- Thread starter
- #11
fancywyandottes23
Chirping
- Sep 7, 2022
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I get that. I think for now I will stick with 1 source and continue on from there. You are correct, after raising from various breeders, I have found a plethora of issues from all of them. I would hate to combine them all and introduce these flaws to each other.The hard fact of breeding.. very little of what hatches is worth keeping for breeding (1-10%). To me, combining so many lines means bringing together so many different faults and problems to try and work out under the desire of avoiding inbreeding most likely.. but sometimes snowballing issues instead of fixing them.
Every bird from the breeder in question I ended up hatching has feathered legs. You can't see them on their breeder pics; however, searching this site for the name of the breeder brings up that feathered feet are common on their chicks (Shamrock Farms, which I should have done before hand). That seems a little much for being random. I will unfortunately avoid from now on, as the person was a super nice individual, and a pleasure to interact with.Feather feet is a strong DQ for SLW. It should not be there and if it is, the breeder is not doing their selection work. High quality SLW should have very strong very sturdy feet with no toe-curl and no feathers.
I have several orders from Foley. To be honest, Foley's are the best birds out of the various breeders I have tried. It's really not even close.I started with SLW from Jerry Foley (foleyswaterfowl.com). I highly recommend getting some birds from him but with one huge caveat. His chickens carry a comb modifier that turns rose comb into a flat rose comb. If true rose comb is your goal, you will have to breed out the extra gene. He uses the extra comb modifier gene to produce exceptionally good hens. His roosters technically are docked a few points because the comb is flat rose. I have to point out that flat rose is significantly better in a cold climate than rose comb.
Also, the salt and pepper speckling on feathers is from a gene typically found in the partridge phenotype. That gene can be very difficult to eliminate. I've spent the last 5 years culling chickens that carry it. I got it from the Brown Leghorns that laid blue eggs which I crossed with SLW to move the oocyanin gene into a SLW background.
However, Foley's are the ones that I have the salt and pepper speckling on. About 12%-15% of the birds I received have it present. Not saying that all batches will have that. But his birds are the nicest I have experimented with by far, and I highly recommend them as well.