BR23 Blog

This is a follow up on the previous 'Dark factors' thread.

I stated that I bred one cobalt opaline-cinnamon hen, two pied cobalt cinnamons, two mauve cinnamons, a sky blue cinnamon and an olive cinnamon from the 'mauve cinnamon' pairs this year. It turns out I made a mistake, one of the mauve cinnamons is actually a cobalt cinnamon.

When it comes to quality the sky blue cinnamon is probably the best from the entire bunch. My luck that it's the one without a dark factor. The first ones are moulting, so I'm looking forward on how they will turn out.

Talking about quality, in the same flight, a cobalt cinnamon chick is feathering up really nicely in the box. It promises to be better then the sky blue cinnamon. There's also a mauve(?) cinnamon, but that one is too young to judge. Their mum is my best cobalt cinnamon hen. She was paired to one of my initial cocks (°06) - her grand father. But I'm almost sure that he's not the father of these chicks (he certainly was the dad of the first round chick). The father is probably her cobalt cinnamon brother. This means he's the father of all the 'mauve cinnamon'-line chicks.

I'm not a fan of brother x sister matings. I will split the pair after this round.
I want to try the cobalt cinnamon hen to a light green cock from last year's outcross. Their mothers are sisters and I think the outcross blood brings what she lacks. This is no longer a colour pair, but a pair for quality.

I'll keep the cock in the flight with its (original) mate. This is not one of my main pairs, not even an auxiliary pair for the winter season. But they bred me the nice sky blue cinnamon so they will stay in the outside flight and left breed as long as they want.

As things look now, the hens out of this 'mauve cinnamon' pair may get used on main cocks in the 2011 spring/summer season. This would mean the the 'mauve cinnamon' would fade into the main line. But this would also mean that the dark factor would become a feature in the main line, so I can always resurrect a new 'mauve cinnamon' line.