Rosabelle died today. She had been going downhill, but we thought she was making a recovery. Apparently, the other hens in with her started to attack her. They killed and ate her, so my oldest is rather sad today. Rosabelle was 11 years old, so she had been with us for a long time, as far as...
There was a fuss over the usage of the word birchen a while back, although I think (personally) that it is semantics. The American Poultry Association stated that using the word birchen to denote the color of the silver based marans was poor wording because birchen as a color in other breeds has...
I got the hackle color evened out quite a while ago, but I do end up with the wing bow edges still showing the darker autosomal red sometimes even now. They are separate, for sure.
I do indeed have recessive white in my flock, I don't actively discourage it so it pops up fairly regularly. It came in when I added the blue silver group in 2016, but I didn't get one to show up until 2018. It was a shocker at first, I thought it was a splash until she grew up to have no color...
you are right, it is a little terrifying. However, I have had a few neat looking males early on in the breeding project that had solidly straw colored wing bows.
Y'all are welcome to come visit, I will have to start the bigg culling of the roosters soon, and it will wrap up in November so I don't have as many mouths to feed when the snow gets deep and I have to actually feed them without access to forage... Until then there are a lot of boys available. I...
personality is one of the things I always breed for. Since I don't make a habit of handling them a lot until they pique my interest, they usually don't get aggressive with me. Any that catch my attention in that way, especially with my 3 kids, end up on the dinner plate, unless their good looks...
They are recessive white, so crossing with the black silvers doesn't cause as many problems as you might think. The biggest risk is not knowing the pattern going on under the white, but just be sure his other attributes match your program. I discovered the recessive whites sprung from the blue...
I don't cull the whites, my daughter thinks they are cool and out of my whole program whites are the only APA sanctioned color, really, so I keep the ones that I think look nice, shape wise.
Here's another blue silver dude, I like his color better than the other one, but he is younger by a couple of weeks so he's still got a ways o go in growth.
If i knew which was his dad, I would probably mark him. I have an idea, but I am a group breeder (My husband won't let me have tons of little breeder pens). He will fill out more for sure since the oldest he could be is 6 months. I get 2 big pens, one is for Marans and one is for my legbars. I...