INBRED/ LINE BRED STUD
We have three main lines; our Cinnamon line, Light Green Violet line & Spangle line.
It is this
technique which enables us to breed many good birds in depth and thus be
in the position to be able to let large numbers of quality birds go to the
various auctions almost every season.
The inbreeding tend to concentrate the good genes and makes the birds more prepotent for quality. The mistake many breeders make, is that they disregard these inbred birds on their appearance and undoubtedly abandon any future policy of inbreeding. After all, it doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice (.....or breeds winners)!
BREEDING
In
those early days and to a lesser extent now, we “run” our cocks. What this
means is that we treat the cock as a “stud” and move him over 2 or 3 hens at
a time. This enables us to get a large number of chicks out of a superior
specimen , in one season.
In 1994, we purchased at Auction a Spangle Light Green cock for $2,150.00 from the estate of the late Les Lloyd. At the time this was an enormous amount of money for one bird, so to maximise our outlay we decided to run this guy with a couple of hens. This bird was bred in England by Jim Moffat, from a Mannes bird he purchased from Jo Mannes crossed to one of his hens. Les had brought this bird over in one of the shipments.
Rod
“ran” this cock over 10 hens in 1 season and bred 73 chicks from him that
year (our record). Our spangle family, needless to say, is based largely on this
bird.
This spangle would gladly sit still for Rod, knowing that his hand meant another rendezvous with another girl.
But
by the end of the year, this poor bird had lost all desire and would just look
at his new mistress with apathy.
The other advantage of this method, is that it gives you a large number of related birds to choose from when selecting inbred pairs for breeding.
