Help me understand the difference between BEARDS and MUFFS?

lisahaschickens

Songster
10 Years
Feb 25, 2009
1,018
25
161
Vancouver, WA
Newbie here!

I generally hear about beards and muffs together in the same sentence. I know what bearded/muffed birds look like in general, but I have tried to look for an exact definition of each, and have come up emptyhanded.

Can someone please tell me exactly what is a beard and what is a muff and what is the difference? Can there be a beard without a muff and vice versa? I want to not sound ignorant when I talk about my EEs on my blog as they grow up. I know they are developing beards/muffs, but I would like to sound knowledgeable.

Thanks!
 
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What she said, think of it like this, muffs are on the side of the fce, like ear muffs for chickens LOL...the beard is under the chin, essentially, it is actually three tufts of feathers.
 
Beards and muffs aren't tufts. Tufts grow out of a piece of fleshy skin called an peduncle. Muffs and beards grow directly out of the facial skin.

Think of muffs as lambchop-style sideburns and beards as, well, beards.

A single gene causes beards & muffs. It is incompletely dominant, so I suppose in a heterozygous bird you might see mostly muffs or mostly beard, but it would usually be poor quality of both.
 
ok, so this is one of my EE girls... she is 9.5 weeks old and her beard/muffs are really starting to show. However, it all looks like one thing to me... a continuous beard-like thing that goes from one side of the face, under the chin, and around to the other side of the face... so I am still unclear how it is two different things... pics of just one or the other (beard OR muffs) would be greatly helpful for my understanding...

23722_triumphant_return_062.jpg


Thanks to everyone for the feedback so far
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