Breeding plans for 2019

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Penny
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Re: Breeding plans for 2019

Post by Penny » Fri Apr 05, 2019 12:02 pm

I'm desperately hoping for my Ameraucana Rooster (10 months old), to start showing the ladies some love. He seems slow to develop much interest, though hes been cowing for about a month and I've caught him wing drop dancing a few times. Then its to wait for the girls to go broody...3 of the 2nd years raised chicks last year, so I'm putting all my eggs in their baskets (so to speak) this year as well. Its just a waiting game for me at this point...ugh!
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Happy
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Re: Breeding plans for 2019

Post by Happy » Fri Apr 05, 2019 12:42 pm

Well I just went out to collect the 2 eggs that I saw "in production" earlier and what did I find but two tiny roosters encouraging two hens to sit beside them in nests and two other hens in boxes on eggs with glazed eyes and death screeches. Sigh...this is going to be a long spring/summer
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Re: Breeding plans for 2019

Post by Kbr42 » Sat Apr 06, 2019 3:29 pm

Gotta love silkie Mom's. She waited 4 day before saying she wanted to got back to her flock...with her chicks. Great day for introductions!
20190406_152159.jpg
In case anyone is curious, the chicks are a buff silkie and a crested cream legbar, I'm guessing both pullets!
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kenya
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Re: Breeding plans for 2019

Post by kenya » Sun Apr 07, 2019 5:04 pm

Pretty black silkie hen.
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windwalkingwolf
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Re: Breeding plans for 2019

