Illia,
After your matings and you put the birds back, I take it you have a holding pen set up for the hen you bred for collecting just her eggs to incubate.
I have several different coops and am getting ready to build another coop with 5 areas, I was going to keep one of the pen areas open to use as a breeding pen. I keep all of my Araucanas together Roosters included, currently I have 4 roosters with 8 hens, last year when I did breedings I specifically put tufted with clean faced and tailed with rumpless together, I got alot of tufted chicks with a few of them being rumpless as well, I may try doing that again this coming spring with my Araucanas I really liked what I got last year alot better than what I got this year from my birds.
I'm going to use my Gold Duckwing cleanfaced and partial tailed rooster this year with 2 white hens I got that are tufted and rumpless to see if I can possibly get some Buffs from the matings, the 2 white ones are just pullets right now and am getting ready to integrate them with the rest of the birds in that coop, then I have 8 stragler chicks that 3 of them are roo chicks that I'm going to also integrate into the same coop after I get the 2 white ones established with the rest of the birds. One of those Roo chicks is rumpless and clean faced and like I said before shows alot of Mahogany, he also looks purple in the feathers in his back, the first one I've got with this much of a purple to the coloring, and One of those roo chicks is black and white, he's tailed and clean faced so I'll be putting him with rumpless tufted when I do mate with him, he's not old enough right now, I'm kind of anxious to see what I get from him as far as colors go. I have one Roo that is an exact copy of the Roo in my Avatar and that came from my breedings from last year, he got his fathers tufts for sure and he's tailed, I have a blue red rumpless clean faced Rooster and also a White Splash Rooster with very little splash to him, he's clean faced and rumpless, I did from last years breedings get better comb sizes on my Roos, so that was an improvement. I got set back with my birds that I have now because my husband had German Shepherds that killed my birds, this year will be quite different, and should be productive, I eliminated the Husband and the Dogs and now have Guardian Livestock Dogs in place, a whole lot more peaceful around here now than what it was. So I'm looking forward to this years breeding season for sure. I'm hoping to get something produced that I can show, had several last year that I planned to show and the dogs took care of that for me. They almost completely eliminated all of my blue egg laying hens, I only have 2 birds now that I am getting anything even close to blue from as far as egg color. At least one of these 2 white pullets lays a blueish egg so that should help.
Victoria
