The Buckeye Thread

[Blueface]

Happy New Year, all!

My Buckeyes are giving me some holiday gifts, starting to see eggs from them now.  I still need to split them up in the breeding pens, but they are coming back around for now, and I think I have decided which males have made the cut for being the first to breed with.

Best of wishes for everyone pursuing breeding this year with their Buckeyes!  

Its nice seeing those eggs. I've got my first clutch going in Wednesday. I hope to get a couple hundred on the ground to select through for this fall. Hopefully this whole AI mess is behind us.

 

[nchvac]

Wow, this is a long post.
Are there any breeders here that ship buckeye eggs? If not, what hatchery or hatcheries sell the best quality buckeyes? And do they lay a large egg or medium? I am seeing different sizes, etc.

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

Check out this pointy egg, Buckeye on the left. Nice size for a pullet but I want that shape bred out of my Buckeyes. Just not sure exactly how to do that. The egg on the right was laid by a sex link cross, and has the "perfect" egg index of 74 (distorted a bit by the wide angle cell camera lens). Egg index is width divided by length times 100.

 

[stryker]

How did you get them so dark. Even in the dark with no flash, they are a nice brown.

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

True, great colour, great size......... lousy shape.

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

When breeding buckeyes, people really need to be patient. This breed is not a good breed for people that seek instant gratification. They take their time maturing out not only from 6 to 12 months but continue maturing out into well into their second year. Keeping the correct color is the most difficult aspect to maintaining the breed IMO. That bar of slate is a key breed requirement that was specifically mentioned and desired by the breed creator. The pic posted is a pic of a young cockerel at 5 or so months old that I took this year. He exhibits a thick bar; at the time the pic was taken he was still growing in the majority of his feathers and hadn't completely finished out the bottom section establishing the bar.

That's interesting, while I was worming my chickens today I had another peek at my Buckeye rooster's feathers. A number of weeks ago he looked as if he had terrible slate barring- it was just showing up in blotches here and there in the down. But today, his slate bars are very nice and prominent. I am a bit mystified how full grown feathers can magically add slate to themselves, but they did! He's not quite 8 months old.

 

[Blueface]

Check out this pointy egg, Buckeye on the left. Nice size for a pullet but I want that shape bred out of my Buckeyes. Just not sure exactly how to do that. The egg on the right was laid by a sex link cross, and has the "perfect" egg index of 74 (distorted a bit by the wide angle cell camera lens). Egg index is width divided by length times 100.

Here is an egg I pulled from one of my breeding pens. It is fairly representative of the majority of the eggs my hens lay.

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

Here is an egg I pulled from one of my breeding pens. It is fairly representative of the majority of the eggs my hens lay.

Nice. What I will be trying to breed towards!

 

[Minniechickmama]

I will say this much about my Buckeyes, once one starts laying, the rest aren't far behind. I started getting 1-2 eggs last week for a couple of days, then 3, and today there were 7. The weather was nice enough today that, despite this rotten winter cold, I went out and cleaned the outdoor run and tossed some straw in for them to scratch around in. I am pretty sure that most of the ones I am getting are from pullets from the size of them. Either one is eating some or they are scratching and knocking eggs around and breaking them in the nests, but I did find remains of broken eggs in the nests a couple of times this week. Today though with all the ones in there, I didn't see anything like that.
In about a week I might crank up the incubator, but with the cold blast we are expecting this weekend, that might set things back a little again. I find that light gets them laying, but if we get those 0-degree temps and colder wind blowing, it does make them a little more reluctant to lay quite as well as on 30-degree days and sunshine, and those days, I get a flood of eggs once everyone has hit their restart buttons for the season.

 

[stryker]

Fire your incubator up.