picked some peppers (feher, a hungarian sweet paprika pepper variety) and some white eggplants (could grow bigger).
stuffed peppers will be for the tomorrow's lunch. I highly recommend these peppers. easy to grow with up to 4 lb per plant. in my climate they need partial shade - we have hell...
similar here but less hot and summer is may-september. grass just has started to come out, some trees grow new leaves. it should be like that till december. real fall is mid/late november and december. we can have even 3 ft of snow but in january/february. march/april is the first spring.
change feed and see if that helps. a friend of mine lost about 90% of chicks bc feed that was expensive and supposed to be good was garbage. with another batch he changed feed and was fine.
breeding is a sort of lottery. you need 4-5 years to get good birds. if you want to show your birds read this thread from the beginning. @Chooks man gave precious information.
he is a good cockerel and you should breed with him. just find a complementing hen (dark with a good comb). very often 2 perfect birds make not so good offspring and vice versa.
congrats!
most kids here get from their parents what they want. when parents cannot buy all they want they start stealing. after that some end up in jail and some become politicians, lol.