Oh and the bird in my Avatar is the dad of the roo you are getting. Color is almost identical, but the dad has awesome tufts. Your roo has tiny tufts but he can pass the tufts gene on. Also one of the hens you are getting is tufted also. Again tiny tufts but tufts none the less.
I fell in love with the duckwing colors myself. This week I am hopefully hatching my first batch out of the duckwing pen. While my duckwings right now are really not a great representation of the color, I am excited about how much better they get each generation.
You are the first person who came to mind when I saw that bird. I'm confused about the color and pattern presentation, though. I really don't understand the duckwings very well, so that's no big surprise. Her tufts are awesome - I WANT A BIRD WITH PATTERNED TUFTS!!!
hey there again fellas. So, the Araucanas I was able to keep, and here's an update -
On the subject of duckwings, I've got a super pullet, clean faced, who I'm very excited about. She's nearly perfect, which is rare for BBR's. Then again, BBR's are rare. Her rear right now is too short for my liking but she's still young, still filling out.
It's hard to get good photos of her, I'll get some more later. She runs around a lot, but has a very nice burgundy/salmon hinted breast.
Her direct brother, who I want to ask you all - Does this look like a Silver or a very poor example of Gold? He feathered out first like a silver, then got a tiny bit of red in the wings, which isn't growing any at all. I'm thinking he's a silver, but, I'm not sure. Honestly never had a silver male before. Anyway I love him so far, he's a huge improvement from my first duckwing males, no white in the breast, but of course he's got his daddy's saddle so far. So far. ( If you remember, daddy Marango in my opinion has a terrible short flat saddle )
Same parentage (Marango x Silver Duckwing hen) here's "Josephine Jr." - Colored identically like Josephine, the patterned-tufted hen of mine, but not hers. This gal is bilaterally tufted, both tufts the same size, but kinda droopy. She's quite a spunky gal. What I don't get is how I got her. Unless she is indeed Josephine's but I doubt it, her color doesn't make sense coming out of a duckwing hen. She's not a brassyback (melanized duckwing) I know because Josephine proves that she's what I thought she was, half duckwing half black, and produces 50/50 when bred to a duckwing. But, how do I get a half duckwing half black out of two pure duckwings?
And, latest pics of parents.
Marango, he knows he's got the stuff!
My silver girl, no name yet (
)
And, yep, was able to so far keep my "blue cuckoo" male Cookies'n'Cream. I'm no longer doing Cuckoo, one of my many sad cut-backs, but I'm using him this spring to improve breast size/width as well as saddle length and rump roundness.
Comparison - Marango has his wing carried odd, but the photo shows the difference in width and hackle amount, which is directly linked to saddle length, too.
Later when I catch 'em I'll get some photos of Josephine's offspring. Boy can she throw some NICE silver duckwing females.
Totally unrelated, but I was looking at that blue Araucana hen's eggs again today - the one who lays that odd, unpleasant grey color - not blue, not green, but grey; something I have never seen before. I was trying to find it on the color chart and realized something kind of cool:
I have also never seen before an actual egg that is the color A1 on the color chart - sort of lilac purple. I have always wanted to see an egg that gorgeous color but it is so far from the egg shades that I have run into anywhere in real life that I sort of assumed it was a "legend" more than reality. BUT, that ugly egg color that my hen lays is not that far away from the A1 lilac color, it's absolutely closer than anything else that I have ever seen. It sure seems that the addition of the right blue egg color genes to that grey would result in something along A1 color line. It's certainly worth a good try!!!!
Lanae, do you have any hens or pullets out of my hen who are old enough to be laying - have you seen the egg color that her babies are producing? I'm quite curious.