First, I have heard so many good things about Toni and her style. That being said it seems very strange to have the white come out like that. I have hatched maybe 30 Cemani Lite chicks. I call them that because they are not the pure black that you can get in Indonesia. Mine are similar to Greenfire. I have never seen the white like that, not even close. Also saying the white is a good thing makes no sense to me. We should be breeding to a specific goal. These chickens are really quite common in Indonesia and you see them in every bird market. They also are a wild bird that the people hunt so I can't imagine there would be a lack of genetic diversity within the black coloring.
Truly I believe we need to find a real expert in the field of genetics. Is this a real breed? What really is the standard ?
is this an aberration that sometimes produces pure black and sometimes not? For me and just for me I would be very upset if I paid so much money for a pure black chicken and got the white like that.
birds from there no, here in the USA, there is only 2-3 people seriously breeding them so, of course yes genetic diversity is a critical issue.
anyone who has any time in breeding knows how important this is.
there is no standard for the breed here since there virtually are none in the US to amount to anything, but all the breed is is a chicken with fibro melanistic genes in it. The all black ones are called cemani. Svart honas, just a cemani from Europe.... You can take a black leg horn, add 2 doses of fibro to it and you'd never know what it really was... Yes, it is a breed , but it's a gene that makes it. 1 copy fibro, lighter skin, 2 copies dark skin, 2 copies and gypsy face added pure jet black.
only having 1 copy does not make it NOT the breed... and again , any black bird can hatch with white in it as chicks. It will molt away and be solid black as it matures, cemani or not. Most all extended black chicks hatch looking like a penguin but change to black with age. My d'anver, phoenix, ohiki, and sumatras all hatch this way, so why is it such a shocker that some cemani can hatch that way. Fibro melanisim has nothing to do with feather color. Solid white birds can be fibro too as can any other color.
and again, the price was at $50 by the seller.. they cant help what
ebay buyers ran it up too... if you didn't want to pay $1400 for eggs, don't bid that. Buy birds instead.... then again look at greenfire's they have yearling pairs for sell for yall at $5000 pr... yes that's 3 zeros not a type o.
so even if the others did turn out to be duds, these people are WAY ahead of the game of price compared to that ,with the other chicks that hatched.
Toni Marie is a genetics expert, more so than anyone on this forum. She has based the majority of her adult life doing this stuff. So I'd take her advice....
