D'uccle Thread

[sue25]

 

[Doc McCluckins]

Picked up three new pullets from a show over the weekend. I now have my very first porcelain. Love how full her beard and muff are. Looking forward to see how she matures.

 

[HenHouse4Life]

My cockerel and pullet. Both a little skittish but good birds.

 

[Stick Chicken]

Here is my Mille Fleur D'uccle I hatched last spring. It was a rough hatch and only two survived and the other one had terrible side sprigs, so I figure he's pretty lucky. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to have inherited his father's aggression.

Something strange I've noticed in d'uccles is that the female porcelains have larger combs than the tiny ones on the mille females.

 

[FluffyBottomBantams]

my two youngsters, Bonnie and Clyde

 

[Lorilyn Farms]

shes pretty

mine are mostly pets and i wounder what will pop out of my hatchery golden necks lol (i still don't know why some call them splash millies though)

I was at a genetics website in which the author kept calling his splash. Since he has more authority than I, I chose to write Spalsh instead of gold-necked, which is a pain in the neck to type. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

In breeding gold-necked, you do not want to breed them together, because the white will take over. Breeding two blue millies will result in gold-necked, blue millies and possibly a reg millie, depending on which genes get thrown. That's why most people keep reg, blue and gold-necked millies in the same pen, because you will not kill the color and all the chicks will be one of those original colors.

The white gold-necked you saw was probably the result of breeding gold to gold after a generation. The black dots were more likely to be the "Holes" in the white, the paint gene we are striving to find.

 

[Gagirly]

I took 2 of my d'uccles to a show yesterday (and some old english game bantams and call ducks). The golden neck pullet won Best of Variety and my almost 3 year old black hen won Best of Breed. I need to make sure I piss off the black hen at the next show. She was mad about having a bath, she fussed the whole way to the show and was puffed up and angry in the show cage. And she looked great ! My gray call duck drake won Best Bantam Duck in Show.

 

[Lorilyn Farms]

I am hopefully getting some MF D'uccles next weekend (eggs due to hatch the 28th!) and am fairly new to chickens so I need some guidance as far as what I am reading and looking at when I look at a D'uccle hen. I have been following this thread to see what I can learn about this breed. Sounds like they tend to be friendly/inquisitive and come in so many colors I can't count. But I hear also a lot of terminology about shape and form that I don't understand (for instance, what are "vulture hocks?") and would like to know if there is anywhere that I can view the various conditions and characteristics explained, like a morphology key for D'uccles. Are all D'uccles boot footed (that's called "cochin" maybe?) AND bearded? I found the breed standard but sort of need an illustrated key to really understand what it is talking about in some cases because I don't know the terminology for any breed and this one seems to have a lot going on. I just know that I LOVE them, having seen a pair of MF for sale at a local flea market a couple years ago or so. Thanks!

Vulture hocks- are those feathers that slant similar to the wing, but are attached to the leg. in these pictures, you can see the length of the vulture hocks are longer than the wing itself.



these are juvenile gold necks.

M

Cochin is a separate breed of chicken, very short and round, like a giant cottonball.
Most of the colors of d'uccle are variations of the same thing.
Mille Fleur - the colombian gene and mottled gene together. (no copies of blue)

Blue Mille Fleur is the same, only blue covers black, (one copy of Blue)



Gold Neck same, only black has been covered completely by white,(two copies of blue)

Pocelain is the same, only both reds and blacks have been covered by the Lavender gene, also known as self blue, different from the other blue.

Colombian gene- black accents on buff

Mottled gene, causes white ends on feathers, should be on most feathers.



babies should have fuzz on the two outer toes, have fuzzy cheeks.
Adults should have toe feathering on the two outer toes, have vulture hocks, beards, five point on their combs and very little to no wattles.

That should get you going....

 

[Lorilyn Farms]

Why are there to few colors of D'uccles in America, compared to Europe? I was messing around on the chicken genetic calculator, and it seems like crossing D'uccles, even just in the colors fairly commonly available (from, say, hatcheries) you could produce many new, cool colors that breed true within a few generations.

I am working on bringing the dun, chocolate, silver and cream genes to my d'uccles. And yes, it will take years of cross-breeding to be able to get back to standards. This is after a year of breeding for dun and lemon/silver. This is 1st Generation. First thing that leaves is patterning and half the foot feathers. What comes back in is full wattles.




Second Generation. Starting to get the pattern gene back in. Notice the full mottled gene has been introduced in the chocolate mottled. Mottling requires TWO genes to show. The other pattern gene is from the citron spangled hen, and the wild pattern,which I hate. The white/dun birds are carrying the silver and dun gene. In the white birds, the silver has two copies. If I can get the pattern correct and D'uccle standards correct, by breeding these double copies of silver to a correct millie fluer, I will get a citron millie fluer. This will take several generations for the bad genes to leave, and for the good genes to "fix". THEN, they may be available






This is the chocolate mottled. Since I only have one bird carrying the chocolate gene (a male that doesn't show, but comes from chocolate stock), that would make this a female, as they only need 1 choc gene to show. The parent crossbred Roo was obviously carrying the mottled gene and passed this as well. This bird should have appeared much later in my breeding, but sometimes you get lucky! Dun shows on both male and female with one gene.




I also have the dominant white gene in my chicken pool, but I don't like this gene because it produces blotchiness and does not breed true. It does not have a one gene or two gene thing going on, like silver or blue. It has a "degree" of inheritance. The more you mate dominant white, the lighter the bird becomes. Pure white birds are birds with many generations off dominant white. Also, the dominant white creates "holes" and you can allow the underlying colors the show thru in all its glory. This is the gene paint breeders use for their paint birds. This is a gene I want to eliminate, since it creates such havoc.

See the difference in the patterning?

 

[QuoVadis]

I thought you all would be interested to know how a Belgian told me D'uccle is pronounced.

My husband and I were at Disney (not really our thing, but his parents offered to pay for the vacation in full, so it was great), and as some of you may know, people from all over the world work there. At one restaurant we were waited on by a nice man whose name tag said he was from Antwerp, Belgium. After dinner my husband was talking to him about Belgian beers, and the whole time I was thinking of my chickens at home - D'uccles (my favorite breed) and dDanvers (from the waiter's hometown), and I ended up mentioning this to him in a joking way. He thought it was very funny, and he said they do have a chicken they are known for that has long feathers on it's cheeks. I don't know which one he meant because every Belgian chicken I know of has a beard! I asked him how to pronounce D'uccle, and after I spelled it for him he said it was pronounced "dickel" (rhymes with nickel). It sounds funny to my ears, but there you go, that's how it's pronounced, at least according to a native Belgian!