April 2020 Hatch-A-Long! All are welcome!

[gmjarvi]

That’s quite the job for a broody! Better be a giant chicken.

Looky what I found...
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This is soooooo tempting!!!!!

 

[gmjarvi]

Yes totally! Good idea. And yeah the Lavenders are beautiful but BBS was the easiest to wrap my head around and I happen to love the way all 3 colors look, so it works out. I think my challenge will be improving and not degrading the blue color. I want to try to keep it dark with nice lacing definition instead of washed out, so I’m growing out as many birds as I can this year to hopefully be set for next year.

I bet your birds will be gorgeous! I can see them already in my mind's eye. Now I'm reading about chicken genetics again and boy is it a lot to wrap one's head around!

 

[BluebirdHomestead]

I bet your birds will be gorgeous! I can see them already in my mind's eye. Now I'm reading about chicken genetics again and boy is it a lot to wrap one's head around!

I’m so excited to grow all these babies out and see what I have to work with. And yes there is a lot to dig into with chicken genetics!

 

[FortCluck]

I’m so excited to grow all these babies out and see what I have to work with. And yes there is a lot to dig into with chicken genetics!

I don't even get genetics I have had chicks that make zero sense. I am amazed every time I hatch eggs how different each chick is. I'm addicted to hatching

 

[gmjarvi]

I don't even get genetics I have had chicks that make zero sense. I am amazed every time I hatch eggs how different each chick is. I'm addicted to hatching

BBS makes sense to me, I think....lol. As does olive egger genetics, I think . At least at a very basic level. There are a lot of variables, so like you said, each chick can be so different! I was reading about lavender last night and that seems so much easier to me now.

I love Highland Homestead's Isabel Ameraucanas but I'm wondering how many years it took to get there. My understanding is that Isabel is essentially lavender over partridge, which washes out the partridge color, giving you the beautiful pastels. But Ameraucanas dont come in partridge to my knowledge, so I wonder which breed they used to get the straw color in there? I feel like wheaten would be too light.

Now that I know more about lavender I'm less intimidated by it. I feel like the biggest issue with doing both BBS and lavender would be telling the eggs apart, but if you're really dialing it down you likely have breeding birds separated from everyone else.

At any rate, I feel like having a couple breeding projects going on is good to fuel my hatching addiction . I'd love to have a rainbow egg project and an Ameraucana project.

 

[BluebirdHomestead]

I don't even get genetics I have had chicks that make zero sense. I am amazed every time I hatch eggs how different each chick is. I'm addicted to hatching

So much can be hidden in the genetic code that we can’t see with the eye which is what makes it fun and unpredictable if we don’t know what is hiding.

 

[BluebirdHomestead]

BBS makes sense to me, I think....lol. As does olive egger genetics, I think . At least at a very basic level. There are a lot of variables, so like you said, each chick can be so different! I was reading about lavender last night and that seems so much easier to me now.

I love Highland Homestead's Isabel Ameraucanas but I'm wondering how many years it took to get there. My understanding is that Isabel is essentially lavender over partridge, which washes out the partridge color, giving you the beautiful pastels. But Ameraucanas dont come in partridge to my knowledge, so I wonder which breed they used to get the straw color in there? I feel like wheaten would be too light.

Now that I know more about lavender I'm less intimidated by it. I feel like the biggest issue with doing both BBS and lavender would be telling the eggs apart, but if you're really dialing it down you likely have breeding birds separated from everyone else.

At any rate, I feel like having a couple breeding projects going on is good to fuel my hatching addiction . I'd love to have a rainbow egg project and an Ameraucana project.

Yeah BBS is pretty simple once you grasp it. There’s just little things to start thinking about - like I’m pretty sure the blacks that come from BBS are silver based and you can sometimes get an even better black when they are gold based so some people focus on just gold based blacks entirely.

I know that years ago a breeder was working on a partridge Ameraucana project but I think it fizzled out. That’s a great question as to how they got there with the Isabels. I’m sure it took some time. My only worry with those would be that there isn’t a lot a genetic diversity there yet. Can you get them anywhere else aside from Highland Homestead? If not, you’d have to heavily linebreed/inbreed which is fine for a while but you’d have to decide what you’d want to do to inject new blood eventually, I imagine.

I feel like Lavender would be fun to work with, especially since it just got approved as an APA recognized color this year! I think the feather quality and understanding how Black splits work are the only big things to understand.
Regardless of the color, I think Ameraucanas are so awesome to work with. I adore the breed. Definitely my favorite.

 

[FortCluck]

So much can be hidden in the genetic code that we can’t see with the eye which is what makes it fun and unpredictable if we don’t know what is hiding.

My jersey giant makes awesome offspring.

Right now my favorite chick I have is my porcelain d'uccle. It's feathers almost look pastel purple. I hope it's a female.

 

[gmjarvi]

Yeah BBS is pretty simple once you grasp it. There’s just little things to start thinking about - like I’m pretty sure the blacks that come from BBS are silver based and you can sometimes get an even better black when they are gold based so some people focus on just gold based blacks entirely.

I know that years ago a breeder was working on a partridge Ameraucana project but I think it fizzled out. That’s a great question as to how they got there with the Isabels. I’m sure it took some time. My only worry with those would be that there isn’t a lot a genetic diversity there yet. Can you get them anywhere else aside from Highland Homestead? If not, you’d have to heavily linebreed/inbreed which is fine for a while but you’d have to decide what you’d want to do to inject new blood eventually, I imagine.

I feel like Lavender would be fun to work with, especially since it just got approved as an APA recognized color this year! I think the feather quality and understanding how Black splits work are the only big things to understand.
Regardless of the color, I think Ameraucanas are so awesome to work with. I adore the breed. Definitely my favorite.

I wonder if you could just use a BBS black (silver based) to make black split to lavenders since the black in either case is not necessarily to the goal since gold based black is a better black? You would probably need to breed to BBS black birds together to get rid of the blue gene first? So much to consider! Could be my fun Ameraucana project . Lots of people up here love the blue eggs and the lavender color is popular everywhere it seems! Meyer hatchery sold their black split to lavender orpingtons this year and I was surprised they were so popular as they dont seem to be very useful unless you're trying to start a lavender breeding program, in which case you probably wouldn't want hatchery quality birds! Another novelty bird, I guess?

At any rate, I love Ameraucanas - I am a sucker for those faces, the eggs, and all of the ones I have met are sweeties.

I think I read that same partridge Ameraucana thread on the breed club's website lol. It seemed like a HUGE undertaking, I wonder how far they ever got with it. I've not seen the Isabels anywhere other than Highland Homestead, but I also havent looked very hard!

My jersey giant makes awesome offspring.

Right now my favorite chick I have is my porcelain d'uccle. It's feathers almost look pastel purple. I hope it's a female.

Right now for breeding birds I strictly have mutts, but they are a fun bunch of birds and hardy, too, so I think I should get some good chicks from them! And some of them will be frizzle . I wanted d'uccles soooooo badly but my TSC doesnt have a bantam bin . The porcelain ones do almost look purple, which is my favorite color .

 

[LilyD]

Yay!! I set 13 eggs 8 are from a local breeder and 5 from home in my incubator Saturday, day 21 should be the 4th so they will be my first April hatch. Hoping to get enough eggs to set a batch for Easter as well.