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Hi Ashlee, I'll be happy to explain it to you.
I'm working on a color project... making some orpingtons have gold laced feathers, which they currently do NOT have. In order to do this, I had to cross two different kinds of birds, orpingtons and wyandottes (was what I chose to try this with). Now there are some significant differences in those breeds, but are close enough for a good start.
When I made the first cross of the two breeds, basically all the chicks look the same as one another, this is due to genetic stuff that gets really complicated (even I still don't get it all)
BUT.. when I start crossing those chicks as they grow up with one another, they will begin to produce a variety of different chicks.
From that 2nd generation, I am looking only for a couple of types of chicks.. in my case, I'm looking for chick down & stripes and for chicks with a single comb. But this generation will produce about 50% chicks with rose combs. So... since I'm doing a project, I want to have as many babies of my own to choose from later on down the road when I create the 3rd generation... so I want to keep about 50 females for my project.
But remember that 50% of what I hatch is going to be with the wrong comb... and then 50% overall will be boys. Obviously I need a bunch of girls..
SOOOO... I am going to try to hatch around 200 eggs, assuming 50% of them have the wrong comb & color, that leaves me with about 100 to choose from more thoroughly... if half are boys... then in the end.. I have 50 hens to choose from and a slew of boys, of which I'll only keep 6.
Its a numbers game.. and I do NOT have the space to rear 200 chicks.. nor keep them.. 100 I could swing. Plus if I feel space is tight I can always pack up a few more each clutch to give away.
The reason I'm GIVING them away is because to me.. it's worth it. I can't keep them, I don't want to feed them, I don't want to butcher them. So if I can't find folks who will take them all right away, then I can't move on with my project!
I win, they win.. we all win!
I go into lots of detail on my project on my website if you want to visit it.
Hope that helps you understand a bit more.
And welcome to chickens.. they can be very addictive.
I currently have around 75 chickens on the property.. a year or so ago I started with 7
I dont want any as I will have about that many chicks myself -I just wanted to say this is very sweet of you to offer such a nice thing to people
A true BYCer love it
Hi Ashlee, I'll be happy to explain it to you.
I'm working on a color project... making some orpingtons have gold laced feathers, which they currently do NOT have. In order to do this, I had to cross two different kinds of birds, orpingtons and wyandottes (was what I chose to try this with). Now there are some significant differences in those breeds, but are close enough for a good start.
When I made the first cross of the two breeds, basically all the chicks look the same as one another, this is due to genetic stuff that gets really complicated (even I still don't get it all)
BUT.. when I start crossing those chicks as they grow up with one another, they will begin to produce a variety of different chicks.
From that 2nd generation, I am looking only for a couple of types of chicks.. in my case, I'm looking for chick down & stripes and for chicks with a single comb. But this generation will produce about 50% chicks with rose combs. So... since I'm doing a project, I want to have as many babies of my own to choose from later on down the road when I create the 3rd generation... so I want to keep about 50 females for my project.
But remember that 50% of what I hatch is going to be with the wrong comb... and then 50% overall will be boys. Obviously I need a bunch of girls..
SOOOO... I am going to try to hatch around 200 eggs, assuming 50% of them have the wrong comb & color, that leaves me with about 100 to choose from more thoroughly... if half are boys... then in the end.. I have 50 hens to choose from and a slew of boys, of which I'll only keep 6.
Its a numbers game.. and I do NOT have the space to rear 200 chicks.. nor keep them.. 100 I could swing. Plus if I feel space is tight I can always pack up a few more each clutch to give away.
The reason I'm GIVING them away is because to me.. it's worth it. I can't keep them, I don't want to feed them, I don't want to butcher them. So if I can't find folks who will take them all right away, then I can't move on with my project!
I win, they win.. we all win!
I go into lots of detail on my project on my website if you want to visit it.
Hope that helps you understand a bit more.
And welcome to chickens.. they can be very addictive.
I currently have around 75 chickens on the property.. a year or so ago I started with 7
I dont want any as I will have about that many chicks myself -I just wanted to say this is very sweet of you to offer such a nice thing to people
A true BYCer love it
