I woke this morning to a cacophony of cheeps from upstairs - our last batch of Scots Grey eggs for the year have hatched and we have 12 chicks from 12 eggs.
That’s a major success as we usually only get two live chicks from 6 to 10 eggs.
I put it down to the fact that we’ve been buying in stock from all over the UK, and have now been able to breed birds from six, widely separate sources. (There are only a couple of hundred breeding Scots Greys left, so the flocks tend to be in-bred.)
We’re using a cockerel from a Western Isles line with hens from an Inverurie flock and an English flock, plus an Inverurie cockerel (different flock to the hens) with hens from Western Isles lines and a Welsh flock. We also have a young cockerel and a hen from a second English flock, and they’ll be used from next year.
We’re hoping that with birds from six separate flocks that I’ll be able to breed some strong stock and then start selecting for productivity in a couple of years time. Certainly this first hatching bodes well.
What’s interesting is the variation in sizes - birds from the Western Isles lines are medium sized, one of the Inverurie flocks has small birds while the other has large birds.
Of the English flocks, one has medium-sized birds and one has slightly smaller birds, while the Welsh flock produces large birds like the Inverurie flock. That aside, the birds look very similar and “right” for Scots Greys.
As for eggs, the smaller Inverurie birds lay chalk white eggs but all the others are slightly tinted.
Now we just have to wait and see how the offspring that result from merging the different lines turn out.
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