Belgian Watermaal

[KristenG]

My hubby won't let me put them outside with the flock. SO, he bought them this cage. I'd like to rehome a rooster for space. the second rooster has a better temperament, but the first one is bigger and broader.

Lisa your cage set up looks awesome! I think you made the correct choice in keeping the darker male.

 

[lisa69]

Lisa your cage set up looks awesome! I think you made the correct choice in keeping the darker male.

The more orange male has a broader back and breast. He is agressive and from what I’m told has too many horns on her comb. What kind of nesting box do they need ? I like the cage on rollers , so they can see outside and get some Sun.

 

[CastielH]

After seeing how my hens choice babies matured I'm tweaking my breeding plans for the season, originally I was going to cross Derby with one of my white males to correct her bad feet and increase body width but after seeing that she's already passing her feet on I think I'm going to keep her as my backup since I'm keeping a few of her already hatched chicks that have good feet.

Pipsqueak produced some nicely typed chicks but three of hers ended up not having crests, the female will be staying for eggs but the boys will be moving on. Current plan is to still cross Pipsqueak with Terran to try to get some more blacks and improve on his body type as well as get a trifed comb on more of my birds.

I have a nice black pullet growing out but I don't know how much hatching I'm going to do this year since I want to focus on conditioning birds for Congress in January once I do one more round of hatching. Lot's of plans, we'll see how many happen! I also entered a few of the birds in the Pipsnchicks online show so I'm interested to see how they do. Picture of the two broody raised babies enjoying their new enclosed aviary for attention. Salad on the left is the only hatless baby that will be staying since she's a broody raised pullet.

How has everybody else's hatching season been going? Any cool projects you're working on? Anyone shown yet this year?

 

[CastielH]

Looking back it's interesting how much my plans changed. I'm going to be setting up breeding pens today and tomorrow and the pairings I've ended up coming up with and even the birds I planned to keep are so different from what I said before. My focus this year is on increasing the number of blacks I have as well as trying to get some better combs on my whites. I didn't end up taking any birds to congress this year but I did get to see some amazing birds and I feel like I learned a lot. I'll do a post later with pictures and stuff for pairings but I'm looking at hatching from 6 different pairings this year.

I've split my birds into different color families to track their maternal ancestry and just as a way of breaking the number of birds I have down. I'll be pair mating this year and my pairing plans (in the order I plan to set them, 2 pairs at a time)
Chucky x Owlet - 50% white 50% black, breeding to hopefully produce blacks with better combs.
Terran x Derby - 50% white 50% black, trying to recreate Owlet so I'll only be keeping blacks.

Then I'll switch the males and give it a few weeks to assure paternity.
Terran x Derby - 75% black and 25% white, possible chance for mottled since I'm pretty sure Terran carries for it. I'll only be keeping black birds and will be test breeding from them next year to isolate some black birds that don't carry white.
Chucky x Derby - 100% white. Looking to improve on Derby's comb and feet while doubling up on some nice type.

Both of those girls will get out of the breeding pen for the year at that point assuming I get a good number of blacks from Terran and Owlet. The last set of pens will be my homebred white d'Anvers male Bobcat who is Pipsqueak's son and will be used to try and increase the length of spikes on my birds combs.
Bobcat x Peaches - 100% white d'Anvers. Looking to get longer spikes on combs while keeping type. Only going to keep pullets.
Bobcat x Pipsqueak - 100% white, I believe Pipsqueak is het for crest so assuming 50% crested and 50% a'Anvers, hoping to get longer spikes with a crest. Most likely going to only keep pullets unless I get a crested cockerel with a comb as nice as Bobcats to replace him with.

We'll see how well this works out but it's the plan so far! I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has. What are your plans for the breeding season? Below are pictures of Bobcat through the hardware cloth because he refuses to pose if I get too close because he has to show off by kicking mulch around. That is 100% staining on his neck because I watched him stick his face into a bowl of mash and it's been too cold to try and wash it out.

 

[CastielH]

Mother nature decided to keep throwing curveballs at me so I didn't end up getting my pens set up until today but I'll be putting birds in them tonight and will finally get to start collecting eggs in a few weeks for this season!

 

[CastielH]

After many setbacks my pens are officially set up with birds in them! No pictures since it's super rainy and overcast today and the light in there is terrible but the first two pairings are set up. In pen 1 we have Terran and Derby and in pen 2 we have Chucky and Owlet. I'll give it a few weeks to try and assure paternity (one benefit to rosecomb impacting rooster sperm vitality is they don't take as long to clear out sperm from my research) and then start collecting eggs.