A Guide to Practical Breeding A Guide to Practical Breeding First edition, 2012 | Page 10

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chickens and liz, after my wife Liz. Much later, I changed the spelling
from blackliz to blakliz. Removing the letter ―c― somehow sharpened the
name.
Thus, the blakliz started with a cross between a 7-time winner 5year old Richard Bates black and an equally aging blue face hen. That
was in 2001. The mating only produced 2 pullets and no stag. The health
of the brood cock started deteriorating after the first season, apparently,
due to the many wounds sustained in battle, so I was not able to breed it
again. The following year I acquired ponkan, the original brood cock that
eventually founded our ponkan bloodline. On the sidelines, ponkan was
then also bred to one of the black pullets of the brown red x blue face
mating. The following year a couple of the black offspring were then
bred back to ponkan in a back-to-father line breeding.
Despite being 3/4 of ponkan’s blood, there were still some black
pullets and brown red stags among the offspring. There were eight stags
in all. Five of the stags were dark red and only three were brown reds.
Since I was after the dark plumage, I gave away the reddish stags to
friends and relatives. I kept the three brown reds and single mated them
to their black sisters. I also discarded the reddish pullets.
Two of the brown red stags I bred were named ―sipsip‖ and
The two
―butsukoy‖ (Cebuano slang that roughly translates to smart or
winners proved that naughty). Butsukoy was called as such because every time I open
the bloodline can
the door leading to feed stock room, he immediately rushed in
kill quickly. The
ahead of me to partake of the feed inside. On the other hand, sipsip
made it a routine to fly to my shoulder, as if to please me to gain
loser showed that
some favor in return or to make sipsip, every time I emerged from
there might be
the stock room carrying the pale of feed. As result sipsip always got
some endurance
the first peck at the ration.
and gameness in
At the end of the breeding season I conditioned and fought
them too.
the three brown reds and fought them in a 3-cock derby despite
their tender age of just 13 months. This was in order to test the mettle of the brothers and in effect the bloodline I am trying to set.
Sipsip and butsukoy won handily and quickly. The unnamed one lost after almost 8 minutes despite being crippled in the opening buckles. I was
happy with what happened. The two winners proved that the bloodline
can kill quickly. The loser showed that there might be some endurance
and gameness in them too. As bull stag butsukoy won twice more and
lost his fourth fight. While sipsip also won two more fights and got retired as a test brood cock for our organic yards.
In 2004 I fought eight sons of sipsip, butsukoy and the unnamed
one as stags. Of the three sons of butsukoy only one won and two lost. A
son of the unnamed one won, another lost. All three of sipsip sons won.
The total was five wins three loses. Not bad, especially considering that
they were in-bred products of already in-bred brother-sister matings.