Brahma Thread

[Tim63]

You would need to hatch thousands of chicks, for SEVERAL years, to determine if there really were any effect. 10 or 20 chicks is much too small a sample size. Even hatching 50-100 birds a year, I find the sex ratio varies WIDELY from year to year. It is random chance.


Tim

 

[big medicine]

Intellectually I think I know the answer to this question, but just to confirm. Vulture hocks are dominant gene, and if your males have them no matter how nice the rest of the bird is, and your hens don't have them, breeding from those birds is still a huge mistake yes?

Edit: While asking questions about said trait, at 8 weeks there's no chance of them molting out of it or anything right?

Actually vulture hocks is/are recessive, meaning it takes two copies(one from each parent), to show. A bird carrying one copy may look perfectly normal, but will still pass a copy to 50% of it's chicks. A bird with vulture hocks will pass a copy to 100% of it's chicks.

If your goal is to produce birds to meet the US standard, you are going the other direction by including any obvious vulture hocked birds in you breeding pens. It's the normal looking, one copy birds, that make it so much harder to get this out of your bloodline completely.

In my experience, once a bird shows vulture hocks , it's not going to get over it.

 

[BGMatt]

Ah. Ok. Thanks for the correction. I don't know why I thought it was dominant.

I typically wouldn't consider using birds that have them but this was supposed to be my start with the variety and all the males have them. There's a couple females that are correct.

Sounds like I was correct that the smart move would be to scrap these, try and find some nice pet homes or something and then if I decide I really want Darks, find a line with less issues with them and try again.

 

[NestingHillsSC]

Wife took some good pics. What yea thinking??

 

[brahmabreeder]

You would need to hatch thousands of chicks, for SEVERAL years, to determine if there really were any effect. 10 or 20 chicks is much too small a sample size. Even hatching 50-100 birds a year, I find the sex ratio varies WIDELY from year to year. It is random chance.


Tim

I figured I would do probably fifty without the ACV and fifty with it. Then the year after see if adding more will change the results. I realize the more the better but 1000 a year isn't going to happen unless I get EXTREMLY hungry for chicken

. With the whole varying widely form year to year doesn't really matter because the judges that they use know NOTHING about chickens so they wouldn't realize that. They would how ever realize the whole needing to hatch a bunch in order to get the ratio to where it should be.

 

[Helen in the Desert]

How many of you cull chicks? I have one that is smaller than the other ones, isn't as active, and doesn't seem to be as feathered in. It tends to act weak in there and not as strong. How many of you think culling would be the best option? I'm trying this year to have less poor quality chicks make it to adult hood. That way I don't waste my money raising garbage.

Been a while since this was posted, but I do cull out my small or weak chicks. The small healthy ones go to my nieghbor who raises them up and eats them, or keeps them as layers and the not so healthy ones go to my local wildlife rehab place as dinner for other critters. That way I don't end up with weak stock or selling small/weak stock to true chicken people

 

[brahmabreeder]

Well I decided half way through that day that I would cull it but when I went to check on the thing it was dead as door nail. Made my life easier I suppose.

 

[brahmabreeder]

Wife took some good pics. What yea thinking??

Your birds clearly need more foot/shank feathers. The middle toe should have feathers on the outside part. They are still young so I can't say much. Looks like they won't enough black in their tails/hackle feathers too.

 

[Cfmills]

I was wondering what the experts think of my young cockerel.He is only seven months and already a big as my full grown orpington rooster.

[/IMG]

 

[Cfmills]

Here is another pic.