June Message from the President
Summer Greetings from the Dominique Club of America
Many of you are probably in the midst of raising this year’s birds. Some of you are still setting eggs and looking for those best replacement or show birds. No matter if you’re finished or not, there are a few things that you might want to contemplate.
The Dominique hen is a dual purpose chicken (eggs/meat) and yet she can lay for most of the year. If your birds have been in production since late January, February or March, they have used any stored body calcium for egg shells long ago. Even with the best of available laying feed it is still good to provide extra calcium to the hens as oyster shell or in some other source.
If you are selecting hens for egg laying abilities, the summer and fall are the times to look over your hens and see which ones are still laying eggs and have not gone into early moult. The longer a hen waits to moult, the longer she lays in the season. So, selection for egg production is not just about size of the egg as you also need to make sure that the hen lays most of the year.
Odd shaped eggs, rough textured egg shells, thin egg shells and other unusual things should be avoided. You might want all of your eggs to be one shade of brown, but that is a hard thing to breed for specifically in Dominiques. Egg size can vary and nobody likes little eggs. Just be sure that when you cull for egg size that you do not cull your best type birds. You can always slowly increase egg size over the generations by breeding hens that lay smaller eggs with males that are selected from the larger hatching eggs.
Older hens will usually lay fewer eggs. If you have a top notch hen, it will be worth keeping her as a breeder with fewer eggs. You really should only compare hens of similar ages in egg production.
The final thing that has been researched and proven is that adult weight of breeders increase with selection for larger eggs. Check the standard and weigh a few of your birds to be sure that your goal does not get you out of range with standard weights.
Thanks for visiting the club’s web site.
Eddie
Many of you are probably in the midst of raising this year’s birds. Some of you are still setting eggs and looking for those best replacement or show birds. No matter if you’re finished or not, there are a few things that you might want to contemplate.
The Dominique hen is a dual purpose chicken (eggs/meat) and yet she can lay for most of the year. If your birds have been in production since late January, February or March, they have used any stored body calcium for egg shells long ago. Even with the best of available laying feed it is still good to provide extra calcium to the hens as oyster shell or in some other source.
If you are selecting hens for egg laying abilities, the summer and fall are the times to look over your hens and see which ones are still laying eggs and have not gone into early moult. The longer a hen waits to moult, the longer she lays in the season. So, selection for egg production is not just about size of the egg as you also need to make sure that the hen lays most of the year.
Odd shaped eggs, rough textured egg shells, thin egg shells and other unusual things should be avoided. You might want all of your eggs to be one shade of brown, but that is a hard thing to breed for specifically in Dominiques. Egg size can vary and nobody likes little eggs. Just be sure that when you cull for egg size that you do not cull your best type birds. You can always slowly increase egg size over the generations by breeding hens that lay smaller eggs with males that are selected from the larger hatching eggs.
Older hens will usually lay fewer eggs. If you have a top notch hen, it will be worth keeping her as a breeder with fewer eggs. You really should only compare hens of similar ages in egg production.
The final thing that has been researched and proven is that adult weight of breeders increase with selection for larger eggs. Check the standard and weigh a few of your birds to be sure that your goal does not get you out of range with standard weights.
Thanks for visiting the club’s web site.
Eddie
posted by Dominique Club of America | 8:19 PM
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