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Poultry breeders: Question regarding egg color

 
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Hi all,

I've done a search for my question but I'm not finding an answer. Most egg color discussions are about creating new and nifty colored eggs. I just want to get my birds back to brown! LOL.

I have a few Bielefelders... a breed that is supposed to lay dark brown eggs. Not as dark as Marans but darker than Speckled Sussex. Two of my hens lay the lighter Sussex color. The third lays a good brown egg.  I'd like to breed for this trait.  Obviously I would hatch brown eggs as time goes by.  

Regarding the males.. is it the kind of thing where I'd have to keep notes on my pairings and then watch the offspring's eggs?  Or -- this is really my question -- should I keep and breed roosters that came out of brown eggs as chicks?

Someone funny is going to say, "What else would they come out as?". LOL. Beat'cha to it.

Thanks for your time and help. I appreciate both.
Caroline
 
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Hi Caroline,
At the simplest level, you are on the right track. If you want to breed for a trait, you obviously pick parents who have those traits. If you hatch only the color/shade of egg you want, then you know the mother had that trait. If you only keep roosters that were hatched from that color egg, then you know the father has that trait. After a few generations I imagine you will start to see more consistency. I do not have any experience with record keeping or anything, so far my chickens have been breed for being alive :) In other words, can I hatch out replacements for my flock and keep them alive. I've only done it once, so I have not gotten into breeding for specific traits as of yet.
 
Caroline LaVin
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Ok, thanks for the breeding advice.

ANd I hear you about survivability. Survivability and health. Maybe that means resiliency.  My birds free range and that takes a little toughness ... maybe more than birds in pens. I think for this rare breed, that's how the parent stock is living.  

So resiliency i's top of my list. Egg color is way lower on the list, but since I just hatched some yesterday, I wanted to know if I should mark the baby roos from brown eggs. So thanks.  

It was a super weird hatch.  We are having a heat wave and drought here in the NW as in much of the country.  My incubator says the room should be between 70-80 degrees.  So we had to run the AC.  And even though the incubator was "ok" in maintaining internal humidity, I think the eggs felt the effect of the ambient dryness.  

Almost all the eggs were shrink-wrapped. Four of 10 chicks were lost because they couldn't get air (I presume). Most of them required full assisted hatching.  Here is a WONDERFUL article regarding that topic.  Some say don't help a chick out of an egg because it's weak.  I've not found this.  And if the issue was incubator / operator error, I want to save that chick.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/guide-to-assisted-hatching-for-all-poultry.72886/  if there's a similar article here on Permies, my apologies.

Not only were most of the chicks severely shrink-wrapped, half of them were UPSIDE DOWN!  Thankfully that article addresses this.  I have never seen this before in my limited experience of 5 incubations, but this high incidence makes me wonder if it is related to the dehydration in the eggs.

My take aways were that I need to fill the water reservoir higher at night even if it means the humidity will rise above the recommended limit. Otherwise it was below the low limit by morning.  The second takeaway was maybe I should find another place to incubate that won't require the AC / dehumidifier.  It's a challenge in this house, because the rest of the house is built into the hillside and is too cool (below 70 recommended by the incubator instructions).

Ok. Just throwing that info out there in case the info helps someone else. Thanks again, Matt.  

Best,
Caroline


 
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