BLUE LACED RED WYANDOTTE BREEDING QUESTION

[cjschickens]

I HAVE A BLUE LACED RED WYANDOTTE ROOSTER AND 3 HENS -- NOW THE GENETICS ON THESE BIRDS ARE TRICKY AND I NEED A EXPERT TO TELL ME WHAT MY 4 BIRDS REALLY ARE -- SPLASH, BLUE/BLACK, ARE ANY OF THEM TRUE ? THIER PICTURES ARE HERE FOR YOU TO OBSERVE, AND TELL ME IF ANY OF THESE PULLETS ARE WORTH HAVING. THE ROOSTERIS THE BIG GUY IN THE 2ND PICTURE . THE BLUE/ BLACK IS THE 1ST ONE. THE 3RD AND 4TH ARE SIDE AND FRONT PIC. OF PULLET 1. (IS SHE A SPLASH?) 5TH AND 6TH IS SIDE AND FRONT PIC. OF PULLET 2. I DON,T THINK ANY OF THESE PULLETS HAVE GOOD LACING -- WHAT'S YOU OPINION ? A FRIEND GAVE THEM TO US , AND I FEEL THAT SHE WAS DUMPING ALL HER BAD BIRDS ON US ! HELP US OUT ! THANKS IN ADVANCE !! IS ANYBODY GONNA HELP ?

 

[cjschickens]

No bumping or cross posting, please.

edited by staff

 

[NYREDS]

Edited to remove unhelpful comment.

edited by staff

 

[AinaWGSD]

It might help if you turned OFF your caps lock so that people could more easily read your posts! Not only is all caps harder to read, it's considered just plain rude.

As to your question, to me it looks like you have 3 splash laced birds (including the rooster) and one blue laced bird. From these pictures, I do not see any black laced birds. So breeding these birds will only give you splash or blue, and more splashes than blues (since splash bred to splash will only produce more splash and splash bred to blue will give you 50/50 splash and blue).

How old are these birds? Yes, the lacing doesn't look very good, but most laced birds go through an ugly adolescence where the lacing looks really off. Sometimes these badly laced birds will molt out their juvenile feathers and grow in adult plumage with very nice lacing. The birds in the first two pictures look a little older, although they still look young enough they could still be in their "teenage uglies," and the birds in the last 4 pictures still haven't got all of their head feathers in yet and could look like totally different birds when the adult plumage comes in. As for them being "true" or not, they all have rose combs and yellow legs so there's nothing to make me think they aren't purebred wyandottes. Whether or not they're well bred wyandottes is another matter. I don't know enough about the breed personally, and these birds are too young to easily evaluate type anyway, to give an informed opinion on how good they may be.

Whether or not they're worth having depends entirely on your reasons for having them. I have a single comb silver laced wyandotte with very poor lacing. She's ugly as sin if you're judging her by the breed standard, and totally useless to a breeding program that aims to breed to the standard. But she lays extra large brown eggs almost every day and since my main reason for having chickens is the eggs she's definitely worth having. She's even worth having enough to put up with her being a tad too rough with the other hens at times (she's a bit aggressive with them and will pull feathers if there isn't enough room for them to get away). Same thing with whether or not they're worth breeding, it all depends on the specific goals of your breeding program. It also helps to wait until they are much more mature before making any final decisions on breeding with a slower maturing breed such as wyandottes. Most serious wyandotte breeders only cull for very obvious faults (such as the wrong number of toes, a "sport" color, or wrong comb type) very early on and then wait and see how they look at several months old (usually point of lay, sometimes later) before making their final culls for the breeding pen. Blue laced red is still a project color and serious breeders are still working out all the kinks. Some are focusing more on one aspect than others so what may be a useless bird in one breeder's breeding program could still be just what a different breeder is looking for.

 

[cjschickens]

I am sorry for the things I did wrong with this post. They were not intentional. My hubby used the computer last, and likes to type in all caps, and I didn't think to unlock them -- sorry !