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| Above are the pair of Self-Blue (Lavender) Cochins that I started with for this project. As you can see the type is not very good, but the color is certainly in the ballpark. Breeding them together would just result in more of the same with no improvement. I have no idea how old they are but I suspect they are at least a couple years old. I picked them up at a Swap last spring (2008). I bred the male to a Black Cochin female, and the female was mated to 3 different Black males, so that I would have some genetic diversity when I mate the f1 splits together. What was interesting is that I got both yellow skin pigment, and white (Black) skin pigment in the chicks, and it appears random as I got both from the same mating. Some had yellow bottomed feet and some had white bottomed feet. However, the yellow pigmented birds are much better in the type department. Below are the f1 split to Black Cochin results. I actually have 4 cockerels (2 yellow pigment and 2 white pigment), and 6 pullets (again with both pigments). The plan is to set up several stud matings, and try yellow pigment x yellow pigment, and white pigment x white pigment, and then mix it up with yellow x white etc. Since the f1 split to Blacks are 50% Self-Blue, I'll need to hatch around 100 of the f1 bred to f1 chicks, in order to get 25 Self-Blue chicks. But you can tell the Self-Blues at the time of hatch, so I won't need to keep the ones that aren't Self-Blue. The type on the f2 birds should be considerably better than the original birds (at least that's they way it should work). The f2 Self-Blues will be evaluated once mature and then bred back to Blacks to inject another dose of type. The f3 chicks will again all be black, but type should be greatly improved. Those f3 birds will be bred together and should produce Self-Blues, that begin to resemble good typed Cochins. Of course along the way I'll be paying attention to feather quality and Self-Bleu shade as much as possible. If the type is good enough with the f4 group of birds I may then breed Self-Blue x Self-Blue to work on the color more. Time will tell. | |
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Yellow legged f1 Self-Blue split to Black cockerel |
Same cockerel. |
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| White legged f1 Self-Blue split to Black (youngest group of splits that I have) | Yellow legged f1 Self-Blue split to Black |
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| Yellow legged f1 Self-Blue split to Black | Yellow legged f1 Self-Blue split to Black |
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| Yellow legged f1 Self-Blue split to Black | |