Cyrus Hyde is my grandfather, and since I was old enough to throw scratch to the birds I’ve been fascinated with them. I did several school projects on them growing up and in doing so learned every detail I could about the Onagadori, my grandfather’s line, and genetic inheritance patterns. I grew up at a distance, 5 hrs away, and only ever had time for one or two visits each year. I received a B.S. in Biology from James Madison University, making sure to take several genetics courses. I came to work on his farm, Well-Sweep Herb Farm, in 2012. At this time I started to work more closely with the breeding and selection of his birds. In 2017 Cy’s health started to deteriorate and I was forced to take over completely. Over the last decade I’ve tried to get as many pieces of the puzzle as possible, so I will tell the story as he told it to me.
Cy’s first birds were 6 good silvers from breeder John Kriner Jr., whom got them from his father John Kriner, who got them from an unknown source via the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair. The story is that someone wealthy paid off the handler to glue the tails to American birds of the same color. It is unclear whether any females were also taken, it is doubtful. The birds went from the unknown man to another, before being sold to John Kriner in his older age, his son Kriner Jr. refined the line but in his later years he was unable to carry on. The 6 silvers he entrusted to Cy in the 1970’s were some of his finest. The birds at this point had been bred to the US Phoenix leg color, slate blue. Cy crossed these silvers and on his first F1 generation got silvers and whites, porcelain whites with blue legs. All of Cy’s most amazing tails reaching 8 to 12 feet with 4 to 5 foot saddles have been silver, light gold, or goshiki (pale gold with brown shoulders).
In the late 80s (very roughly, could’ve been the 90’s, but definitely before I could remember) Cy got another version of longtail from an unknown Japanese import that went to a “Judge from Virginia.” This import was white with yellow legs, but slightly smaller in size, not bantam but slightly smaller. Cy crossed the two white lines thinking he would get whites, he was wrong, getting only one gold rooster and 3 black breasted red hens. He crossed them and created one of the original BBRed phoenix lines in the country. Shortly after this he also imported Dutch bantam silver phoenix, crossing those to his standard lines to create his own line of longer tailed bantams. He also got eggs from the National geographic import, though where and when he got these eggs from has been lost. Of the eggs he hatched one of the chicks displayed signs of a disease he was unfamiliar with and in fear of disease, genetic or otherwise, Cy quickly rid himself of these birds, never allowing them to cross into his line. The last introduced blood was when I was in highschool, roughly 2007, Cy became interested in the light blue color and found some old English blues to cross his white bantam phoenix line to. This cross did not go as he intended and I will expand on what happened to each of these lines below.
Fast forward to 2012. I have graduated from college and begin working on Cy’s herb farm, helping him with his chickens and becoming more involved in the hatching and breeding. At this point Cy had 8 breeding lines that were kept separate. The standard lines all with slate blue legs: Silver, BBRed, and White. The bantam lines: Silver, Gold, and BBRed (slate legs), as well as white bantams, some with willow legs and some with slate legs, and his Old English cross project. The only line displaying all of the onagadori traits (non-molting tail, nm saddles, and extreme growth of 3-4 ft per year, and mutant nm sickle tail feathers) was the Silver Standard line, which was and is not pure silver as the mixed females will lead anywhere from pure silver to goshiki in color.
To fully understand the other lines and why experts and haters may say that Cy’s line has lost these genes you need to understand that my grandfather was very busy, hosting one the largest collections of herbs in the world, has never owned a tomebaku, is a hoarder and overhatcher, relying on his excellent selective breeding intuition to choose breeders for the next generation… meaning his hatches weren’t as isolated as maybe they should have been. That being said I can pick almost any silver out of a hatch and expect what you see in the profile pic (Big Guy) after a few years. I selected Big Guy for a top roost around 2014 because his color wasn’t perfect but he showed many early signs for greatness. He has tangled and ripped his glorious tail out twice over the years but despite that his saddles exceed 6 ft still today and his tail always rapidly grows back.
But let’s start with the Standard BBRed line. If you followed the above story, the BBRed line came from crossing the Kriner slate legged whites to the longtail yellow legged whites, the resulting cross has been in**ed from those original 4 birds and has been refined for onagadori tail traits and size for the last 35ish years. In 2012 the best BBRed I had the pleasure of taking many photo shoots with was large (5 lbs), displayed the fast growth gene, made a full tail and saddles reaching 6+ feet, but lacked in saddle length when compared to the silvers. His father died around this point and even though he was still very much in blood, we decided to move him to breeding. Any BBReds sold between 2013-2019 were his descendants. Where this line is today I will continue below.
