Introducing new blood line to blue orps

[msrma7670]

Hello

I have a few questions, but first this is my situation. I am starting a new breed this year. I have 8-10 blue orps in the bator that are viable and growing set to hatch on the 27 of this month out of the 14 that were shipped from colorado coranchers kids. Bye the way I live in Georgia.

My goal is to maintain a flock of about one Roo and 6-12 hens All blue orps
my question is to keep a breed line healthy I know I should introduce fresh blood every so often. When should I do that? How should I do that?

The parents of my eggs came from sandhill Presv. I belive MOM AND DAD
My eggs are the offspring of those parents. KIDS

DO I breed the kids together (siblings) to get offspring then add new blood?
What effect will this have on my flock?
Can I use others from sandhill or go elsewhere?
Can I introduce non blue gene orp to the line for the blood take the offspring
and reintroduce them to the flock? Will this work?
Is it just best to get other blue orp eggs and breeed the kids to them? see below
Roo Kid to new egg hens New roo to hen kids
then cross the off sring back together. How long before I need more blood?


This is a very confussing subject in my house right now and finding solid information
on this matter is hard to come by even in my books. Any help would be great!


thank you all
Mike n Shannon in GA

 

[hcammack]

You can use black and splash orphs as well we have allot of breeders that know more about blue orphs than I do. Speckled hen has some and so does Missprissy, Bamachicken, and many others. One way I think to introduce new blood is to find a separate line of black orphs and use them.

Good Luck with your cool knew breeding project

Henry

 

[Kanchii]

Are both of the parents blue? Then you will get black, blue, and splash offspring out of the eggs you have. If you want to breed the best blues, I recomend having one black rooster and all blue hens, which will give you half black and half blue offspring, but the blues will have very nice lacing and the ideal dark color! Or you could breed a black to all splash hens and get 100% blue, but they probably wont have as nice and uniform of color. Depends if you're breeding for show quality or not.

There is no problem breeding siblings together. If you got something good, just keep at it. Unless your planning on breeding tons of generations down the line with the same lineage, you don't need to introduce new blood really.

 

[seriousbill]

Breeding half-siblings together isn't a big deal at all, but repeatedly breeding full siblings can reduce the overall vigor of your stock and increase the liklihood of some defects, such as roachback taillessness. Line breeding, or breeding offspring back to parents, is a better way to go but has to be done carefully so that you're not inbreeding the stock too closely.

Here's a chart that shows how to do it:
http://www.users.on.net/~greggles/strategy2.html

 

[MissPrissy]

This is the way the blue gene works

Black has 0 blue genes
Blue has 1 blue gene
splash has 2 blue genes

% is based on the vaerge of 100 chicks -

Blue x Blue = 25% Black 50% Blue 25% splash

Black x Blue = 50% Black 50% Blue.

Black x Splash = 100% Blue

Blue x Splash = 50% Blue 50% Splash

Splash x Splash = 100% Splash

To keep the blues gorgeous with good lacing you want to keep a blck in your flock. Either roo or hen it doesn't matter. The black is important otherwise you wash out the colors and they are not as pretty colored in their feathering. Some people don't care and just want blue chicks of any variation.

If you want a good strong line and you are very serious about raising them I suggested you get more eggs from other lines and keep more than one pen to breed for hatching eggs.

I am not in any way trying to point a finger but there has been some past observation of green legs coming out of the hatchery chicks you say your eggs came from. I would be looking for better breeder stock to invest my hopes and dreams in.

Good luck with your plans.

I had 2 chicks with green legs and I culled them both. I am trying to breed for the SOP (Standard of Perfection).

 

[speckledhen]

You dont have many choices, as so many of this breed are related to each other somewhere along the line plus not that many even have them at all, related or not. One of my rooster's ladies is his half sister, one is not related at all, and one is his daughter out of the unrelated hen.

 

[seriousbill]

I'll just add that if any bad traits are hidden in the stock, as MissP suggests, sibling mating would be a particularly bad idea, because it will set those traits.

I would also like to add that that hatchery has a very wide range of quality. Some are good; some are not. I've ordered two different breeds from them and had mixed results. You might be okay with that stock for a start, bringing in better stock as you can. Speckledhen is right; your options may be pretty limited.

 

[corancher]

Just wanted to give a little information since the eggs came from my flock. I have 18 hens and three roosters in my breeding pen. I have black, blue, and splash in the breeding pen. My original stock from Sandhill I kept 2 roosters and 6 hens. I have kept the best of my hatches and have not introduced any new outside blood.

With that many different hens and roosters the chance of real close relationships are greatly reduced. I have some chicks just hatched from Angela Stanley's Orpingtons that will be new blood for next year.

Hope this information helps. Also hope you get a great hatch.

 

[dangerouschicken]

Great info! I really want Blue Orps at some point, and it is interesting about the breeding percentages. Thanks for posting that, MP

 

[speckledhen]

Blue x Blue = 25% Black 50% Blue 25% splash

Technically true, but I never get that many splashes! No fair, LOL. I only have one splash per hatch for some reason, no matter how large the hatch is, at least if I'm doing it for myself. I think I got two splashes in a custom hatch I did for KingsCalls.