Shaun
455 posts
Mar 12, 2007
1:17 AM
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Yes, but smaller numbers of good ones were produced than if I had had established breeders to start with. You either pay good money for a small number of breeding pairs - that's if you can find anyone willing to part with them - or you try and find your own good breeders from what you've got.
At the moment, you simply have a melting pot of genes. So long as the family is good to start with, you'll probably kick out only a few good birds, with many which will be no more than average, plus some rubbish which will either rolldown or have such bad faults they'll have be culled as you progress.
Whilst ideally we'd all like to see birds in the air before breeding from them, some don't have that luxury. They don't want to risk losing their initial stock, preferring to fly out the offspring and evaluate those. You then have a choice of forming foundation stock birds with the best of those flyers, or continuing to breed from the best of the original birds, ie, the ones which gave you your best flyers (using the remaining not-so-good breeders as fosters). However, using a combination of both the decent original breeders together with the best of those flown out, is also an option. I'm doing that right now.
Until you've found your best breeders, be prepared for a lot of frustration in flying out all those youngsters which you need to evaluate. There will be plenty of dross among them.
Shaun
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