"Breeding discussion - When to and when not to breed"

[psue]

Let me know what you think. I know he is working on some new stuff with the Animal breeder version like egg production records or something like that.

How do you set it up for small flocks? Example... I have one drake and 4 ducks all Buff Orphington so there is no way for me to tell the eggs apart but the dad is the same.

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

list them as BO duck 1, 2, 3, 4

The Khakis and SA are like that for us.

 

[Coyote Night]

How do you set it up for small flocks? Example... I have one drake and 4 ducks all Buff Orphington so there is no way for me to tell the eggs apart but the dad is the same.

There really is no way to keep the hens separate in this case. I have one Ancona duck that I can tell her eggs from the rest because they are huge and her name is Jumbo because of that too but the rest I just track the drakes offspring on. The best way to track a hen is to pull her and a drake up and hatch offspring from them. You could add a field with a breeding group ID to keep track of which group a duckling came out of. You won't know the exact dam that the duckling came from but you would know what breeding pen and if only 1 drake you would know the sire. You can add fields by going to the settings tab and then custom fields tab.

 

[psue]

ok I wont worry about it until or unless I get more of a breed. Right now I'm lucky to only have 1 pen of anything that I'm breeding.

 

[Coyote Night]

LOL, that won't last long. We started with just 2 breeding pens one for runner ducks and the other for our mixed laying flock of chickens........ Now there are pens all around our backyard perimeter.

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

I remember having THREE chickens and no ducks

like Coyote now we have all sorts of fencing and birds and .............sigh its fun

 

[Dwen]

Dwen you have to buy it from the APA directly, its listed in their online store.

do they sell an ebook version? or maybe I can just buy the waterfowl portion.


on another note, Should I switch to breeder feed now? (I use gamebird stuff) I've been feeding flock raiser, but my geese have just started to get frisky, and my ducks are already laying.

 

[toadbriar]

The APA SOP - having to buy it - this is such a culture shock for me. My basis for comparison is the dog fancy, and dogs being shown for conformation etc. Any dog breed club website will have their breed's standard on it. Most comprehensive informational articles about any breed will share it or link to the breed's standard. It's not proprietary information! It's there for the general public to peruse and interpret so that they can be informed as they compare breeders and animals. So why is the poultry version so exclusive, to where you have to buy a book - and buy it again and again if you want to keep current - just to know what the birds at a show are supposed to look like?

It's very hard to feel neutral about the way the system is set up.

 

[aoxa]

The APA SOP - having to buy it - this is such a culture shock for me. My basis for comparison is the dog fancy, and dogs being shown for conformation etc. Any dog breed club website will have their breed's standard on it. Most comprehensive informational articles about any breed will share it or link to the breed's standard. It's not proprietary information! It's there for the general public to peruse and interpret so that they can be informed as they compare breeders and animals. So why is the poultry version so exclusive, to where you have to buy a book - and buy it again and again if you want to keep current - just to know what the birds at a show are supposed to look like?

It's very hard to feel neutral about the way the system is set up.

Some breed websites have the standard posted. One that comes to mind is the Ameraucana standard. Probably because I go post it all the time when people ask me the difference between Ameraucanas and EEs.