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I was kind of wondering the same thing Kim....if you ever planned on showing him. I bet you would place very well with him!
Yeah...this is my first hatch of ducklings ever, so i have no idea how it is supposed to go....my girl did such a good job and the hatch was spread out over three days....I thought it was odd, but maybe its just cause I'm used to using an incubator. Not sure if I'll hatch them in the incubator or not in the future...I don't know why but the thought of doing that makes me nervous? It shouldn't...just one of those silly things I guess.
I could use a bit more size on my birds too Lynette! The ones that need the most help are the birchens of course. My blues came from a couple of different people, but the funny part is that after talking with them, they both got their stock from someone named Peggy I think out of Texas, but she eventually sold out of them. This is a perfect case of getting birds from the same line and having totally different results because of how they choose to breed their birds and the characteristics they focus on. Helen is one of the people I got my splash birds from...the thing I notice most is that I and a couple of other people I've seen post pics of their stock from her is that they have a lot of copper leakage. I don't know if maybe we are the exception or not, but I just go with what I see. The egg color is good however...especially for splashes. The other breeder was out of Tennessee or Kentucky I believe....I'd have to check my records again, out of all the birds I've hatched out only has had one with copper leakage....but when I've done a test hatch, none of them have produced copper...the curiosity is that I'm getting consistent birchen color...no matter the hen or pullet I put with him. So....I'm keeping him for a couple of more test hatches and testing a couple of theories. The down side is that his egg color is not quite as consistent as Helen's... I also snagged up a few solid blue marans from a sale in Kansas...they lay egg color that is passable, but my biggest boost in my process of moving forward is to take things a step at a time. That is why I love the saying "build the barn first, paint it later." I have seen vast improvements over the three generations of hatches I've done thus far. The body type and color has vastly improved and more consistency in leg feathering and I'm keeping that copper and birchen leakage under control with selective hatching. I also am seeing an improvement in the coloring on the eggs. I'm not gonna lie...its slow going, but with the results I'm seeing taking things slowly, I think it might be the way to go to really get a quality line going.
