Holcomb Hatch

A few years back, I saw a really good fight in where the victor won in spectacular fashion. This hatch looking dark legged red rooster gave an amazingly strong punch that ended his grey opponent. I then asked what bloodline did he belong to. The owner told me that it was a Holcomb Hatch.

Not too many breeders have the real deal Holcomb Hatches but the ones that do, are real lucky. I saw an article written by Frank Holcomb regarding the composition of this bloodline.

It is thought the original Hatch was bred by Judge Leiper, not Sandy Hatch, as most people believe. They were supposed to be a Kearney Whitehackle and a Kearney Brown Red cross. Leiper also bred a cock from Duryea. In 1900 Hatch got some dark red, green legged fowl from Cassidy (some say Lynch). He bred a black red cock from Jerry Genet, of New York.This Genet Pyle cock was bred over the Cassidy (Lynch) hens, and this was the starting of the Hatch fowl. In 1933, Hennie Mathesius went to work for Hatch and carried his fowl with him. These fowl were Morgan Whitehackles, some Lowman blood, and some Gull/Morgan crosses. Some of these were crossed on the Hatch fowl. Hatch gave all of his fowl to Mathesius, who later sold them to C.C. Cooke, who soon after that became a partner of E.W. Law.

We must give Cooke the credit for the Hatch fowl that we have today. J.D. Perry made the first niche with Cooke’s Hatch, but that is what Cooke paid him for. It would be too long and complicated to write a complete history of all the different blood lines and different Hatches and their blood lines, but as to ours, the Holcomb Hatch, we will try to make it very brief, and not any more confusing than possible. We started out with a Ruble Hatch cock, over a Sweater McGinnis(Blueface) hen. At the same time, we bred a Democrat cock over J.D. Perry hen. Then we bred the off-spring of these two together, making their off-spring 1/4 Ruble, 1/4 Democrat, 1/4 Blue Face and 1/4 Perry. At the same time of the above breeding, we bred in another pen, a Chocolate Gray cock over a jet black Aseel hen, (directly from Pakastan, and one of the very best strains of Aseel), thus giving 1/2 Chocolate Grey and 1/2 Aseel. This we crossed over the four kinds of Hatch, giving 1/2 Hatch, 1/4 Chocolate Grey and 1/4 Aseel for the first year. Then we bred back to the Hatch saide, father over daughter and son over mother, thus giving 3/4 Hatch, 1/8 Chocolate Grey and 1/8 Aseel. We keep three pens of this combination, and this we proudly call our Holcomb Hatch.