The Official Forum of the Ameraucana Breeders Club > Breeding
Really? Snow?
faith valley:
Can not believe that I woke up this morning to a white lawn....snow in November is not very common here in Ohio. Guess we can not deny that winter will actually come again this year.
Caleb & I got all of the birds brought in and into winter breeding pens last week so decided to take a ton of photos. Fun project~ http://www.faithvalleywaterfowl.com/breed_pen_set_up.html
I was cuious as to what system everyone else uses to track breeding pens or special project eggs.
Patty
Mike Gilbert:
Great job on your website with all the photos. You have some very nice stock to work with. I did notice you mentioned something about fan tails in your females. I\'m not sure of the exact Standard wording without looking it up, but I prefer my females to spread their tails just enough so they are neither pinched nor fan shaped. Take a look at the champion large fowl picture, the Black pullet of Jim Fegan\'s.
I thought her tail was just about right. Tom Kernan\'s black LF RB pullet had a good tail too, but was not holding it in the proper position for her picture. Again, nice job with your birds - keep up the good work.
faith valley:
Thanks for the wording correction- I will fix that - You are correct, we are not going for a Jap tail... but not pinched either. I was hoping the standard would give me a \"word\" to use, but unfortunately it does not...
ABA standard female tail description, \" Main Tail- medium length, top two feathers slightly convexed, carried at an angle of about 40 (degrees) above the horizontral. Coverts- quite long, flowing well up the tail.\"
ABA male tail description, \" Medium length, well spread, carried at an angle of about 45 (degree) above the hoizontal. Main Tail- feathers broad, well spread, and medium length. Sickles- broad, well curved, extending beyond main tail feathers. Lesser Sickles & Coverts- medium length, well curved.\"
Do you recommend that we use the wording \"well spread\" from the male description? It seems to be a nice middle ground term - you are correct that the term \"fanned\" does give the wrong impression so we do need to change that.
Thanks for catching the error~
Patty
Tailfeathers:
Patty, you just keep that snow to yourself! :D We didn\'t have any summer this year and I\'m definitely not ready for winter yet.
That\'s a very nice looking website you have there. Very nice indeed. It makes me think that I need to give more thought into making my website a higher priority. One of these days I am hoping I can be at a place where I get to just sit down and make it happen.
I particularly like the page which lists your awards for each year. That strikes me as a good way of keeping track of them. Would you mind if I use your idea if and when I ever get around to making my website?
To answer your question, here\'s how I track my breeding pens:
1) All my birds are toe punched. The first year I just created a breeding pen where I bred each of my two Wheaten and two BW cockerels to each of my females. That made for 15 different breeding pens.
2) Then as those birds matured, I would look for any obvious faults/DQs, record their #, cull accordingly, and try to identify any trends from either one or both of the original parents.
3) Then I would also look for any obvious improvements and do the same as #2.
4) Then at the end of the year, I\'d sit down pour over all the info I recorded, and put together the breeding program for the next year using my best two W & BW males and the best females from at least four different lines (so far) so I could keep the breeding pens to 16 or less.
I still have many young birds but will be throwing birds back into breeding pens after the next show in mid-December so I think the first nice weekend day we get, I\'ll be going out with pen and paper to record the rest of everything for this year.
Thru this system I was able to identify that my #15 BW Cock and my #15 BW hens had to go. The cock was throwing over-sized combs and a brown gene and a couple of my hens were laying white eggs.
This year I\'ve made some real improvement in the black & blue of the tails ans wings on the females as well as eliminating the reddish-brown in many of the cockerels tails. I\'m not sure who\'s who yet which is why I need to take pen & paper to hand the next nice day we have.
Your system is obviously much more sophisticated and you\'ve got a great layout. I\'m somewhat envious as I neither have the cranial capacity to manage such complicated - albeit noteworthy - separations in pens such as for tails, combs, etc. nor do I have such nice facilities to house all my birds separately like that.
Ah, but maybe some day. :rolleyes: One can dream, right?
God Bless,
faith valley:
It is actually very easy to track each pen with this method - we have a hang tag on each pen with the egg code, the leg band number and age of each bird in the pen. On the flip side of the hang tag is the desired outcome goals of that particular mating. So when eggs are gathered the kids can just write the pen code on the egg and bring the eggs in for incubation.
Fertility and hatchability are both very easy to track.. just marking those chicks is a bit tough. I am super good at toe punching call ducks~ there is a lot of web to work with. But chicks have teeny, tiny webs- that I feel is an art form that I have not yet mastered. LOL
Patty
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