Dave,Mine are all bantams. I had a busy summer with hatching chicks, building a new barn, and keeping up with all the regular chores! With all the work and now many days of rain I haven't had time to get many pictures but hopefully can get to it this week.
Pen 1 produced slightly more than half of the LBs, although they are a bit darker blue due to melanizers discovered in the blue hens. I'll likely continue with the lighter ones once the molt adult feathering so I can see their tone better. Pen 2, as expected produced all the frizzles, about 70% of the BRs, and the Splashes. Ideally Splash x BR gives all LB so I'm planning on setting that pairing next year. I'm also planning for LB x LB hoping for more Splashes to use in breeding. The chicks will be split for a few genes as I'm not sure how clean my blue line is so it may take a while to clean up the LBs from pen 1. Because pen 2 were all ER/ER chicks theu should be a shorter path to consistency.
The frizzle chciks are just something that happened along - I wasn't planning for that hen! Actually I suspect that she is pure frizzle (F/F) as she's quite pathetic looking and all chicks from her are correctly feathered frizzles in LB and BR. I'll test mate females next year to see if they produce any smooth feather chicks so I could use them for breeding normal LBs down the road.
My adult stock isn't too bad considering their rarity - I do have some issues with male combs and shafting on females especially the female BRs. The LBs are pretty good color, less shafting and good breast lacing. All 4 males have better cushions and feet than the average females.
Interesting I have two Jamie Matts' bantam x LF BR females that I used this year. They are too big for true bantams and I'm considering tinkering with picking up a trio of LF Blues/Splashes to try to start a LF LB project. That will depend upon finding appropriate Blue stock. These are about the only Birchen (ER) birds in LF that I've seen so it should be easier to get to the true LB pattern in LFs rather than the non-ER crosses. Time will tell.
I'm hoping for four or five breeding pens including the LF next year to get enough stock together as an established line before cutting back to a more manageable number in years 4 -5. Hopefully in year 3 I'll start to see a solid, consistent line established to continue with in the future.
I'll get some pictures together of the chicks in a day or two.
Dave
Thanks so much for all the details. Looking forward to see pics of the chicks. Can't wait for Spring~!
