Those look pretty black and big to me! If I could get those to add to my black meat chicken project. I was going to leave one of my white bresse pullets with the cemani for a bigger black meat chicken since my line is not the best anyways. And I have a better blacker male now too, but am not getting the crow reduction surgery on him.
I have finally resigned myself to selling off my laying flock to make room for more white bresse and svart honas and ayam cemani in the spring (better lines). The neighbors are talking I can use the buildings in the a joining yard to increase my urban farming aspirations. But they are much closer to the busy road. I can't free range due to predators, but at this rate my entire property will be covered in bird block netting to keep squirrels and other birds out.
Amazon is probably wondering why I'm ordering so much fish netting and bird block netting.
My friend hatched out more non Smithsonian cemani and has kept the blackest ones for us to possibly breed with. A few are coming out very black. She has gff pair that will start laying in the spring, at which time I may cull most of mine to eat.
I also contemplated using one of my cemani pullets in the bresse pen to see what pops out. For meat, not breeding.
I personally think that the cemani line I have make for good sized birds at 6 months or so for eating, much bigger than silkies.
Now Santa asked me to be specific about which 2 incubators I want. I really want to hatch and even though I'm fazing out my colored egg laying flock, I'll probably hatch from them to figure out how and not planning on hatching eggs from the bresse and cemani until they're laying a bit first.
I have a supplemental led rope light, but am still on the fence about installing it. I didn't vent from the warm barn to the coop either. The next step is to cut new panels from 1/2" hardware cloth to screw into the pen and add more roosting spaces, moving the muscovies to the laying flock pen. Hstd to believe it's December in CO and how fast the babies are growing.
My bf admits he hates caponizing, so we may not continue to try to do so. I wish my hand were more steady for me to try my hand at it, but many deaths would probably result in that. The production red capon we did is much bigger than the regular rooster. So there is merit in caponizing I feel for rooster control and better meat.