Wednesday, April 27, 2011

hatching plans for the rest of season

Sorry, I gotta go all chicken genetics nerd again... ignore this post if you're not into the birds.

Here's batch 5. 2 Brassy Back, 5 Blue Brassy Back, 1 BBRed, 3 Black Red, 2 Black, 1 (Blue)Black, 2 Blue, 1 Splash.

Five weeks in, and I have 2 Blacks, and what... 4 BBReds? That's super pathetic. Brassies and Blues coming out my ears though!

I have three more weekends in which to set eggs. I mean, I *could* hatch into June, I could go one more week, I could have someone else hatch a big batch the week I'll be gone, that's an option (and perhaps a good one) but I really don't want to be hatching too late. I'm going to be overrun with chicks in colors I wasn't planning on, and I have a lot of people who want to buy eggs. But it's become pretty clear that the BBReds need an outcross. As I said a week or so ago, the Blue male is now in with the BBRed hens. We'll see what that produces. I am also going to outcross them to the Brassy Backs. I don't know what that will produce, but they're fertile and hatching like mad, so it's worth a shot. Hmmmmmmmmm. This season is totally not going as anticipated.

2 comments:

Jan Blawat said...

Problems start when you make a plan. At least that's my personal experience, but it's especially true with eggs, which is why you can't "count your eggs before they hatch." Which sucks for a conservative person who likes to have a plan.

Katherine Plumer said...

No kidding! The plan was to hatch a zillion BBReds, a decent number of Blacks, maybe a dozen Blues, and only enough Brassies/Blue Brassies to be sure the eggs were fertile. I have the opposite situation though... oh well. The next few weeks of eggs should produce interesting results... and a lot of birds to sell!