California - Northern

[Flowers of Abba]

We are doing an early prediction based on behavior... Roo. We shall see!

 

[chiqita]

On olive eggers:

The only way to get a repeatable olive egger is to get ones that have an egg that is a little darker then you would like it and breed them back to a blue egg rooster that has 2 blue genes. 75% of the resulting hens would be olive eggers. But only 50% would have the double blue gene needed to keep all of the offspring true.

Have to test the genetics to know. That should be available at a reasonable ( about 20 per bird) soonish. You can sex a chicken now for 15.

This uncertinty that comes with the blue egg gene being dominant is why ee's can lay different egg colours an araucanas and amerecaunas must lay a blue egg to be considered a pure breed chicken.

 

[chiqita]

And gratz for a successful fair or mom!!

 

[debs_flock]

When they have the dried on hatch gunk, I only wash it off if it's on their bottom. You need to keep things "flowing". If it's on their head or body, I just leave it and it will flake off like skin from a sunburn. The exception is if it's causing restricted movement, such as wing stuck to body or something, then I'll also wash it off.

I've always loved the coloration of golden/reddish head on a dark chick. I brought a HQ chick home from fair like that, it's probably a boy, I should probably look, it's certainly old enough. They had a frail chick they wanted put down, since I was the "chicken" person at fair the task fell to me. I couldn't bring myself to do it, since it appeared to me it was the type of chick that would be cured with Poly-vi-sol. Two drops later and it was running around with the chicks I had hatched and brought home. So now I have one HQ in the mix that I didn't even know what it was. It will be interesting to see (or dinner), but at least it got a chance at some life.

Fair is over and it has taken me a day and a half to catch up.
Sorry for the bobcat losses and missing Anakin.
Cute chicks hatching - I missed mine hatching but only lost 1 in my absence.
We ended up with 137 4-H birds and I brought in some to bring the total up to 59 birds in open.
DD got the champion showmanship buckle, was named as reserve champion in master showmanship but they messed up the totals and she really finished 3rd. She is still pleased since she finished 5th in 2011. Her bbs orp bantam won best bantam. She got SCCL and reserve SCCL, RCCL, her quail, blrw hen and dutch got blues. The basques and her OEGB got reds. Not to bad, she is not happy about her photography results - first year she hasn't had them go to state - but 2 of 3 baked goods and her crocheting went.

I made the final moves today, getting everyone back where they belong. Our partridge rock bantam was the last to go since his girl had just hatched out chicks. I put him in with mom and babies this afternoon. He went over, got a quick drink and started in with the food call and was pointing out food for the chicks within 5 minutes! What a man!!!

Congratulations to your DD on all her wins. Did she take a photo with all her prizes?

 

[PetRock]

Practical Poultry Magazine posted a link to this blue egg gene article on Facebook this morning. I haven't read it yet but thought some of you might be interested.

http://phys.org/news/2013-08-unscrambling-genetics-chicken-blue-egg.html

 

[ChickNmamma]

Quote: Yes, that is mostly right - except the brown egg has about 8? genes that can make it brown - so you could get some form of green if you can keep the blue egg gene. I think it would be very rare to get back to only blue, some AMs are still struggling to get rid the lines of the brown overlay from their distant ancestors. If they loose the blue in F1 then you only get the brown. Like chiqita said, if you cross back to the AM (AND if he carries 2 blue egg genes) you can get birds with two blue and lots of brown and have a 75% chance of green/olive eggs. However, be very careful about claiming the egg color makes the AM breed - the SOP does not state what color egg a bird must lay for the AMs and it is not judged - and there are a few breeders who get upset if you make that claim

Your F1 should lay olive (if they aren't boys

). The F2 will follow the same information above - the Isbar will strengthen the blue egg gene and the Marans the darkness in the browns.

Fair is over and it has taken me a day and a half to catch up.
Sorry for the bobcat losses and missing Anakin.
Cute chicks hatching - I missed mine hatching but only lost 1 in my absence.
We ended up with 137 4-H birds and I brought in some to bring the total up to 59 birds in open.
DD got the champion showmanship buckle, was named as reserve champion in master showmanship but they messed up the totals and she really finished 3rd. She is still pleased since she finished 5th in 2011. Her bbs orp bantam won best bantam. She got SCCL and reserve SCCL, RCCL, her quail, blrw hen and dutch got blues. The basques and her OEGB got reds. Not to bad, she is not happy about her photography results - first year she hasn't had them go to state - but 2 of 3 baked goods and her crocheting went.

I made the final moves today, getting everyone back where they belong. Our partridge rock bantam was the last to go since his girl had just hatched out chicks. I put him in with mom and babies this afternoon. He went over, got a quick drink and started in with the food call and was pointing out food for the chicks within 5 minutes! What a man!!!

Congratulations on the great fair! And congratulations to DD on the champion and reserve champion - even if it would have been 3rd, that is still a very good job. Good job on the Best Bantam and ribbons too. It sounds like she did very well!

Some roosters are amazing with babies - some are stupid. I like the amazing ones too.

 

[chiqita]

Getting myself in trouble with ams again! I thought it was. Thank god its just on this thread.

I love those chickens but I didn't look into breeding them because I'm a whimp. The fcbm guys are bad enough!

 

[ChickNmamma]

Getting myself in trouble with ams again! I thought it was. Thank god its just on this thread.

I love those chickens but I didn't look into breeding them because I'm a whimp. The fcbm guys are bad enough!

You can breed them if you want to.. just don't tell anybody!

 

[ronott1]

because they were both a lot younger than the rest of the flock, they are rather low on the pecking order, and when the other girls went broody the first time & there was a lot of commotion over nesting boxes and etc., both of my Amelias stopped laying, for over a month i think (i should have kept better records) -- and when they started again, their eggs were a lot lighter. now one is still laying quite regularly, the other is the one that just hatched a bunch of chicks, so no eggs. will definitely be watching to see if/when they molt & what the eggs look like after that...

and, for what it's worth, my CL's blue eggs also got a lot lighter from her first eggs in january -- so perhaps that's coming from the CL genetics, not the pene?

Ron, what are your Amelia eggs looking like these days?

I think my Amelia pullets are about to molt. The egg color has gotten a lot lighter this week.

These are from last week. I have two Marans X EE(From Chiqita, Whom does not breed AMs

) Those are bigger and smoother. I love the one on the far right with the crazy speckles. That is an Amelia egg.

 

[Ali707]

We are doing an early prediction based on behavior... Roo. We shall see!

I had a Polish hatch out that I thought for sure was going to be a Roo because of it's behavior. Used to run right up to everyone and everything, chest bump some others. Nope! It turned out to be a girl. Pretty one too!

Edited to add: She must be a little bit special needs though because someone picks out the center of her crest. Maybe that is why she acted the way she did. Just a little challenged.