The Official Forum of the Ameraucana Breeders Club > Breeding

Quality vs Quantity

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Stephan Roaque:
Afternoon,
This has always been a topic that I feel should be talked about more often. And maybe it does. I have set personal goals to not only to breed my birds towards the standard but also be breed quality. Susan Mouw posted recently in regards to this on the FB Ameraucana page. What I want to ask those that have done it respectively is at what point do you draw the line at quality vs quantity? To be more specific when do you or how do you try to not to stray away from quality? Breeders can get pressured to produce volume, its up to the breeder to dictate(in my opinion) how much to sell as far as eggs and day old chicks. I have two birds now that are poor quality. And I am bummed about that. But I have some new ones now from two other breeders that I hope to correct the situation I am currently in. What advice or tips can you give? Please. Thanks. This is for discussion not argument please. Thank you for your time.

Birdcrazy:
Stephan, can you give us a little more info on the birds you judge as poor quality. Are they from eggs that you hatched, day old chicks purchased, started birds, adult birds? What in your opinion makes them poor quality? Do they have an obvious defect? How old are the 2 birds? What variety of Ameraucana are they? Some varieties take longer to mature than others.

Stephan Roaque:
The birds I had acquired were from a breeder. Got them as day old chicks. I ended up with two cocks and two hens. The blue cock had very bad leakage and there was no question he had to go. We continued to show the blue hen and the black cock. Our other hen was a black and died very young. Since getting serious about quality birds for showing I have inquired a better trained eye to give me feedback on the two we had. The black cock is lacking in his fullness of chest and his tail is a little too high. He is now a year old and went through his first molt and now is showing silver leakage on his hackles and is also shy on the right color of eye. The blue hen is showing some slack spots on her feathers and some are hidden unless you pick her up and examine closely. She is ok but her blue coloring is light and very faded lacing. Her tail is high not bad but high. She has good muffs and beard. With these things mentioned above I was told they were lacking in quality. From my stand point with four chicks and 3 out of the 4 not being better quality that seems a fair judgment to me. Maybe I am wrong. My expectation for other breeders and I hold myself to this standard too is that we must do our best to attain quality vs quantity. This goes for anything in life really but I will stay on topic. Haha! My question really is how do you that are far more experienced not get sucked into that "quantity" column.
Sorry for the late reply. I forgot that I posted this.

Birdcrazy:
Stephan, I think your expectation of having show quality birds out of 4 chicks is extremely high. Exceptional birds for show are not that common. I usually use the rule of thumb that 5-10% will grow out to be exceptional show quality. Then at large shows like the ABC National those with show quality soon drop down in the pecking order. So the Champion and reserve Champion Ameraucana are a very minute % of all Ameraucanas hatched. That's what makes breeding fun, but also so challenging. I do think that you make a valid point about quantity vs quality. It costs just as much feeding poor quality birds as exceptional quality birds. I am paying almost $20 for a 50#  bag of high protein commercial feed. Chances of getting exceptional show birds out the poor quality birds is almost nil compared to hatching from quality stock. I know some sell their chicks as out of breeder quality birds. This can produce some quality birds, but at a lower %. I'm glad you are looking at the physical attributes of your birds with self evaluation. Do you own or have access to a copy of the Standard of Perfection by the APA? This will help give you an ultimate help in culling your birds as they grow out. It will also give you help on eliminating breeder birds that should be culled.

Penny McDonald:
I started in a similar place, and am not very far ahead of you.  I got 5 chicks off of Kijiji which all turned out to be pullets (good type , poor coloring) and then I became obsessed with the breed, so bought a young cockeral off a breeder (which turned out not that great either). I lost 2 of the original 5, but added some of their chicks.  I am up to 9 hens and 2 roosters, some good, some "meh", but nothing that would be disqualified at a show.  I'm terrified of something happening and losing some birds and having to start again, thats why Ive kept the "meh" ones this long.  This year I have my favorite rooster separated with 3 hens (was 4 hens but reduced for quality) and bought an incubator.  I plan to try to hatch and grow out at least 20 chicks from this particular group, and then cull.

Definitely get a copy of the SOP, talk to Ameraucana people on this group (so many are willing to help!!!), study the galleries and show results photos. Breed the best of what you have, build your stock up, (or purchase a nice trio), hatch lots, cull lots.  But this is just advice from a newbie too :)

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