Welcome to my 2010 adventure! Such a futuristic sounding year isn’t it? It gives me hope for great advances & success as we move forward through our future history. I know that I’m still years away from having any kind of chickens that resemble a Gold Laced variety, but I’m still very hopeful that this year I’ll see something, a hint of the future to come.
It is now January and even though it’s early in the year, the 2nd generation has been grouped together and are getting on just fine. Mating has taken place in all pens and I’m just waiting for the pullets eggs to become more consistant and larger before I start collecting eggs for hatching. I learned a lot last year, and that really means I have a LONG WAY to go. Taking on a project like this and not really knowing what your doing is like trying to cook a 10 course gourmet meal even though you’ve never used a stove before! To continue my analogy, last year I learned how to turn the stove on and set the temperature, but I still have no real idea what ingredients to put in each dish, and that is very important!
Lets review the most important things I learned in 2008 & 2009
- Gold Lace Orpingtons can be created by using an existing Gold Laced Variety and crossing it with an Orpington chicken AND it may also be possible that they can be created by breeding a certain combination of Orpingtons together, without introducing an outside variety.
- Just as soon as I think I understand something well, I learn that I was wrong
- Gold Lace CAN be created on the eWh (wheaten) OR eb (brown) E Allele.
- I basically have very little idea of the current genetic composition of my breeding flock, and THAT makes everything just a little more difficult ( like not having labels on my cans of ingredients for my gourmet meal)
This year the goal is to hatch as MANY chicks as I can from the groups so that I have the most to choose from and can have a good number of hens from each family to go forward with next season/year. At the end of last year I got a great idea to try and expand my lines by criss-crossing all of my solid color Orpingtons, but as it turns out, they don’t all like eachother as much as I had hoped so I had to scratch that option for now. Which is fine, as a newbie, the less ingredients that go into the mix, the more success I’m likely to have. So I should stick to my previous plan as closely as possible, at least until I know better, or think I do. But I have Goldiflocks, that OH so handsome young rooster who is either a Blue OrpXGLW baby or a Blue OrpXBuff. Either way, he’s georgous to me and I want to use him to go forward. His personality is award winning, his face is so sweet, he’s a gentle rooster with his lady and mild tempered around other roosters. Hey may dilute my project, or enhance it, no one really knows. I originally thought he was Orp/GLW but the genetics pros I trust for an opinion believe he is not and is simply BlueXBuff Orp. Since the discovery/concept that Gold Lace Orps could possibly come from solid Orp on Orp, I figure it’s worth a try to include him as I go forward.
SO, here are the 3 NEW GLO Families for 2010. I had to move everyone around so that no one was mated with a related sibling, further diluting the potential outcomes, but also diversifying now while it’s easier.
Left - Goldiflocks & Blondie (GLOFam2 Pullet) Middle - GLOFam1 Cockerel & GLOFam2 Pullet
Right - GLOFam2 Cockerel & GLOFam1 Pullet
If you read about last year you know that fertility in one family and an amazing number of hatched cockerels in the other, is WHY our families this year are this small, I should probably call them “pairs” but family sounds better. You can also see they all look quite different from each other, even the siblings look different from eachother in tone & pattern. The next generation will have dozens of variations, some visible and some not. I’m working on a pedigree so that I can keep good track of everyone’s lineage.
The next hurdle is deciding how and WHO to select for the next breeding. There are MANY MANY options and I haven’t yet figured out how to make that selection, and time is ticking as I need to start incubating in the next 30 days. With only 3 pairs, I will have to hatch for weeks on end to get enough offspring to choose from. They will range in age with the largest gap around 5 or 6 weeks, which won’t be a problem when everyone gets to laying age. I have homes lined up for up to 200 discarded chicks so I have the freedom to choose how I want without restriction, which is really nice.
I’ll have to split my brooder in 3 sections to segregate the 3 families. In addition, I expect to see 2 types of chick down coloring and after hatching, I’d like to band them according to their chick down color. So within each of the 3 families will be 2 types of chicks. More important than comb type in this next generation is down & pattern. But comb type does matter, if you for instance happen to keep chicks that are homozygous for Rosecomb, you would NEVER be able to get a straight comb from them. I think I might just have to keep a balance of both types of down AND both types of combs. Once I have them selected they will grow up together and eventually take their parent’s place in the coops. I will continue on with the best looking of each group & sell off any extra hens or roosters I do not plan to use. I wish I could speculate on what happens after THAT, but I have NO EARTHLY idea! I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I get to it.
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