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Most of us are at the work in progress stage. . . .
I can not even work on the barn . . . . I am doing a great job of providing the food for the fried chicken picnic after the barn building, but an absolutely lousy job of building a barn or even finding a barn. . .. . I am blinded my the red combs and wattles that keep popping up every time I open the brooder cage.
I NEVER thought this would be my main trouble - - - producing a female chick.
We all feel your frustration
ONE step at a time. . . Pick something you can accomplish, do that and then move on to the next improvement.
At least here, you have some wonderful resources to get help from. On other threads, there is little collaborating. Marans breeders seem to be really to share their knowledge and help others learn from their mistakes. EDUCATION is big on this thread. OTHER threads want you to join their CLUBS to get information. I am soooooo glad it is OPEN here.
Thanks for the encouragement. After I read through this thread from the beginning I really realized how much work there really is to do on the Marans. I could see the obvious faults on mine and I wondered if I was the only one...so its been very good for me to read this. And I agree...there really is a lot of collaborating and openness on here. I've read through quite a few other threads and its just not the same as here.
I had planned my breeding pens for this season during the end of last year and have tweaked a few things as a result of some of what I read here and at the same time had a lot of confirmation my instincts were pretty good on what I needed to do to give me the best chances for improving my line.
I did have a question for you about producing mostly males...I was wondering what kind of incubator you use? and if you have ever callibrated or tested your temps to see how accurate they are? The reason I ask is that when temps in an incubator are high the results usually are more males. The other sign is if your eggs are hatching early at all. You might already know all of this, but I thought I would throw it out there in case.
And I'll keep my fingers crossed that your spring hatches will be filled to overflowing with pullets!
