Breeding Update #3
Posted by Phil Hodgkins on Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Under: Breeding
Forty-six rung so far.
Lots of the youngster from the first round are looking good, only a couple look like pet quality. Almost all of these youngsters are cousins or half aunt/uncles, and belong to the Cinnamon family, so they largely resemble each other making it harder to remember which one is which. However since they have good faces, good shoulder and feather I don't mind too much.
The original Cinnamon Light Green cock from Dave Swann that started the Cinnamon family is responsible for 13 of the 46, he's paired up with another Dave Swann hen. The youngsters do not have as good as quality feather as the youngsters from the original pairing, but they have many very useful features and hopefully this hen's fertility will be passed on. This hen is a soft soul, when I take the box with her youngsters out of the nestbox, she will sometimes jump onto my shoulder and then work her way down my arm until she could jump onto the edge of the box. While there she'd just watch me handling each chick as I checked it. As I lift the box to put it back in the nestbox, she jumps in with her chicks.
The big Light Green cock is heavily into his moult, his cap is ragged but showing that he's just going to get better and better :-). His parents have three more chicks in round two, a Sky Blue looks very promising - he's at 6-8 days younger than his siblings, but he's bigger than either of them. So perhaps I've a Big Blue to join the Big Green - either that or he's an FD.
A Grey Green cock I got from Richard Bowker is finally doing well, after two hens he's doing well with his third an Opaline Grey bred from a John Bell/Jeff Davis pairing. They have two pinkies and four fertile eggs. The idea behind this pairing is that they have no relationship to my Cinnamon family (which account for more than forty of the 46 rung so far) and so this pair's youngsters will act as outcrosses to the Cinnamons - if they are good enough. This is important, with so many related birds being bred I could run into problems breeding with pairs that are too closely related. I will still need to bring in a few out crosses even if this pair produce good youngsters.
Lots of the youngster from the first round are looking good, only a couple look like pet quality. Almost all of these youngsters are cousins or half aunt/uncles, and belong to the Cinnamon family, so they largely resemble each other making it harder to remember which one is which. However since they have good faces, good shoulder and feather I don't mind too much.
The original Cinnamon Light Green cock from Dave Swann that started the Cinnamon family is responsible for 13 of the 46, he's paired up with another Dave Swann hen. The youngsters do not have as good as quality feather as the youngsters from the original pairing, but they have many very useful features and hopefully this hen's fertility will be passed on. This hen is a soft soul, when I take the box with her youngsters out of the nestbox, she will sometimes jump onto my shoulder and then work her way down my arm until she could jump onto the edge of the box. While there she'd just watch me handling each chick as I checked it. As I lift the box to put it back in the nestbox, she jumps in with her chicks.
The big Light Green cock is heavily into his moult, his cap is ragged but showing that he's just going to get better and better :-). His parents have three more chicks in round two, a Sky Blue looks very promising - he's at 6-8 days younger than his siblings, but he's bigger than either of them. So perhaps I've a Big Blue to join the Big Green - either that or he's an FD.
A Grey Green cock I got from Richard Bowker is finally doing well, after two hens he's doing well with his third an Opaline Grey bred from a John Bell/Jeff Davis pairing. They have two pinkies and four fertile eggs. The idea behind this pairing is that they have no relationship to my Cinnamon family (which account for more than forty of the 46 rung so far) and so this pair's youngsters will act as outcrosses to the Cinnamons - if they are good enough. This is important, with so many related birds being bred I could run into problems breeding with pairs that are too closely related. I will still need to bring in a few out crosses even if this pair produce good youngsters.
In : Breeding