Dark Egg Breeds Thread

[sewandgrow]

Quote:
I have one little Golden Phoenix hen that keeps hopping the fence & getting in with the EE rooster. Little hussie that she is...........LOL She does produce some really pretty ofspring but I am not into mixing things up much,..... so they are not in the pens with the regular groups. She in on her second clutch doing this. AT least this time she only showed up with 2, very EE looking chicks. It amazing how each chicks turned out so different.

 

[sewandgrow]

Quote:
Ha, I know what you mean. My BCM were laying fine then I moved everybody around to their prospective pens for the upcoming season and and not one egg for 2 weeks!

Also, been meaning to ask you if you have heard of the roosters fertility being affected by an injured comb. I thought I had read somewhere that fertility can be linked to comb health. Anyone else heard that?

I have never heard of that................... I did hear that soybean can effect fertility, but I think that was my daughter when she was trying to get pregnant for 5 years. She was checking into everything.............. She finally reached her goal & my adorable 17 month grandson will be the last they have.

 

[Cowgirlgrace]

Oh no Mr Bill! Isn't the main source of protein in a chickens diet Soy?

While we are on the subject, anyone feed fish meal or dry dog food to supplement their chickens diet so they are not on a complete veg protein diet, other than bugs etc from free ranging?

 

[geebs]

Drom.... Medicine Man, to the best of my knowledge, is right... I breed non related roosters but from different breeders...not lines... for 8 generations if I can get them to hold together that long... If you are improving something you can overimprove it.. Like adding copper to the hackle..You start with one rooster that has too much color, by the time you have bred back to him your hens are overcolored... Sticky wicked...I haven't had it come up yet... But I bet it will...I am on generation 3 and working on 4 right now... It is possible my girls will be overcolored when bred back... It is a quite tricky thing... I wish some of the oldy but goodie breeders could help us with these pitfalls. Full brothers is the only way I think one could effectively get there and that would be bred back a multitude of times using same genetics with full brothers... I am a novice at the long term linebreeding and am making my way through it one generation at a time...So far I am single mating as I can't make the males come out good enough in the first or second crossing so my females are getting older without a proper male to mate for double mating...I understand how to do it... just having trouble making it work for me.

 

[Lotsapaints]

Quote:
I'm trying to stay away from soybean meal and I would love to find a local source for fish meal so instead I've been feeding Farmer's Helper Ultra Kibble since I was mixing my own feed anyway...between sprouts and feeding UK WOW is all I can say and it has made feeding much easier and since UK has to be ordered online from Michigan no less I switched the turkeys to Mazuri Game Bird breeder it costs 22.00 a 40lb bag but outlasts 100lbs of locally made with mucho soybean turkey feed not formulated for hatching eggs....and the chickens eat it too I tested it on a pen. I think it's very important to feed breeder birds correctly starting 6 weeks before you plan on setting hatching eggs. Geebs has been a big help along with Pink but Resolution is da bomb he knows his stuff.....and is willing to share also.

 

[drom]

Quote:
Ok, so I told Joe I would re-post this formula. And in reading it again, I realize I screwed up in my recollection of it

Resolutions formula is a little more complex than what I remembered.
Here is his post on backcrossing:

Per Resolution, link: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=278349&p=6

Start with a female line that you know absolutely are full sisters. Save one or two of their full brothers.
Locate an unrelated rooster that you have personally hatched from a dark egg.
Pair this rooster with the first female from your well represented female line.
Select out the darkest eggs from her first clutch.
Hatch them. Select the rooster from this clutch that has hatched from the darkest egg.
Breed him back to his mother.
Repeat the process again and again for 8 consecutive generations.
If for some reason the original matriarch dies, replace her with her closest relative.
Her full sister is the best candidate but remember- you are taking two to three steps back everytime you outcross to even a related female.
Once you have arrived at the eighth generation, you can now breed the progeny interse, that is brother to sister.
Or, better yet, breed them to the close relatives of the mother. You can keep any of the birds not used for breeding but I would send them off to save room and prevent confusion.
You really want to just be as conservative as you can be. This means you set up separate enclosures. Your breeders don't get to run loose. You have to feed them like wild junglefowl and care for them as if they are delicate hot house flowers. This means no crumbles, no mashes no pellets- just whole grains and an animal protein infused pellet.
Mazuri makes an exotic pheasant extruded kibble and of course my company makes an extruded zoo pellet that's 70% more nutritious.
The French feed cockles as their mystery ingredient and lots of crustacean meal- pieces of shrimps and such left over from cooking -so close to the sea.
But for you - inland its too risky to put out material that may become a disease vector. Great genetics help. You can nevertheless, select breed towards that point using blegh stock.
We've experimented with different breeds and it is almost always the same result. We end up with better egg shell colour when we backcross- provided that is what our founders -that's the trait we are isolating and encouraging through selective breeding.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a83/Pi … breast.jpg
Yes- each generation of roosters is another generation bred back to the original matriarch. By the 8th generation his mother will also be his great great great idk how many grandmother.

