Starting to Evaluate Breeders for Spring

[3KillerBs]

I'll need to get individual photos when I can recruit an extra set of hands for the camera, but I took some photos today.

The 9-month pullet in the upper right is Charcoal and the dark blue in the lower left *may* be her daughter.

In closeup you can see the overtone of her gypsy-face, which was much darker before she matured.

This young black fellow is so much larger than my young blues that I might end up breeding him, either in the main flock or the Silver-Laced project -- which would probably benefit from not having to deal with the blue color anyway.

Nothing really wrong with this young fellow, but his black brother is ahead of him.

Dark Beauty, one of my other darker hens (potentially Charcoal's mother), shows off her nice lacing after her molt is complete.

Another picture of the dark girl from the first photo behind her splash sister.

I didn't get her feet and thus her bands into the photo, but I *think* this is black-yellow, whom I think has particularly good lacing.

I welcome all thoughts -- and photo references of better Australorps for comparison to help me learn would be especially useful.

 

[sdm111]

Look up the standard and judge each prospect to the standard. Don't judge prospect with other prospects.

 

[3KillerBs]

Look up the standard and judge each prospect to the standard. Don't judge prospect with other prospects.

http://www.openpoultrystandards.com/Australorp

It's rather difficult to understand for newbies without access to good photos of show quality birds. If you have some I'd love to see them in order to understand better what my birds ought to look like.

 

[Sally PB]

Following...

 

[NagemTX]

Also following!

 

[NagemTX]

Ugh you're not wrong. Just googling for show quality or champion blue astralorps is not giving me any good pictures of something labeled as such.

 

[SourRoses]

I really like the look of Dark Beauty. Her lacing continues up her neck whereas the darker girls seem to be losing it. Or is that something particular to first years?

Anywho, I totally get what you mean about the standards. And I am one who prefers to learn by reading. But a written description is much harder to translate into a mental image of the perfect bird. Some things make easy sense, such as arrow shaped lacing being undesirable.
But the blah blah about angles and depth of color is really only making sense to the person that wrote it.
I'm pretty sure even the judges are just making educated guesses (note: anytime someone holds up how long they've been doing a thing it's a pretty sure bet it's more of an art than a science).
I get a kick out of internet breeder groups talking about this or that bird being "leggy"... But there are no measurements to be found. That's why people are generally not confident enough to present example pictures of perfect specimens. Because the rules can shift depending on who's looking at the bird.

Anyway, enough of my opinion. I'll just close with my personal conclusion (take it or leave it)...
The human eye is naturally attuned to symmetry. It's how we choose our mates (usually) and build structures and all sorts of stuff.
I found that natural inclination helpful when I was working on our car with absolutely zero mechanical experience (complete success!). Other people made it, so if something looks "off", the designers would likely agree.

Same thing with birds. Whoever got hold of the power to dictate what a breed should look like was probably looking for symmetry from all the different angles. So you probably, deep down, have a better idea of what birds "seem right" than internet strangers looking at static images in only one lighting, pose, and moment in time.

This is probably the opposite of helpful

 

[3KillerBs]

Ugh you're not wrong. Just googling for show quality or champion blue astralorps is not giving me any good pictures of something labeled as such.

I find it peculiar that the breed associations don't enthusiastically show off the best birds from shows. I would think that it would make people more willing to pay extra for show-quality breeder birds if they were better educated as to what a top-quality chicken should look like.

I'm pretty sure even the judges are just making educated guesses (note: anytime someone holds up how long they've been doing a thing it's a pretty sure bet it's more of an art than a science).

I'm certain that you're right about it being an art. An art I'm struggling to learn.

I really like the look of Dark Beauty. Her lacing continues up her neck whereas the darker girls seem to be losing it. Or is that something particular to first years?

I remember reading that lacing often improves with successive molts. Dark Beauty is a mature hen, Charcoal is about 9 months (Easter hatch, I think? (I need to learn to keep better records), and the little one is 12 weeks.

I chose Rameses over the other main candidate (I started with 5 cockerels), for two reasons -- one of them being that he had better lacing as a 16-week cockerel than the photos in the hatchery catalogs had.

The human eye is naturally attuned to symmetry. It's how we choose our mates (usually) and build structures and all sorts of stuff.
I found that natural inclination helpful when I was working on our car with absolutely zero mechanical experience (complete success!). Other people made it, so if something looks "off", the designers would likely agree.

That's a good point.

The other reason I chose Rameses (then known as Green for his band color), over Red was that though Red was very slightly larger and *might* have been very slightly better type, Rameses had an indefinable star quality to him that not only showed in person but which came through in multiple photos at multiple ages.

 

[3KillerBs]

I remember reading that lacing often improves with successive molts.

I forgot to say that one of my lighter blue hens almost got sold but came out of her molt with such excellent lacing that I decided to keep her based on that and on her disposition.

 

[Iluveggers]

How do you bring in new genetics? I know of 3 hatcheries that have Blue Australorp off the top of my head… Welp, Ideal & Mt Healthy. Have you stayed w the same group, or introduced new genetics just out of curiosity? Eventually I hope to breed chickens to sell in my area. Retirement can’t come soon enough!