Most of us growers treat males like a problem to get rid of. Spot one, yank it, move on.
Rocky of RockyMountainHigh719 runs whole rooms of them. On purpose.
“We’ve done full runs of just males just to see what males we have… we ran over 70 males, full flower, full run, just pollen everywhere.”
That’s not a typo: 70+ males, flowered out completely, pollen everywhere, because a male you haven’t flowered is a male you don’t actually know.
That run is how he found the stud behind his Malibu Pure Kush I-95 project:
“It showed us what each male actually had potential-wise for structure. And that’s how we were able to find our stud male for that project that was just absolutely fire and had trichomes like a female…You don’t really know what they’re going to put out until you use it.”
So when Rocky hunts males, he’s looking for specific traits:
- Vigor. A strong, aggressive grower. Weak males make weak projects.
- Structure. “If it’s a really lanky male, it’s probably going to put out really lanky offspring.” Structure carries.
- Smell. “Good males smell like a female plant.” The stinky, strong-scented ones are the ones to watch.
- Trichomes in flower. The big one. “Good males will throw trichomes in flower.” It’s rare — “if you grow 100 males, you may only have one, or you may not have any” — but a frosty male is a very good sign.
- Flower cluster tightness. How tight the male’s clusters are tracks with the bud structure it throws in offspring. Airy male, airy kids.
None of it is a guarantee and he’s the first to say so. “You never know what you’re going to get until you actually do it… it’s the same with human breeding and dog breeding.”
But flowering the whole tent turns a guessing game into an actual hunt.
When Rocky’s in a real breeding cycle, that stud room is the project. He’s not running flower or hash production alongside it. Males earn their own space for a reason.
The takeaway: the male is half your genetics and most people judge it on a glance. Flower them out. Let them show you what they’ve actually got.
Part of our breeder hunting series. Reply and tell us what you want us to ask next.
— Farmer Freeman