Post by windwalkingwolf » Fri Apr 12, 2019 3:16 am

Breeding plans for 2019, what a can of worms that is over here. What I want to breed, and the reality of what I CAN breed, are proving to be two very different things.
1.) Black Jersey Giants are on possible hold again this year, for lack of a decent husband for the very, very few hens of quality I have left. I have one boy who is of the correct type for my needs but is actually crossbred with wrong eye colour, bad melanization of beak and legs, and major gold leakage. But I will use him if I can ever get birds separated, because type-wise, he's literally the best boy I've ever had since my originals. Go figure. Also because NOBODY has Giants within driving distance that aren't ugly hatchery cluster :sSig_censored: birds. I cannot afford the time or the money to be travelling this year, unfortunately. I have too much on my plate.
2.) Beltsville Small Whites and all other turkey breeding is on possible hold again this year as well. Two and Twenty-seven (bsw) have been laying well for a couple of weeks now, but EVERY.SINGLE.EGG. is infertile. I've cracked open more than a few, and set the rest *just in case*, but NADA, ZIP, ZILCH. The toms have been observed doing their thing, but something is going wrong in between point A and point B, clearly. With the bsw, I have a very short window of a chance of getting good eggs before Twenty-seven goes broody on nothing, as bad as a silkie, and subsequently quits laying for the whole year. I expect it any day now, and I will have to give her some chicken eggs. She is a crappy turkey momma, but a GREAT chicken momma.
Two is a pet, she doesn't ever lay eggs well and has NEVER gone broody for me, so I don't expect much from her in any case. She's just so adorable that I don't really care, but it would be nice to get a couple poults from her just for the personality! I'm crossing fingers and toes that some of that Tom attention will 'take' on one of them, eventually, Jeez! I also have two Ridley Bronze girls hatched late last summer. I've yet to see a single egg from either of them. Slackers!!! Not that I want to breed them, the RB grow SOOOOO slow, but I've been hammering away at turkey breeding so long, I am loathe to just completely give up. I'm not even talking about BLACKHEAD disease, which I know all too well is here and usually takes at least 1-2 poults of every spring and summer hatched clutch despite treatment (don't ask me about the treatment. Or do. It's hush-hush, nudge-nudge wink-wink and CFIA doesn't approve, but too bad for them...I rarely eat my turkeys), besides being plagued with fertility problems (not related to blackhead treatment at all) the turkeys just seem determined to off themselves. I really, REALLY like turkeys: they have so much personality, and are like "The Little Engine that Could", but if there's a way for them to get hurt or killed or eaten, they will find it. They really need a Fort Knox coop. Or a padded cell. Or both. Crazy buggers. I still have my old, wild, beautiful, Royal Palm Tom, Mr. Fizzlebeef, who is aptly named because his "beef" fizzled about 4 years ago or so. He is at least 9 years old, and is very dominant, and tries REALLY hard (too hard sometimes...sometimes girls will just buck him off before they suffocate) but cannot get the job done, and will not let anyone else try. I should have freezered him years ago, but he's beautiful and strong genetically (except for the dead/no sperm thing) but I just CAN'T. He's old and has coop cred. I have to let the old bugger try. Silly me.
3.) Ducks have started to lay like crazy in the past week. Unfortunately, most eggs have been laid in the duck shed, which is in the shade 3/4 of the day, and is still very cold. I have a handful of eggs I have to candle tomorrow to see if they've scrambled or cracked from the cold, but I'm hopeful. I want to breed Magpies and ONLY Magpies, but there are two mixed (Magpie/Rouen and Magpie/Cayuga) drakes and one Buff Orpington drake in the pen (again, I haven't had time to separate) and so I'm not expecting big things, or really, ANY things this year. I WILL get more ducks, but I'm not betting that they'll be the ducks I want. I expect I will be eating a lot of duck next winter. I'm OK with that. At least, with my Pennydog now on the job, I will actually get some extra duck meat unlike past years where the ducks were not only the first to fall to any predators, but actually seemed to call IN hungry carnivores.
4.) Embden geese: My one girl has been laying like clockwork since last November, and the other girl laid 13 eggs at the same time, and 8 eggs since the beginning of March. They are both now broody on the same nest with about 10 eggs in it, but most of those eggs froze so I don't expect great things. However, it's irrelevant because I incubated everything myself that didn't freeze or crack over the winter, and currently have 13 new "goslings" from Dec.-Jan. and some idiot (not mentioning names) has half a dozen more in the incubator. I'm fairly confident that I'm set for geese this year, barring a freak tornado or something. I *may* even be able to sell goose hatching eggs in fall this year or spring next year. I can dream.
5.) Mixed breed chickens: I got a few lucky birds two and three years ago. A beautiful gold laced hen with REALLY good lacing for a one-off, and 2 mottled girls, and several birds (only roosters last year) that have ONE or two black bar/chevron across white feathers, which is astonishingly striking and I want MORE of those. I've been trying half-heartedly to replicate the gold-laced and the "single barred" ever since, with crappy results--no girls and only two boys who clearly show those genes but have REALLY crappy lacing, and only one big boy with the single barring. The one boy who has the lacing genes, also has beard and muffs, which isn't something I want to perpetuate. I haven't been paying enough attention to my birds, clearly, and need to exert greater control and build more pens. What else is new?
In other news, I have 2 or 3 hens that look for all the world exactly like black Ameraucanas. EXACTLY. One even has the potential to compete in shows. They are not Ameraucana, not even close. In fact, any Ameraucana heritage they have (as evidenced to me ONLY by their coloured eggs) is so many generations back as to be literally LOST in history. They are great-great-great-great-great grand daughters of a mixed breed hen I once had that had more in common with Cuckoo Marans than Ameraucana. The beards came recently from a bearded Polish/RIR cross, for Pete's sake! But they are SOOOO close, I get a little thrill every time I see them. I take great pleasure in "building" a chicken breed. I also have a dead ringer for a Mottled Java hen, completely by accident. I also have a couple or five highly melanized birds (originally from Silkie heritage 10 or more generations back) that are dead ringers for "leaky" ayam cemani or svart hona, if you don't look inside their mouths. My son (not a chicken guy at all) pulled into the yard a couple weeks ago, saw "Gypsy", a paint ( white with random black feathers) highly melanized hen, and another, solid black and very dark-skinned 'mix' with her, and nearly dropped a nut. He asked me how I could have afforded to buy them! I don't buy, they were complete accidents! I LOVE LOVE LOVE my happy accidents.
Speaking of which, that little tiff in another section of this forum, I can clear up right now. No, you DON'T need Paints to get Paint. It can just happen randomly, as it did the first time for me, as did mottled for me. Literally out of the blue. If you don't care about breed, colour or type (or sometimes even if you do), and just let birds do their thing, mutations and throwbacks show up and/or burn through. Once you have paint or any other genetic mutation, you can perpetuate it. I thought my paint birds were actually "splash" for several years, despite the fact that they never bred any blues, but I didn't know anything about anything when it comes to genetics, and still so much DON'T if you get right down to it. I've been lucky, very lucky, to get the patterns that I have. I throw birds together on instinct, and get some astonishing results that really should NOT happen. Some of the time, better results than deliberate pair breeding. There's something to be said, I think, sometimes, for instincts/gut feelings. Some of your worst birds will give you some of the best surprises. I have to admit a little pleasure that some of my accidents are better than some birds that people have been trying deliberately for for years or even decades. An outcross can be your worst enemy or your best friend, no telling. Observe your birds. Watch them a lot. Watch them critically. If it pops into your head to make a pairing or a trio and see what results from those matings, don't ignore that feeling. Mate the squirrel-tailed guy with your hens that can't keep their tails up, if that's what your gut is telling you to do. Worst thing that can happen is that you'll have to BBQ a lot of chicken.
But, I've gotten off-track.
I've decided I am not going to hatch coloured eggs this year (except maybe for a couple big dark Olive eggs with striking speckles roflmbo ). I *HAD* decided I'm going to let the hens do all the hatching work, because last year I had broodies coming out of my wazoo! Except for the fact that I've already caved and set three dozen eggs a few days ago. Chicken math is a real problem. I set eggs in an incubator despite the fact that I now already have FOUR broody hens and two more going clucky. In my defence, I didn't know two of those hens were going to try and set, and I'm hopeful that the clucky ones (including CHERYL, @Killerbunny ) may give up. Hope Springs eternal. I know almost every egg by who laid it, and I do NOT know where Cheryl is laying! She's proved herself an excellent mom, but I *may* be a control freak and I don't know where her nest is nor which roosters she has been dallying with. Cheryl is a beautiful hen I plan to pair with a specific rooster eventually, but she's a wildcard genetically, and also resists all attempts to tame her or contain her.
One of the first hens to go down and set eggs, is Nurse (Owl Jr.) who is nine years old, and a chronic and voracious egg eater. Actually, the major clue that she was broody (or dead lol) was that all of a sudden, instead of getting 4 eggs a day, I started getting 20, so I went looking for her. Other hens were still laying in her nest, and stupid old biddy was attempting to cover almost THREE DOZEN eggs. Almost none will hatch: Even after thinning them out, some got too cold and the rest are all over the place development-wise. BUT, as long as she's sitting, she's not eating anybody else's eggs, so I intend to take her remaining eggs before they hatch and replace them with eggs that will all hatch around the same time. If I can keep her sitting for 6-8 weeks, and then raising chicks for 6-8 (she's an EXCELLENT mama), then she's not eating my precious eggs. Win-Win-win.
Last, but not least, is my unofficial "spangling" project. When @Jaye 's cockerel, named Jan :-) came home to roost, and proved to have beautiful breast spangling (along with one of his brothers and a sister both to a lesser degree than Jans'), I found myself gleefully rubbing my hands together and planning matings just to see what may or may not come from it. I got one male last year with good spangling, but he's also just generally ugly. His mom was one of those black Ameraucana-looking hens I discussed earlier. Jans' unnamed son is silver based, and has decent black (and blue) spangling throughout, for a starter anyway, but also has beard/muffs and columbian pattern in both black and blue, but the kicker is buff/gold leakage everywhere and he is just a really weird looking bird. Anybody, no matter how experienced they are with chickens, would look at this guy and say "wth is THAT". BUT. Try, try again!!! I've got a bunch of eggs in the incubator right now sired by Jan (even though I decided not to incubate :roll: :roll: :roll: AND, I've now got Charlie, a rather special Cream Brabanter. SPANGLES!!!!
Charlie currently has two hens keeping him company in his quarantine, a mottled standard bearded/muffed perpetually broody hen and a little barred bearded/muffed EE. I have NO idea what their offspring might look like, but I intend to find out very soon, before I move Charlie to the girls I have planned for him to deliberately breed. The girls I have planned for him are offspring of Cheryl's, as it turns out...they are a light partridge, but very washed out, with some flecks, light salmon almost, and I think it would be a good base for spangling. We'll see. If I'm happy with the chicks, I may turn my attention back to gold lacing. GOOD gold lacing is a hard thing, apparently, and I'd be ticked off if I got only one good gold laced bird for the rest of my life, completely by accident, and couldn't replicate it with deliberate breeding. Oh, speaking of which, @Farrier1987 , did any of those chicks you hatched last year end up with lacing, of ANY sort? Or spangling?
OK, as usual, I've gone on long enough. I'm sure that I have more breeding plans, but then again I always do. Even when I don't :YES:
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kenya
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Re: Breeding plans for 2019

