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Not much to explain, you when you breed to splits 1/4 of the young will be Charcoals and pretty much useless unless all you want is a pet.What!![]()
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"Also, there is a lot of culling of undesirable birds."
Can you develop this idea?
nothing wrong with midnights. People just get lazy with them.When breeding Black Shoulder to Black Shoulder 100% of the offspring will be Black Shoulder, (my favorite pattern). When breeding Charcoal to Charcoal you will get 100% NO EGGS. Charcoal hens are not sterile, they just do not lay eggs at all, that is why we have to use IB hens split to Charcoal. When breeding Charcoal BS to IBBS split to Charcoal hens half of the chicks will be Charcoal BS and half will be IBBS split Charcoal. Half of the cocks will be Charcoal BS and the other half will be IBBS split to Charcoal. Half of the hens will be Charcoal non-layers and the other half will be IBBS split to Charcoal. Only 50% of the offspring will be useful as breeders, the Charcoal cocks and the IBBS split to Charcoal hens.
The IBBS split to Charcoal cocks will carry Charcoal and BS but only half of what they can produce would be productive for breeders and then you could not know if half of the hens carry Charcoal, that is why you do not want to breed a split to Charcoal cock.
The Charcoal hens of course will not lay eggs.
So you are producing approx. 1/4 of the chicks in a color and pattern that you want for beautiful Charcoal cocks that go blind and 1/4 of the cocks that will only make 1/8 chance of doing the same. 1/4 of the chicks will be Charcoal non-laying hens and 1/4 IBBS split to Charcoal that are useful breeders.
The bottom line is that you are producing at least half of the chicks that are able to make Charcoal BS breeders reliably, 1/4 of the chicks that are not desirable split cocks and 1/4 that can not lay eggs. And any that can pass on the Charcoal gene to the Charcoal offspring are most likely going to have a short life expectancy by going blind and dying at an early age.
Another color that should not be reproduced is Midnight, but that is a story for a different time.