As far as what I personally like to look at I like the splash hens as much as the blue laced. I like having some of both and right now with blue roosters, one black laced hen, two blue laced hens and something like 13 splash hens I get more than half Blue Laced chicks, almost as many splash chicks and just a few black laced chicks. I know that if I was breeding for show the best Blue Laced come from breeding blue to blue but that leaves me with quite a few black laced and they seem less popular. I used to have almost all blue hens and a blue rooster but decided that for the sake of selling to the locals that I would raise up a bunch of splash hens and a black rooster to create 100% blue laced. Unfortunately when I held some birds back to raise up there were ZERO black cockerels in the mix! So now I'm planning on raising up a black rooster but for a while there they were selling like hot cakes so I figured that I'd wait until things slowed down in the fall to raise up a few to pick out a new rooster. So far I haven't had any cockerels old enough to sex except for a blue laced rooster. I've got quite a few, they just aren't old enough yet. My sales stayed very strong longer than I expected this year so I went from consistently empty brooders to way too many chicks on hand very abruptly. My roosters tend to take quite a long time to mature so I probably won't be changing to a new rooster until late summer. It wouldn't be a terrible idea to get rid of my Black Australorps and add a pen of all Blue Laced birds but I really like the Black Australorps despite the fact that the chicks don't sell for much.
