What Color Eggs Will I Get and which cockerel to keep?

[cajun41887]

Hello fellow chicken lovers! We’ve had a flock of chickens for almost 3 years now and have raised some chicks from our own hens and Roos each year. I’m hoping some of u can offer some suggestions and insight on what I should do. We have 3 Roos currently. One is a black australorp who has sired most of our chicks thus the other 2 Roos are his sons. All are respectful of people including my children. We have 2 separate flocks in 2 coops but they hang out together during the day when their paths cross while free ranging our 6 acres. The 2 brothers have recently begun fighting as young cockerels tend to do. My question is how do I decide which to keep of the 2 brothers? Neither are purebred. Both share the Australorp as their sire and one has a Sicilian buttercup as his mama (they are white egg layers and we don’t sell those eggs as they are white and smaller and my customers want only brown and larger) the other cockerel likely has a Partridge Rock or Delaware/White rock cross as his mama. His mama is definitely a brown egg layer either way. My question is if I opt to keep the buttercup son, and he only breeds with brown egg layers, will he sire brown egg layers most of the time since he carries 50% chance of being a brown egg layer and he’d only breed brown egg laying hens? He’s the smaller of the 2 Roos, but he’s gentler with the girls. The other is HUGE and had been the low man on the pole until recently when he decided to duke it out with the other roo. Both seem to be gentle with the girls when the other roo isn’t around, but as soon as they see each other, they are grabbing girls left and right and some of my hens are really torn up from being treaded so heavily. Damn teenage roosters and having to show off. My goal is to have brown egg layers who lay regularly and have nice dispositions. We have Buff orpingtons, ISA Browns, Dark and Buff Brahmas and Australorps the chosen roo would be breeding with. The aggressive breeding should stop once one of them is gone I would imagine. We have lots of predators and these 2 have proven they are savvy and survivors as they are the only 2 cockerels to have survived a year with the coyotes and fox attacks and they’ve kept most of the hens safe. Thoughts, suggestions, comments and everything else welcomed. I have hens who want to sit on eggs, so I’m trying to decide what to do.

 

[junebuggena]

You'll get brown eggs, no matter the combinations. But the genes that control the brown coating are complicated, so there is no way to predict the exact shade of brown.

 

[cajun41887]

Thank you so much. Which cockerel would you keep?

 

[junebuggena]

I'm partial to barring, so I'd pick the Delaware/Australorp cross. You'll get some really cool looking offspring out of him.