It also has helped me to think of them as animals when breeding
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The male has it’s own flower structure that will show you what it will impart to it’s progeny. Just because they’re not buds doesn’t mean it’s not the same thing. If anything, it’s easier to tell on a male once you’ve seen a few.
If you choose a male that’s frosty but barely has any balls, the females from his progeny are likely going to be same way. Frosty, tiny or airy buds. If you choose a less frosty male but he has balls all over the place, likely will have some less frosty, dense, offspring.
So when looking for a male, I tend to go in this order:
You want frost if it’s available.
You want the best flower structure possible for your goal
Now to check stem rub to compare or notes later
And here’s where structure might come into play in choosing
Once you know the line, you’ll tend to do this process in reverse.
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All great info and much appreciated. Like anything I just usually jump in with both feet. With this being just the start of my endeavor i want to do it right and will likely stopping by with more questions. Have a pretty good understanding but always seem to need to fill in the blanks. 
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thank you this helped me a lot …kinda feel dumb for never equating the male flower size and density to bud size lol seems like common sense now lol much appreciated homie
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I copied this from Breedbay, it’s kinda long, so I put it in a pdf.
Selecting Males By BCO.pdf (76.2 KB)
He says the same thing I hear every other respected breeder say, an exceptional male is more important, and harder to find than a great female.
I thought it was a great read. 
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so much gold in that pdf 
thank you!
And 100% this. Before I dropped the FLC line, I went through 22 seeds before I found ONE male that might have fit the bill for my project. Found at least 5 girls worth keeping in that process.
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Humboldt Seed Organization?
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Humboldt Seed Org
i think
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What’s Humbolt seed org? Not sure what you were referring to. Welcome back to overgrow!
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several folks ask what is HSO…it is humboldt seed organization
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Riot sold a Blue Dream S1. I have reversed it a handful of times and only get a few seeds each attempt.
Rebel grown has a Blue Dream BX seed line: Blue Dream - Rebel Grown
I love Blue Dream. You either like it or you don’t (like every clone-only), but well grown Blue Dream is an elite smoke.
As for selecting males, I generally don’t or only make negative selection against weak plants. If I am using a regular seed line, I use as many males as possible to drop pollen, because (unless you are able to do progeny tests for each possible male) there isn’t good selection strength for female flower quality among males. However, if the line is inbred to begin with and consistently puts out females with the traits you are looking to pass into the pollen, their brothers should be good to go.
The best way to select a pollen-donor in a breeding scheme is to not use genetic males, rather breed using female plants only. You have higher selection strength for how the female plants look among both parents that way.
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Strongly agree with this. Good point about the ibl and consistency with the progeny.
Has anyone else tried this yet? This is probably the coolest color experiment I’ve heard of yet. I need to take cuttings of something and try this ASAP
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Find a male that passes the same traits down to everything, disregard its quality, call it a candybar name, and now you are bulletproof.
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I have to work on my candy-bar name. I have about fifty seedlings popping their heads up, already have a male with balls enough for the bunch. We will see if he makes the cut.
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Good thread. Very informative and much of what I know from my younger days. I have to agree with what many have said here…Primarily those who emphasize structure and node length. Everything counts, but observing seedling to sex stage growth structure, when choosing G13xNL for Blueberry and then again choosing Fig Widow for G13 proved to be my best measure. I sent out the Blueberry GNL to many growers and I don’t remember a complaint. Many raved about it. Mind you the GNL seed Blazer(for those who know who I’m referring to) sent me 3, so didn’t have many to choose from, but it’s still possible to use something decent if there’s only a few to select. Gotta agree w that stem rub too. I was doing that as my Colombian Gold and Chocolate Hazes were vegging. I’ll add light stress. I’ll say it again my FW male decided to grow and continue to flower it’s pollen under incandescent bathroom lighting and that to me was my BIG tell tale to dust an entire crop and hope it was right. I’ll say that selection was bang on. Again didn’t hear complaints of being weak or hermies. Maybe I just have ‘good luck’ too 🤷
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I’d pick him too. I’ve been watching your work with the Black Rose. He’s man pretty
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Started up day 5. Crazy.
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