Lavender Orpington project ....

[feathers4fun]

I'm somewhat new to lav and learning as I go. Current flock consists of 4 pullets, of which 3 are laying, and 2 cockerels. Have purchased eggs, due to hatch on Thanksgiving, and I hope to use some of those to put under a lav roo.
I've only read back a few pages in this thread but someone mentioned using an Eng Orp to beef up size. I might consider this if I can find hatching eggs. Either way the lav color is by far my all time favorite. In fact friends/relatives that visit love my "purple chickens" too.

 

[Schroeder]

Nine pure lavenders born 6/12/11. No eggs yet, combs are still pink. I know its lazy of me not to read all posts in this thread again to find my answer but can some one explain? If I put a Black over my Lavender hens (F1), will all the chicks (F2) be splits, black in appearance? If I then put a Lavender roo over these splits, I think I'll get some Black splits (F3) and some pure Lavenders (F3). Is this correct? Will it matter if this Lavender roo (F1) is a brother to the original hens?

One more question. Is my use of F1, F2, F3 correct?

 

[OSUman]

Quote:
this is correct, but crossing the F3's to the F1 rooster will be counter productive because you will loose alot of what you would have gained by out breeding.

 

[Schroeder]

So should I seek out an unrelated Lavender roo to put over the F3's? What if I would put an F3 roo over his sisters?

 

[HallFamilyFarm]

It has been described that you paint the barn, rebuild the barn, paint the barn, rebuild the barn.

With ours, the next generation will be paint. We need to see what the lav gene looks like with the new "barn" from the Black Orpington. If the Self Blue looks good with type and size, then we will pursue breeding SB to SB. If not, we will take the SB pullets and mate them back to a Black Orp male. We may even take a SB male to some Black Orp hens. Then we will mate these Splits together. We keep going back to Blacks to build the type (barn) and then to a good Self Blue to "paint" back to the lav gene.

 

[OSUman]

Quote:
I just looked over your plan and the black splits would be F1 offspring and the black splits will be F2 and I would suggest you cross them to eachother and cull all the blacks and keep the lavs then repeat.

 

[HallFamilyFarm]

Sort of like wash, rinse, wash, rinse.....

 

[Lark Rise]

Here are my 3 LOs from Nancy Garry:

The brown chick is not a LO. Of the 4 LOs chicks hatched in late January this year, 3 survived. 2 hens and a rooster. The roo is really sweet.

In the next 2 pics, they are 6 months old:

Tootles, the roo, is almost 7months here:

In this pic, he is just over 5 months.

Love this pic of them dust bathing. They were about 2 months old here. They look so content.

 

[cukooformarans]

How old are they in those pics?

How old were yours from Nancy when they began to lay?
Thanks!!

 

[Lark Rise]

Quote:
I added ages to the pics.

I think they started laying around 5 1/2 months old.