Brahma Thread

[big medicine]

Now theres some under color for you.

 

[Tim63]

Teamroper and I were discussing if chick down color in my birds might indicate sex. I have never paid much attention to down color in my lights. They are easy to sex just about as soon as they start to feather. I wing-band my chicks and have recorded down color on my records for this years hatch-light,med or dark. It will be interesting to see if down color is a reliable indicator of sex. It seems like the lighter ones have "usually" been males. I realize this info may just be relavent to my particular lines. many lines I have seen seem to be uniformly light.
BigM, have you noticed any relation of down color to sex in Lights? Anyone else?

Tim

 

[big medicine]

It's been quite a while since I've raised any straight lights, I really can't remember making any correlation between down color and sex. But what you say about the males tending to be lighter makes sense, as the good females tend to have a deeper undercolor than the males, of the same breeding, as adults. You sexing your youngsters by how their shoulders feather in ?

 

[Tim63]

No, with my light bantams the females feather in quickly in the saddle area with solid white feathers. The males are slower to feather in there and the male saddle feathers have black centers, even the first set . It does not work with the buffs.

 

[samouw]

Quote:
What a beautiful too! Makes me want to add a buff Brahma to my little group of RIR and BR.

 

[BLaBauve]

I thought I'd share a cute picture of my Silver Laced Brahma. . . a few days old.

 

[bantiebabe1200]

Quote:
What a cutie!!!

Thanks for sharing this!

 

[sableboi]

Tim - Susan told me typically with the large Darks the darker ones are hens and the lighter ones are roos - Todate this has been pretty acurate. This morning I had two Dark hatch - a lighter one and a dark one, we will have to see how they turn out.

 

[Tim63]

Quote:
Good to know Matt. Had eight large Darks hatch this past weekend, a couple of them were very light, the rest were dark. Maybe, that might be something that holds true in the bantam and large. Of course it will require accurate record keeping to verify it absolutely.

 

[SarahIrl]

I picked up five week old chicks today, three Gold and two Grey. I am thinking the Greys are one roo, one pullet, that's fine, but the Golds? One seems noticably lighter in colour than the other two. I got a quick snap of them in the brooder before putting them under a broody at nightfall. She took them in, no bother to her. Now, are Golds autosexing? The much lighter one has no wing feathers protruding from the shafts yet, either, yet the other two do. I am thinking it is just a day or two behind, but looks to be the same size.

I also saw some GORGEOUS blue laced gold pencilled (by this I mean gold/buff coloured father with blue lines) hens today, exactly what I am hoping to achieve with my Blue/Grey hens and Gold rooster. I am so hatching from these all summer!! I'll keep the best ones, and try to cover back to a Grey/Blue rooster if one of the Grey chicks turns out to be a boy after all.

Here's the only pic I got of the brooder:

Edit: the lighter one is top left
Will follow up with more once they are happy outside and a bit more feathered in.