Homozygous Update

It is 2024 and we are updating where we are on having a homozygous flock. We currently have 7 pens of birds. All have homozygous roosters in them. Currently, three of the pens are homozygous. The other pens contain tested as well as untested birds we are trying to get tested and placed for this season..

The current set up of our pens is we have a blue rooster over splash girls, a Black rooster over black hens and a Splash we are pairing with blues. One pen is a blue rooster over older untested females as well as tested birds that are heterozygous. Another pen is a blue rooster over my older untested females that we will be finding retirement homes for soon. The remaining two pens are a splash and a blue over untested pullets from last season. We are working our way through getting them all tested and into breeding pens for this year. Then we have a few roosters we need to get tested. We will have some of these males available.

When you order from us, you are going to get eggs from all of the pens so you get genetic diversity. The eggs are clearly marked as to what pen they came out of. It is recommended that you hatch the eggs in different mesh bags so you can know which birds will eventually need to be tested. While we are working towards a completely homozygous flock, we also want to keep genetic diversity, so will continue to have a pen, possibly two, that are nice birds but heterozygous. 

While I know that everyone wants to start out with all homozygous bird.. it is more important to have as much genetic diversity as possible in this breed. I will not ship eggs just from the homozygous pens. I have had Silverudds close to 7 years now, and probably have the largest first import flock in the US. Back when I got these birds, there were a lot of problems in the breed because of the small gene pool. I knew about it and was prepared to deal with it, but lucked out and have not had any issues. That said, I don't want to go back to those days. So when I ship eggs, I want to ship as much genetic diversity as I can from my flock.