Writing this to get some expert opinions and to talk things through with myself lol.
I've finally gone through and looked over my pool of hens and cocks, overall I'm really happy with what I have but a little bummed too. I started with 2 breeding pens, pen one was a chocolate cock over 4 w/bw/spw hens, and pen 2 was a BW cock over 3 chocolate hens. I knew I'd know which female offspring came from which male based on their coloring, but I ended up not marking the chicks to track which males came from which pen, which was an error on my part.
My conundrum is that all my females that came from the BW male over choc hens aren't that awesome. The things they have going for them are really nice, beautiful egg color, one has a great tail, and one has lovely full muffs, but they have more stacked against than for, including white shimmer on their earlobes, brown eyes, single muffs and I'm pretty sure one has a single/pea comb.
I'm worried about keeping my gene pool healthy though, and debating on using these hens since I know that they had a different sire than my chocolate and mauve hens and therefor potentially different than the male that I use, since I didn't mark the males.
I could keep only the best of the best, which would give me 1 male and 4 hens, which all likely share the same dad, and then outcross to more BWs hens once I get a chocolate wheaten male.
I'm 100% getting a toe punch now though, any recommendations?
