Chonky Boy (?) the Lavender Orpington Chick

[YellowRoseFarm]

Six weeks old! I got a stomach bug and missed the 5-week photos, but here you go. Poor Chonk has the weirdest feathers coming in. I've never seen them like this. They look painful.

As it stands, I suspect I have 3 cocks and 1 pullet, Lola Belle.

 

[K0k0shka]

Six weeks old! I got a stomach bug and missed the 5-week photos, but here you go. Poor Chonk has the weirdest feathers coming in. I've never seen them like this. They look painful.

As it stands, I suspect I have 3 cocks and 1 pullet, Lola Belle.

Yep, Lola Belle looks to be the only female. Poor ugly ducklings... My lavenders had really ugly feathers when they were young, too. The one I kept, who's an adult now, has filled out and looks nice if you don't look too closely, but she still has bad feathers here and there.

 

[YellowRoseFarm]

9-week update. Here's Stormy, Steve, and Chonky Boy. Lola Belle is very clearly a pullet and she even snuggles next to one of my EEs on the roosting bars at night while these 3 dudes hang out on the opposite end. So, now I have 3 cockerels I must rehome as Stormy and Steve challenge each other for seniority. Chonk is still a little delayed - poor guy is the Steve Buscemi of chickens. He's often found roosting under the roosting bars on the edge of the poop board, which explains the poop down his back.

 

[K0k0shka]

Wow, that's an impressive amount of shredding there! They almost look frizzled This variety is messed up... Don't take that as a proxy for their health though - your chicks look great! It's just genetics. Something that shouldn't be propagated, but people like the color, so... the shredding lives on.

 

[YellowRoseFarm]

These dudes are the poster boys for Meyer Hatchery's LO stock. I bought them in bad shape at the feed store, which I don't blame them for necessarily. On the other hand, the shredding...if anyone is thinking of getting their chicks from Meyer, this is what you get.

 

[K0k0shka]

These dudes are the poster boys for Meyer Hatchery's LO stock. I bought them in bad shape at the feed store, which I don't blame them for necessarily. On the other hand, the shredding...if anyone is thinking of getting their chicks from Meyer, this is what you get.

I got my LO's from a fancy breeder who swore up and down that her chickens didn't have any shredding because she had "bred it out" of her lines. Didn't let me go look at them myself, citing biohazard reasons (which I understand to some extent, but also... I want to know what I'm buying...) Well, her fancy chickens ended up having a lot of shredding, too. I only kept one, she's over a year old now and in addition to the shredding, she has these odd feathers that seem to grow backwards. The tip of the feather looks like a shaft instead of a tip. You can see it in the second photo - that's not a loose feather stuck between the others facing the wrong way, that's just how it's growing.... So yeah, even from a "good" source, lavenders still suck. I only got them because she was the only local Orpington breeder and that was the only color she had in stock when my hen went broody, I didn't actually want lavenders... thought I'd give them a try, and sure enough, they were disappointing. I won't be getting any more (from any source).

 

[Auntiejessi3]

I got my LO's from a fancy breeder who swore up and down that her chickens didn't have any shredding because she had "bred it out" of her lines. Didn't let me go look at them myself, citing biohazard reasons (which I understand to some extent, but also... I want to know what I'm buying...) Well, her fancy chickens ended up having a lot of shredding, too. I only kept one, she's over a year old now and in addition to the shredding, she has these odd feathers that seem to grow backwards. The tip of the feather looks like a shaft instead of a tip. You can see it in the second photo - that's not a loose feather stuck between the others facing the wrong way, that's just how it's growing.... So yeah, even from a "good" source, lavenders still suck. I only got them because she was the only local Orpington breeder and that was the only color she had in stock when my hen went broody, I didn't actually want lavenders... thought I'd give them a try, and sure enough, they were disappointing. I won't be getting any more (from any source).

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I'll have to a get a pic of the 1 I kept from the eggs I hatched from Carolina Rare Chicks, she's pretty although she's only 8 weeks old. I tagged you in a post a couple weeks ago where I posted pics of all 3 of them