Post by kenya » Fri Apr 12, 2019 1:34 pm

WWW not you too, you need the paint gene and yes it could be hidden for years before it shows up, when this discussion orginally begun there were few silkie paints out there but now they are everywhere. I wish I could delete all my posts on this subject, I'm sick of the discussion.
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windwalkingwolf
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Re: Breeding plans for 2019

Post by windwalkingwolf » Fri Apr 12, 2019 3:04 pm

I apologize @kenya , I may have a bit of a penchant for stirring the pot :susel:
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Farrier1987
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Re: Breeding plans for 2019

Post by Farrier1987 » Fri Apr 12, 2019 4:50 pm

So WindBlowingWoof, no laced or spangled. Have two that have the gold shaft but darker around it, towards, but not laced. Great birds tho. How are your strawberries and raspberries?
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Farrier1987. South of Chatham on Lake Erie. Chickens, goats, horse, garden, dog, cat. Worked all over the world. Know a little bit about a lot of things. No incubator, broody hens.

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Re: Breeding plans for 2019

Post by Ontario Chick » Thu Apr 18, 2019 11:03 am

So I took a day off and read @windwalkingwolf post, Thank you, great read.
The lack of good husband material in the poultry department (not touching the other department) seems to be chronic at this end and has been for years.
Yesterday I spent the day banding 5 Columbian and 5 Black pullets, at the same time checking their body condition etc.
Plan is to put the 5 Columbians with a Columbian male, his rating "nothing to crow about" but all I have. Out of the 5 pullets one is way too small and one has gone broody, which leaves 3 to breed.
Then going through the 5 Black pullets, that have great body condition, literally gleaming with good health and 3 have VERY good type, and I thought, seriously.......why don't I just breed Jewel the almost Black cockerel to the Black pullets and be done with it???
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kenya
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Re: Breeding plans for 2019

Post by kenya » Thu Apr 18, 2019 2:09 pm

I would try the columbian male with the black pullets first in the hopes of improving the columbian. After all its the columbian colour you love the best, then rearrange the males and try the different combo to see what you get.
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