Ameraucana thread for posting pictures and discussing our birds

[Goose and Fig]

Quote:
Awww! Thanks for posting that. They all look girly so far!

Illia- that's just crazy!
So what color are the chicks? Have you gotten any of the dun or khaki looking ones in the buff xs wheatens?

 

[Illia]

Well some are lighter and some are darker, yes, but I don't think there's a difference in dun vs khaki as I'm sure the Buff dad is carrying khaki. (homozygous dun) - All of them are shades of yellowy, one is pure Buff looking, the others have a faint dot or two on the head, which is normal for this cross. If anything a few of these don't carry dun at all and one does. But I doubt that's the case.

Proof hatched out though that this isn't a fence jumper issue - Got a chick that came out obviously the offspring of my Am x Polish cockerel, as it is striped quite well. (influence of the patterning, columbian, or both genes) Clean shanks though.


The hatch is done though, got just the four, all feather shanked. I marked the best of them, feathered shanks excluded, (although it has the lightest feathering) and I'll see if I want to keep it for experimentation or not. Otherwise. . . Looks like I'll just keep hatching more.

 

[fowlman01]

Quote:
Any speculation as to what is in your birds is just really only that..speculation. You could go many breeding seasons and not see what the birds are really carrying. I had feathers show up on the shanks of a white leghorn pullet this year. I have a closed flock and trust me no birds are jumping fences here. In 30 years I have never seen feathers on the legs of these birds and here it is. These are not sparse feathers either, these are a row of feathers on each shank. I will try to find the pics that I took with my phone.

Walt

Here is the pic of my leghorn pullet. It finally arrived from my phone....don't know why it took so long.
This is from a closed flock that I have never seen a stub in during at least 30 years of breeding these. I culled the parents and the offspring...don't know how this happened, but all my pens have tops on them and other than the leg feathering, this was a good looking pullet.

To be a serious breeder you have to insure that there are no "mistakes". No male should be somewhere it should not be.

Walt

 

[Illia]

Quote:
Which is why I'm kinda going nuts about this issue. And the rogue male issue - Completely aware of that.

It's been taken care of 2 weeks ago.

I can't cull the parents though, the Buff male is all I have, so I'll just use him until I get a replacement somewhere down the road. I'm not the decider of when and who gets added to the flock, so, . . . Things move slowly around here.


Since I've crossed my Wheaten parent hens to Buffs, Wheatens, Marans, Polish, Araucanas, and even mutts and not gotten any leg feathering but from the Buff father, and I've never gotten any leg feathering from the Buff mother to him, I'm assuming he's the one at fault here, and likely the Wheatens are carrying something recessive that he also has - it's the only thing that makes sense.

 

[pips&peeps]

never had a buff throw stubs, ever......................

 

[Illia]

pips&peeps :

never had a buff throw stubs, ever......................

That's what I'm sayin'. My Buff pair from you - Natta. Now, the Buff male x Wheaten females from someone else - Feathers. Full on feathers.​

 

[pips&peeps]

Have you ever hatched anything from those girls before??? Maybe they are throwing it.

 

[Illia]

Yes. Read my previous post.

 

[pips&peeps]

too lazy to do that......

 

[fowlman01]

pips&peeps :

never had a buff throw stubs, ever......................

I never had a stub on these Leghorns either, but there you go.......feathers down the leg. When it is out of the blue like this, it is not the breeders fault. This is just another example of what can happen and that we don't really know what is in our birds.

In Illia's case I think the fence jumper still had some viable swimmers in the hen.......they can last a long time when you don't want them to last. It seems too drastic, especially since you have never seen it before. I only had one out of over 10,000 in the leghorns, so given that she had more than one, there was probably still some viable sperm left in the hen.

My point with all of this is ....don't believe you really know what genes may be carried in these chickens. It is only an educated guess on our part.

Walt​