Its like he is saying hey there you better get my good side.....A cutiemy baby!
First, Azer, to "cull" does not necessarily mean to dispatch. It means that you will not use them in a breeding program, or have removed them from a pen. In this case, these birds were sold as "backyard layers."
Melissa, okay, let's look at the picture & discuss. While it's difficult to tell all you need to know to evaluate a bird in a picture, here are some of the negatives about these birds:
They didn't even come close to making the weights they should have been at, per the SOP. They were all much too light.
If you look carefully a the foot of the splash bird to the right, you can see (though it's hard to tell) that her foot pads are not yelow - none of them had yellow foot pads. That is a DQ, per the SOP. I would never use a Giant without yellow foot pads in a breeding program.
Looking again at the splash (becuase we can't really evaluate the black) hen, note how her back is not flat, long, and horizontal like the SOP calls for. They also all (the females) had pinched tails, which is a fault. The tails are not shaped correctly, either.
On the male, while he was a handsome bloke, his back is MUCH too short. It looks like the base of his tail practically is attached to back of his neck!
Okay, Herman...here are some more. This is the same male above when he was younger. You can see the foot pads in this picture, and clearly see they are not yellow, but pink:
Here is a blue male from a different line than the male above, but another line I did not keep. This male had better size, and I liked him better overall, but his tail angle was too low, and again, no yellow foot pads. He also never reached quite 11#, so still too small. He had a nice underline, though. And it was much nicer, even, as a 2-year old adult (though I do not have pictures of him at that age). In this picture, he's a bit over a year old.
Tee-hee....I just love this pic. You can even still see the egg tooth, and look how his nostril has black all around it. Kind of unusual.
Okay, now HERE you go. This is a female from the line that I have now. She is 20 -22 weeks, I believe, in this picture, but you can see already that she'll have very nice type. Look at that long, horizontal back! While some can have backs that are TOO long (we discussed this some months ago), hers is just right. I really do need to get some better pictures of the adults that I have now, but this female, to me, was the best I had ever had on my farm, and marked the cornerstone of my current program. Can they be improved? SURE they can! But this is a lovely start for me.
