I posted this over on the Plymouth Rock thread....thought I'd share my thoughts here as well
Evening all...
I had a good long sit with the birds tonight and I think I've finally selected the 3 pullets I will keep for next season and BOY it got much harder this year, I guess that's a good thing
I selected 3 pullets as follows
1 to be as close to a perfect female as possible (mostly in case my youngest son wants to show her)...great type (nice front end, long back, slight tail lift, nice wide skull), no black spots/mossiness on her back, nice tail lacing, no cushion, light colored butt fluff, great bright yellow legs, good balance and medium/light undercolor. Likely will not breed from her 9unless there is some catastrophe here) as her undercolor is too light
1 with decent type but extremely rich/dark undercolor, dark/well laced hackles, some mossiness in her back, slightly higher tail than standard, great yellow legs. My plans are to use her to improve my males in two ways - the striping in the hackles/saddles AND tail lift
Finally,
1 with the best type of any females I have plus a little on the large side. She is almost 8 lbs at 9 months old. She will be used to maintain overall type/size on my female side and hopefully add a bit of weight to my males and improve the length of backs. The males aren't really lacking in weight vs the standard, BUT, I need size if I'm gonna compete with the White Rocks
I seem to have made really good progress on my females, so next year my focus is going to be on the males as they are quite a bit behind my females in terms of improvement. After I get these 3 separated from the rest of the flock, I'll post pictures of each of them