DAISY OR AS ONE OF THE TARGET BREEDS. The concern is that those that understand what the tag signifies may seek to exploit it when in truth the bird will be a poor example or it would have been retained in the breeding programme. We want to programme to have credibility and for new breeders to trust the Marsh Daisy Breeders to provide good and true, consistent breeding birds.

All agreed that the starting stock is not as we would like it to be and that some leniency will be required while we breed numbers. However, it was agreed that any bird that is not a Marsh Daisy should not be registered on Cloud-Lines or used for breeding. Absolute basic principles apply. A Marsh Daisy must:

1. Be true to type - upright, bold and active.

2. Not have white legs - you can never create green legs from white legs - yellow legs x slate legs will make green legs and that is a permitted cross.

3. Have a rose comb, single combs must not be used for breeding (unless in a test mating situation to prove a cockerel or hen are pure for the rose comb gene). Single comb birds will not be registered.

Most members confirmed they had set up their free Cloud Lines account and were loading up breeding birds ready to port to the main site when live.

Serena confirmed that she was able to purchase a Roxan Plastag B application for anyone wanting one.

23rd February 2021 Marsh Daisy Breeders Meeting

18 Members attending

Report to the Marsh Daisy Breeder’s Group by Paul Morgan

Approval of Wing Tags by PCGB - Finally there?

Paul explained that there had been a hold up with approval of wing tags on account of PCGB decision to seek European approval for the use of the wing tags in European showing events. Despite our protestations that it was hard enough to get people showing in the UK this had caused a 3 week's delay. On top of that Europe had refused. PCGB had therefore approved the use of wing tags limited for this year to the 7 Target Breeds and with the proviso that birds can not be shown in Europe.

Paul explained that we should have the application form for the wing tags next week and wing tags will follow with in a week or 2.

4^thFebruary 2021 and Tuesday 9th February (part 2) Marsh Daisy Breeders Meeting

19 Members attending

Report to the Marsh Daisy Breeder’s Group by Paul Morgan

Approval of Wing Tags by PCGB

Wing tags will be available from the Poultry Club ONLY for official use in the MD breeding project.

Tags will have individual numbers for the birds but do not indicate the breeder. They will be printed with country, year and five-digit individual number: eg GB 21/12345. The colour of the tags will change every year in line with the leg rings.

They can be ordered in multiples of 10.

For tags that are to be applied to chicks under one week use AA tags but for older chicks and adults Plastag B should be used and these need an applicator.

A diagram was shared where to apply the tags which is the same for both very young chicks and up to adults.

There is a link to u tube

It is very important to understand the above when ordering tags from the Poultry Club.

The Poultry Club will not register breeds or any other information except who the tags are supplied to.

Individually numbered leg rings can also be used and ordered from the Poultry Club and are acceptable as a means of identifying individual birds. The correct ring size can only applied at around nine weeks and the disadvantage is that the chicks have to be identified in some way (small plastic rings/cable ties/coloured bands ) before the permanent rings are applied. These would need to be changed probably more than once to allow for leg growth.

These tags/rings from the Poultry Club are THE ONLY ONES that can be used to identify birds in the MD breeding project.

Cloudlines will be THE ONLY acceptable method of recording for the MD project.

Report to the Marsh Daisy Breeder’s Group by Serena Eustice

Approval of payment of Cloud-Lines package by RBST

RBST have agreed to pay for the Cloud-Lines package for year 1. We are to set the objectives and if we meet them RBST will keep paying.

SE demonstrated the site by screen share. There is a free-version package:

https://cloud-lines.com

If you upload your birds to the free version then we can port them across to the Marsh Daisy central package. Registrars are going to have control of the birds that are uploaded as they must be Marsh Daisy.

Ultimately there is a great resource to retain genetic material using COI and Mean Kinship data.

There is also the possibility to use the site to advertise birds for sale looking at their parentage.

Part 2

Serena explained to the Members that the importance of wing tagging chicks was to achieve 4 things:

1. It is a means of individual identification of the chicks.

2. The Marsh Daisy is now back on the Breeds at Risk Register but that is not sufficient to save the birds - each and every bird must be registered and identified to be with a chance of being saved in a contiguous cull situation.

3. The Marsh Daisy central database Cloud-lines is the place for registration of the birds once tagged. Only PCGB approved and individually numbered tags will be recognised for the registration system.

4. The publicity that is going to surround the data base Cloud-Lines will take the Marsh Daisy breed with it.