Hello!
We're Maran newbies, and we just picked up this BCM cockerel below at Stockton for possible breeding. We've made breed SOP mistakes before, so I just wanted to check with the knowledgable BYCers first before completely settling him in to do this job. I am most grateful that people here are willing to share their knowledge! There's an overwhelming amount of pages to go through, so I thought I would just ask.
This cockerel is 6 months old, crows and mates the hens, but we were told that he is a good "type," with a nice, solid body and okay tail. She believed that he was decended from the Bev Davis line, back east. His actual coloring is closest to the second side photo, not quite as golden as some of the closer shots as the light reflected.
She said that his chest coloring should likely be fine for breeding, as there were people who were even showing roos with even more chest color than his, and she took us to the exhibit building see them…but I don't know if they had placed or were DQ. But, is this chest coloring something we should actually be more concerned about enough to not work with him? He has little neck hackle halo- seems to be pretty subtle.
Another concern I have that I just noticed is that his legs are pale whitish, with fine black stippled along the tops. Is this acceptable? He has feathering along the shanks with the correct amount of toes. Ideally, we hope to eventually breed him to his daughters, but I'm not exactly sure what I need to be checking for in new pullets. The hens that will be with him now have combs that need some work, but otherwise their body type seems decent, and legs are feathered and black. One lays very dark speckled eggs, another seems much lighter, so we won't be breeding her.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks!
Well.... I am not all that experienced, so take what i say as just an opinion. If he was mine i would have got rid of him when he was a baby, but having now seen him as an older roo he has made it this far so the decision is different. You can see that he DOES have a nice type (at least i think so) He has a couple of a longer tail feathers but not what i would call a squirrel tail (the angle looks slightly high, but quite nice to me) and he has a nice curved back and he seems to be balanced (i invite others to jump in her if you disagree pls) How big is he?? if he is nice and big to me that is a plus, if he was small i would not breed him either.
SO: assuming he has some size, what i would do is to definitely not let him loose with my flock but i would see if i had a very dark (maybe one showing no copper) nice looking hen and do a controlled mating and see if the copper can be made to go away. I am a bit of an experimenter so maybe it's just me. Also this would only really work if you have the time and resources to do these experiments. If you are looking for a roo for your whole flock then that is a different case.
just some comments from the mad scientist section LOL!!
LL
