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.
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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