I spent another day out working with the birds. I had expected to find 5-10 birds to get rid of, but surprised myself with 24 culls. Good grief! Some are actually not bad birds, but I felt I was able to be very picky. There is only one I'm iffy about- the Blue Brassy Back cockerel I showed all season. He's typy, his color is awesome, but he has white in his face and probably should have been DQ'd at the last show. If he was a few years old I'd let that slide, but he's not even a year old. Darn he's just so pretty though, and he has a much nicer comb than the older Blue Brassy cock. I guess I'm just going to have to send him down to the road too. No sense being sentimental about a disqualification. It's hard sometimes. So I set up 11 breeding pens (9 groups, two trios). They are as follows: 3 BBRed (will also produce Brown Red breeding stock), 3 Black, 1 Brassy/Blue Brassy, 1 Black X Brassy Back, 1 Golden Duckwing X Everything, 1 Cuckoo, 1 Black X Birchen&Blue Silver. I am keeping 59 birds. No breeding pen has more than 8. Most have 4 or 5. It's very satisfying to cut back. Now to figure out when I can go to auction...
So I'll leave the birds to "get acquainted" so to speak for about a week, and then collect eggs for a week, and the first batch of chicks should be out in mid April, same as last year.
I started a small drawing tonight, a color study of a Shamo (did the sketch yesterday). Not sure if I'll post pics in progress or not...hmmm.
1 comment:
You know, you made the right choice to get rid of the bird with the white in the face. I'm having that problem in my Phoenix and I tell you, if the daddy has white in his face, it's almost a guarantee that his sons will develop it. It's just plain annoying and not worth keeping in the blood. But you know, I've noticed that I can show a Phoenix with TONS of white in his face and he won't be DQ'd. Funny.
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