I think, possibly, that this might be a case of the owner not feeling equal to the challenges of the breed. If they raise chickens as pets, then getting a breed with a known shortened lifespan is just inviting heartbreak, you know? It’s not the chicken’s fault, and it doesn’t mean a broiler...
Oh, well then! Yes, he should have ??? for feather-color genetics, and 2 blue alleles for egg-color genetics, meaning his daughters would be ???-colored and lay 100% blue/green eggs! ^x^
To my (limited) understanding, the lack of standardized coloration in Whiting True Blues is meant to be a feature, not a bug, as they were initially bred to provide feathers for Mr. Whiting’s fly fishing lures, and having the widest possible color variety of long, high-quality hackle feathers...
Our favs are besties with our Speckled Sussex (just after each other,) but that might be more a function of them being at the bottom of the totem pole than anything else.
(The favs are dramatic goofballs whose first reaction to most things is to run away screaming- fortunately they have each...
Have confirmed that the light brown eggs are being laid by Blackberry- I heard the “clonk” just before she left the nest box. (Every day I add a little extra straw to the nests, and every day they kick it out again. So eggs go “clonk.”)
Here’s pics of Blackberry and May making judgmental faces...
Got 3 eggs today, 2 of which I can recognize as from our girls who were already laying, and the third is probably (but not certainly) from Blackberry (our MMM.)
It looks like she’s also laying light tan:
Newest, probably-Blackberry egg on the top, nearest Blackberry in the background. The...
Well, since other people are posting pics now and the eggs are pretty dark, it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong in one or more ways. Like, maybe either MMMs aren’t all F1 crosses, or That Thing I Read Somewhere was less than accurate. I littered that post with question marks for a reason, and...
Sooo, I’ve been thinking. MMMs are an F1 sex-link hybrid between BC Marans and Barred Rock, right? But I heard somewhere that the really dark-dark brown egg genes are mostly recessive.
So, you generally wouldn’t see those genes expressed in a first generation hybrid, even if your girls were...
With the caveat that I’ve only had them for a little over 3 months- mine have been very enthusiastic to get up in my lap (though not as insistent about it as my Wyandotte, Sophie, who will zero in on a lap or even an outstretched arm as soon as it becomes available, and thereafter refuse to...
Yeah, the stripey pattern I was worried about only seems to show up on the ends of her wing feathers, and it was difficult to get photos of it at all. It’s just 2 or 3 alternating darker and lighter bands on the end of each primary feather, and it’s pretty faint. Honestly, she was looking...
Awesome, cool. One more we don’t have to worry about rehoming! She’s a sweetheart, too, once she warms up to you. :)
I’m really glad you guys are here to ask. I didn’t know what to make of that stripey pattern- they only seem to show on the ends of her flight feathers, not even on her...
Junie here is supposed to be a Sapphire Gem pullet. Both descriptions are now in question.
S/he had no head spot as a chick, but was also one of the darkest chicks in the bin so it might just not have been very visible. Further, the hatchery had multiple mix-ups shipping grey chicks this year...
Yeah- and Duck Duck Go lets you not use it, too. Like, without having to download a browser extension. Which is the best I’m coming up with now, other than just appending “-AI” in every search.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-get-rid-of-ai-overviews-in-google-search-4-easy-ways/
^ Best I...
Looking at the screenshot, it looks like that’s coming from the AI overview. I usually tell people to shut that thing off; no human wrote that and it doesn’t actually understand any of the information it gathers. They work by averaging out the answers that come up in search, and about 30% of the...
… Well, they all have slate legs, I think, but I don’t know enough about chicken colors yet to know if they’re off-model in any other way.
The top boy looks to have a pretty patchy beard, too, but I don’t know if that’s disqualifying, or if he has a pea comb or a modified pea comb… but it’s...
Aaaand there it goes for the third time.
I’ma just show you the photo I got of my girlies.
Top left to bottom right: Elanore, Cream Legbar; May, Craem Lagber; Alvin, AmerIcana; and, photobombing and mostly cropped, Isa, our ISA brown.