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The first photo looks like a bantam cockerel. His color is great. In your second photo he looks like a huge bird. Your pullets still have some developing to go but the color looks really good. I believe the smutty pullet should give you darker cockerels and the other pullet should give you better pullets.
I remember Leisha telling me a judge telling her that her hen or pullet didn't have enough black in her tail. The judge was wrong. According to the standard the tail should be salmon. I have some hens in bantam and large that have a lot of black in their tail and its my belief that you need these hens in the breeding pen. This will help your cockerels to keep their tails black. I have had cockerels in the past that would always show some white edging on some of their tail feathers. I had problems getting rid of it till I realized I had one pen with two hens in it that had a lot of black in their tail and all the cockerels had all black tails and a few that I did keep their tales stayed black even after a few moults. At least this is what I noticed in my birds. Challenges.....you got to love it.
Dick
Oh, I forgot to mention. This cockerel is half bantam half LF. My rooster is a bantam and my hens are all LF, but at the moment that's all I have. I bred the bantam to my largest hen in hopes of getting bigger chicks, since this had worked for me in the past with other breeds. I hope to use him in the spring as my rooster instead, to continue to promote LF size. In the second photo he's standing next to another bantam x LF cross, Rock x Cochin, so it's hard to place his size against him. He's as tall as my purebred LF Rocks of the same age though. The girls are the same, but they are proving to be less difficult then my cockerels. In general my pullets this year have been very nice looking. This cockerel has a lot of white/red in his tail but not so much as his father. I'll keep that in mind though, I was thinking of not breeding a hen with black in her tail and wings next year, but I'll go ahead and try breeding her. I could really use cleanliness in my cockerels.
I do. Challenges are why I like breeding Faverolles.
Thank you,
Sierra
