With My Pet Chickens and Myer's Hatchery already sold out for the season at $47 and $49 each per day old pullet plus shipping and someone told me that Greenfarm is now asking $125 each for day old pullets with the release of the Rees line. I would think that the demand for Cream Legbars is a lot higher than $10-$15 each for pullets.
Your cockerel is defiantly cream but he has way too much positive white on the tail feathers. APA allows one inch of positive white on one feather for solid colored breeds. multiple feathers with white or more than one inch of white is a fault. barred breed have more allowance but I haven't seen what these are, but your cockerel is going to make it really hard to get back to black and white barred tails in the offspring since he has a lot of tail feathers that are neatly completely white. He also has smokers yellow ear lobes. I am seeing some light yellow lobes in my current grow out group. I may have to cull them all and hatch more from new pairing with my current breeders before moving to a new generation. I will wait and see how my white ear lobed cream cockerel develops. The yellow lobed one is by far the one cream cockerel with the best type though (I am taking him to the Fancy Feathers Poultry Show in a week)
Yes I see good type on some of the pullets. the ones with the fuller tails and rounded breast that extend past the beak on the hen are what you are looking for. If you are going to focus on breed standard, you might consider pairing off 2-3 of your best hens to hatch from (i.e. the cream colored one like Lonnyandrinda suggested, and start to weed out the faults in the flock). You can breed a different 2-3 next year if you feel that you need to test mate more, but the rule of thumb is if you want to make improvements to only breed the top 10% of anything that you grow out.
So $10-$15 for a pullets? maybe, but I would think the $25 each for pullets that DCChickens asks would be a better starting point if you are culling hens to where you are only breeding the 10% that are the best examples of the breed.
Your cockerel is defiantly cream but he has way too much positive white on the tail feathers. APA allows one inch of positive white on one feather for solid colored breeds. multiple feathers with white or more than one inch of white is a fault. barred breed have more allowance but I haven't seen what these are, but your cockerel is going to make it really hard to get back to black and white barred tails in the offspring since he has a lot of tail feathers that are neatly completely white. He also has smokers yellow ear lobes. I am seeing some light yellow lobes in my current grow out group. I may have to cull them all and hatch more from new pairing with my current breeders before moving to a new generation. I will wait and see how my white ear lobed cream cockerel develops. The yellow lobed one is by far the one cream cockerel with the best type though (I am taking him to the Fancy Feathers Poultry Show in a week)
Yes I see good type on some of the pullets. the ones with the fuller tails and rounded breast that extend past the beak on the hen are what you are looking for. If you are going to focus on breed standard, you might consider pairing off 2-3 of your best hens to hatch from (i.e. the cream colored one like Lonnyandrinda suggested, and start to weed out the faults in the flock). You can breed a different 2-3 next year if you feel that you need to test mate more, but the rule of thumb is if you want to make improvements to only breed the top 10% of anything that you grow out.
So $10-$15 for a pullets? maybe, but I would think the $25 each for pullets that DCChickens asks would be a better starting point if you are culling hens to where you are only breeding the 10% that are the best examples of the breed.
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