The Standard White line was originally out of Kriner’s Silvers, but the tail genes were not as lucky in this line. From inbreeding this line for 40 years the best male I’ve seen only achieved 6 ft and the saddles were poor. Once again this male had to be rushed into breeding to save the line when his father died. This was a common problem when I arrived as my grandfathers breeders were all approaching 10 years of age and needed to be replaced. Any white standards sold since 2013 came from him. I am in the process now of crossing back to the silver line to bring the tail genes back to where they need to be, with 9 very promising F2 males that will be going through trials before becoming breeders or available for sale.
While were still in 2012 let me talk about my first project, which was to bolster the saddle genes of the BBRed line, so we took our Silver breeder male and crossed him to 6 large BBRed hens in 2012. The resulting cross gave us dark gold males and phenotypically silver hens. Based off of early tail indicators the best male was selected and crossed to his sisters to first refine the tail genes. Two of his wonderful dark golden brothers went to Vincent Basler and Jason Stokes for testing. To my knowledge, the longest onagadori tail maintained in the US belonged to one of these golden roosters, reaching 12 ft, photos of Jason holding Jekyl can be found if you peruse my photos. This goes to show how even in the F1 generation of the silver and red lines can produce amazing onagadori tails, meaning that though not as stable as I would like, all the genes in the BBRed line are floating around in the breeding pool. My best young bird out of this line I now call ‘Golden Boy,’ and he is going through isolation testing as he is F2 of dark golden male x BBRed females, but he looks destined to be the 2nd cross back the BBRed hens and father of the F3 generation.
Now lets talk bantams. Cy imported dutch silver phoenix bantams in the 70’s and crossed them to his different lines to produce show worthy bantams. These birds were significantly smaller than his standards (3 lb males). In 2012 Cy had some gorgeous bantam BBreds and Silvers that dragged beautiful trains of saddles, but… they molted, and as my grandfathers health began to deteriorate, we had to downsize. From 2014-2017 I slowly sold off all of these bantam lines, the best of which went to Johnny Mellinger, Toni Rivers, and Toni-Mari Astin, to name a few respectable names. I also eradicated all of the Old English blue descendants and white willow legged bantams, but with two exceptions because ya know… I’ve got that hoarding gene too. The only birds I kept that were not standard in size were one willow legged white male breeder with spectacular feathering and one black legged BBRed with red chest leakage and his black-red sisters, which accidentally came out of the old English cross in Cy’s last year hatching. These birds are being used in side projects I have going today. The F1 of a ‘willow project’ was born spring 2019, resulting in a low percentage of black legs. Which goes to show two things: that mutts can have great feathering and that as my grandfather crossed his whites to the old English that they obviously got mixed. The black legged BBReds are being used in a ‘Shojo project’ as I explore genetic leakage. The F2 of half of this project was born spring 2019.
I have written this all down December of 2019. Cyrus is still alive but his mind and body are not in good shape. My grandmother is his full-time caretaker and I am now the owner of his line as of 2017 when he fell and ended up in the hospital. My goal is to carry on the line that inspired my interest in genetics. I call this line ‘Cy’s US Onagadori Phoenix’ even though this makes most breeders cringe. Onagadori and Phoenix pull from the same tail genes but body type, leg color, and the assortment of tail genes differ between the two breeds. That being said, Cy’s birds are technically neither, with the only focus being on full expression of the recessive onagadori tail genes and other tail related genes. And I mean no disrespect and do my best to educate those on the terminology and the rules I’m breaking. I introduce the birds to many tourists and for the non-chicken person, Phoenix is easier to remember. I have always found the full expression of the 3 recessive tail genes of the Onagadori a legendary beauty and I use the term Phoenix because to me, the Onagadori is a legendary creature with legendary genes far more deserving of a legendary nickname than the European/American bantam showbird. The Kriner-Hyde birds may not be pure Onagadori, may have the wrong leg color, and are far from the Phoenix standard besides leg color and some having partial tail genes. That being said, Phoenix today in the US owe many of their genes to this line, and my grandfather’s birds are the the closest thing to Onagadori here in the US (at least that I’ve ever seen photo evidence of, I’d love to see evidence otherwise). *edit* David Rodgers is working towards true recessive white onagadori with yellow legs.
Hope this story was of value to you, I am very open to criticism and implore any expert reading this to not hesitate for any feedback or corrections to the story if they happen to know a piece of it from talking to Cy through the years. If you are interested in where the lines are today or in getting a bird for yourself please contact me here on Facebook.
For more info on the breeds and genetics please follow these links that have educated me throughout the years:
http://www.longtail-fowl.com/onag.html
https://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGP/Phoen/ReederOnag.html
https://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGP/Phoen/BRKOnag.html#Ona
