I've trimmed down my marans cockerels alot too. down to my keeper, a backup and 1 more to go to a member of the PSO forum. All in all things are looking up! I have extra cockerels in the black orpintons and silver laced wyandottes yet to deal with, but they are rather pleasant breeds so no rush has been placed on that. That brings me to my main topic tonight, the blue/black orpingtons!
Today had a couple hours of sun so i brought them outside to do a bit of comparison and just a good through check up on all of the black and blue orpingtons. Unless i found a major defect or something unforgivable, I was intending to keep all the hen, I really needed more to decide on which cockerel to keep. They are a bit on the young side yet, only around 15 weeks, but they have come along way. His brother was on the smaller side and had a stray sprig also, so that leaves me with my winner.
The other difficult thing about trying to evaluate these birds at this time of the year is feather condition. I think the birds are getting a double whammy right now with changing from chick feathers to more adult feathers plus the weather change. So please don't hold their feathers against them! There were 3 black cockerels to choose from the 1 male had good overall potential but had carnation comb... not something i want to breed into my foundation flock as it is genetic(see Breeding discussion:combs in an earlier blog). My spring breeding flock (barring no strange incidents) for the blue/black/splash breeding group will consist of the black cockerel over 2 blue hens, 1 black hen, and 3 splash hens. Should give me some well rounded offspring of a nice range in colour!