 

[pinkchick]

Quote:
Ok, so I told Joe I would re-post this formula. And in reading it again, I realize I screwed up in my recollection of it

Resolutions formula is a little more complex than what I remembered.
Here is his post on backcrossing:

Per Resolution, link: https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=278349&p=6

Start with a female line that you know absolutely are full sisters. Save one or two of their full brothers.
Locate an unrelated rooster that you have personally hatched from a dark egg.
Pair this rooster with the first female from your well represented female line.
Select out the darkest eggs from her first clutch.
Hatch them. Select the rooster from this clutch that has hatched from the darkest egg.
Breed him back to his mother.
Repeat the process again and again for 8 consecutive generations.
If for some reason the original matriarch dies, replace her with her closest relative.
Her full sister is the best candidate but remember- you are taking two to three steps back everytime you outcross to even a related female.
Once you have arrived at the eighth generation, you can now breed the progeny interse, that is brother to sister.
Or, better yet, breed them to the close relatives of the mother. You can keep any of the birds not used for breeding but I would send them off to save room and prevent confusion.
You really want to just be as conservative as you can be. This means you set up separate enclosures. Your breeders don't get to run loose. You have to feed them like wild junglefowl and care for them as if they are delicate hot house flowers. This means no crumbles, no mashes no pellets- just whole grains and an animal protein infused pellet.
Mazuri makes an exotic pheasant extruded kibble and of course my company makes an extruded zoo pellet that's 70% more nutritious.
The French feed cockles as their mystery ingredient and lots of crustacean meal- pieces of shrimps and such left over from cooking -so close to the sea.
But for you - inland its too risky to put out material that may become a disease vector. Great genetics help. You can nevertheless, select breed towards that point using blegh stock.
We've experimented with different breeds and it is almost always the same result. We end up with better egg shell colour when we backcross- provided that is what our founders -that's the trait we are isolating and encouraging through selective breeding.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a83/Pi … breast.jpg
Yes- each generation of roosters is another generation bred back to the original matriarch. By the 8th generation his mother will also be his great great great idk how many grandmother.

drom~ Thank you for posting this.....this is what I was referring to when I responded to flgardens inquiry, I just didn't have enough time to type it all out when I was posting.

I started out with 2 Davis roosters and no hens......later after the boys were 1 yr old I finally got 4 Davis pullets, I bred these birds together kept the female offspring that I wanted, I did not care for any of the male offspring produced from these birds and eventually got rid of the 2 original roos. While in the process of growing the offspring out I located some one here (in the same state) that had a closed flock of Davis birds (referred to her by Bev, unfortunately I understand she is no longer breeding........huge bummer on my part.....I so wanted more eggs from her) hatched out those eggs and kept the offspring that I wanted, 2 roos and 5 girls. At this point I now had 2 pens of Davis birds, not that closely related, but still of the same lineage. I bred the 2 roos from the second batch of eggs to my 4 original pullets and kept the good female offspring from those crosses and a few males to grow out, I did not like any of these males either. So I keep one of the original hens in this pen and her daughters and they are still being crossed to one of the second batch roos, essentially speaking most of the females produced from this cross are being bred back to their father and grandfather. Still in search of a nice male to be thrown out of this pen so that I can grow out and breed a new grandson back to his mothers/grandmothers each year.

On the flip side...........I have a completely unrelated rooster that I crossed to my original 4 Davis pullets to introduce new blood and other nice qualities that he lends including his egg color. I have grown out some very nice bodied and dark laying females from this cross and have now introduced these females to my pure Davis pen and have first generation from this cross growing out now with the prospect of 2 nice males. I am hoping to produce a nice male from the 1/2 Davis and 1/2 unrelated roo females by breeding them back to my Davis roo. I also still continue to breed the completely unrelated rooster to Davis hens and a couple of his daughters from the first Davis/unrelated crosses for hopes of a nice male someday and I have increased the diversity of my gene pool at the same time.

Now to add to that.......I have again added another batch of Davis birds to the equation, that I had shipped in this summer, new blood so to speak, but still of the same lineage. None of the roosters are worthy of keeping, the females are great and I feel that by crossing them back to my Davis roo that I may have a chance at a nice roo while maintaining egg color genes from the same lineage. I also added a couple of females from this last batch of birds to my completely unrelated roo's pen.

My goal is to create my own line and eventually breed in more of the unrelated roo's blood, borrowing a few well established qualities from the Davis birds, I have found combining them with the qualities of the unrelated bird creates some very nice birds that are more of what I would like to see in my flocks.

 

[pinkchick]

If I didn't confuse anyone too much with that last post as I did myself

, I thought that I would share that this is also the same practice that I use with my Welsummers and hope to use with my Barnevelders as well, this spring I am adding another batch of same lineage Barnie eggs and/or chicks looking for good females, I have one female now and one roo that are same lineage, but not closely related, I think that once I get some more good females that I can then begin to breed for more nice males while backcrossing at the same time for maintaining egg color and or in hopes of increasing it.

 

[flgardengirl]

Quote:
I have one little Golden Phoenix hen that keeps hopping the fence & getting in with the EE rooster. Little hussie that she is...........LOL She does produce some really pretty ofspring but I am not into mixing things up much,..... so they are not in the pens with the regular groups. She in on her second clutch doing this. AT least this time she only showed up with 2, very EE looking chicks. It amazing how each chicks turned out so different.

My little phx hen is the sweetest thing ever. I have a little phx bantam roo in the layer pen for the winter to keep the girls out of trouble LOL. There are a couple blue ameraucana hens in there. I was wondering the other day what a silver phx roo x bl ameraucana hen would look like especially if the chick was a roo who looked like a blue and silver (would that be a blue birchen?) Phoenix with a muff and beard LOL!
I'm like you, I don't normally set crosses except my Olive eggers and I have one split blk/lav orp x BCM hen.

 

[knjinnm]

Quote:
Hi Pink,
Sounds like you keep good records. Have you applied Wrights coefficient of inbreeding to your flock?
http://www.tenset.co.uk/fspeed/

Joe