Hi all, I have not posted in a while, been too busy. Now we are having one of those rare, for us, days of continual rain! So stuck inside. I wanted to give an update on my Barred Rocks. The predator (never caught it) that killed most of my young cockerels and my Stukel male that I used to cross to the Good Shepard line, has come back a few times and tried to get in my pens along the outside perimeter but has been foiled each time by the wire barrier I put down, yeah!
I got another Stukel cockerel at the Nov. Tucson show, one of his "culls" that his friend who helps cull out birds brought up to the show to sell. He was still a pretty decent bird, with nice wide tail feathers. I put this one over the 6 Good Shepard X Stukel that I culled down to. I only got 7 fertile eggs out of them, out of about 130 set. Well stupid me, I never checked that bird for mites or treated him when he came here and that was the problem. He ended up dying from the mites. I feel so stupid, when am I going to learn not to make assumptions. Fortunately, all 7 fertile eggs hatched out a few days ago and all look fine. Maybe I'll get lucky. I went through all my chickens and treated them all for mites but did not see any sign of them on any other birds. But that male was completely covered in them.
I am down to one Good Shepard X Stukel cockerel and one Good Shepard X Duckworth cockerel from the original group that were killed by the predator. So I took the Good Shepard X Stukel cockerel and put him over the pullets. They are his "sisters" but being an outcross to begin with, I don't think that is an issue at all. He has only been in with them for a little over a week and eggs are just starting to be fertile. This breeding will be my main focus this year for the Barred Rocks, I think. The Stukel males are coming out with some nice tails this year. I wish I'd have bought a couple of the pure Stukel pullets at the show.
My Good Shepard X Duckworth cockerel has a poor tail. I'm not sure why I'm hanging onto him, except just for the genetic diversity. I don't think I will use him for breeding this year, maybe not at all. I have kept two of his "sisters" and have a Good Shepard line cockerel over them. So far fertility is excellent, 100%. The first of those, 9 eggs, is due to hatch 2/10.
I also put one of my older GS hens that I like in with an older GS cock. Now I only had 4 fertile eggs out of her, so a small sample size, but of those, 3 hatched, I think I helped 2 of them, and those 2 had really bent over toes so I culled them. Hmmmm....bent toes, needing help, and failed to develop, I think this is telling me something.
