Gilmore Hatch

This past week, we fought 3 cocks, 2 Gilmore hatches and a sweater. These roosters were bred by Ivan, a family friend and top notch breeder. The Gilmores won in terrific fashion and thus prompted me to highlight the different Hatch bloodlines. The next few articles I’ll be writing will be about the Hatches. Let me start with the history of the Gilmore Hatch.

Lun Gilmore was a cocker and a good friend of Ben Ford, they fought birds with and against each other for over 60 years. Lun Gilmore acquired his birds direct from Sanford Hatch and Mike Kearney. When Mike crossed the Kearney Brown Reds on the Hatch birds they were awesome as any ever bred until this day.Sanford wanted to breed them back to the yellow legged side but Mike insisted on breeding them one more time to the Kearney Brown Red side and produced them to fight and fight they did and won some derbies against everyone at that time. He wanted to breed a cock of his fathers breeding, which was the Kearney Whitehackle to the Sanford/Kearney and Kearney breedings.

From this breeding he had 17 black birds with white specs in them and over 40 Brown Red looking birds, he then crossed these back on the Brown Reds having the Kearney Whitehackle in them and Hatch blood. They came all dark fowl with green legs. Mike gave Lun Glimore 6 hens and one dark red cock to breed over them. This was the origin of the Gilmore Hatch fowl and the Ben Ford fowl. These birds were given and sold to Gilmore from Mr. Hatch and Mike Kearney. It did have Mike Kearney’s fathers Whitehackle blood in them and still till this day they will come spangle or dark!

The next breeding that was the Brown Red and Kearney Out and Out became the 42 Hatch that J.D. Perry dominated with the same fowl from same people except did not have the Kearney Whitehackle in them yet mostly yellow leg, and the black legs made em all come odd green legged. Believe it or not, I knew Colonel Givens for over 40 years and he got his fowl from Lun Gilmore in the early 40s and also got some of Mike Kearney Jr.’s Whitehackles that were dark red and spangled, and fought the Kearney Whitehackle crosses at Sunset and all over North Alabama.

Colonel Givens and Jimmy East were the handlers for John Ovilan Fowler from Huntsville Ala. When John Fowler died Jimmy kept his Hatch fowl and Colonel Givens kept the Whitehackles. So the Gilmore’s are 1/4 Kearney Whitehackle-1/4 Hatch- 1/2 Brown Red bred back to the 1/2 Hatch 1/2 Brown Red and kept that way until he passed on. Still to this day all Gilmore’s will throw a spangle every other year or so. It depends on how they are bred and where you got them.

Before I forget, the Mike Kearney Brown Reds and the Sanford Duryeas crossed were very good fowl and after they bred them back making the 42s the breeding back to the pea combed Hatch side was the ones they gave Ted McLean and Theodore McLean (two seperate men) and the ones that were 3/4 Hatch-Duryeas and 1/4 Kearney were the left nose Hatch of the late Sweater McGuiness. Marvin Anderson was in WW1 with Sanford Hatch and become friends in 1910 where they fought in North Alabama in long heel mains which was all new to the short heelers. Marvin’s father had the Kelcy Patts from Ireland and Sanford Hatch fell in love with the long heel roosters.

Sanford gave birds to Marvin untill his death and Marvin gave the Patties to Sanford upon any request of these men and they whipped all roundhead fowl those days which was dominating the early years. Judge Lacy was makin a statement at this time and was winning more than average in Alabama and at the Agusta tournaments. The Kelcy Patts were brought from Ireland by Marvin’s grandfather well before the civil war, no one knew there originality. Straight combed, lemon hackled, big thighs and wide backs and spangles came dark red with lemon around the bottom of the shaw.

The photographs are all black and white, Marvin lost them over the years do to hawks and eagles in the mountain areas of North East Alabama. He owned the Ranburne pit which was shut down in ’73 due to his health. Lun Gilmore was the insperation of establishing the Hatch name in the south, Ted McLean routed the Hatch name when he was dominating with the Hatch fowl, Sweater came famous in the mid section of the country, J.D. Perry and Blondy Roland, Harold Brown, Ben Ford, Frank Steel and Curtis Blackwell made the Hatch name in the south east.

The fowl that Gilmore acquired were the one that won the Orlando tournament from Mr. Hatch and would have payed any price for those fowl and was a very sharp eyed man that could recognise an ace cock, that made him a true breeder and respected in the gamecock fraternity. Sanford Hatch told Marvin Anderson that Lun had the best fowl of the dark breedings anywhere and he would do well with them and at that time Lun whipped Leiper in a fight that lasted 6 hrs and 10 minutes, both men strived on deep game fowl, as did all long heel men of the south at the turn of the century, until there deaths.