Chantecler Thread!

[popsicle]

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Baby chick can hatch with green legs. Even if Frere Wilfrid doesn't tallk about the hicks legs, the breeders usally don't reproduce those babies even if when the chick gets older and the legs change color to yellow.....on that point I don't totally agree for this reason....the legs change colors so in my opinions could stay in the breeding programm but it is another subject I guess...

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I got some White Chanteclers this spring from Cackle and noticed that some had/have a greenish tinge to their feet, one had Easter-Egger-like green legs. This was the only reference to green legs I could find while searching this thread. Near as I can tell (they're 8-weeks old) in my batch only cockerels have the green feet, and it is fading. Should the green-footed cockerels be marked for the freezer now, while I can still tell which ones they are, or should I wait?

I'm overall very happy with these chicks, and will probably order more later this summer.

For reference, here is an image of the chick with the most extreme green legs. The others just had a green tinge on their toes. This chick also looked very different from the other Chantecler chicks, enough so that I thought it was a different breed that must have come with my assortment. He was smaller, lighter, whiter, and walked more like a turkey poult. Now he looks just like the others.



ETA: by "whiter" I mean the down was less yellow.

 

[Chantecler7]

I would not worry too much about the leg color. It is complicated. The chick probably has the genes that would produce slate legs (willow when combined with the yellow epidermis). But if the chick is also carrying the barring gene (as in Barred Rocks for example), the dark pigment will not express in adulthood. The barring gene prevents it. If it turns out to be a male, I would not use it as a breeder, but if it is a female, I would. You have to know leg/shank color genetics to understand my reasoning.

 

[Folly's place]

Thanks! Mary

 

[insanity]

Today I set 6 EE x Lavender Am eggs under my Buff Chantecler. She is insisting on hatching so I might as well. I guess we will see if she is a good mama.

 

[Cody Renz]

I currently have 8 Part. Chanteclers, I've noticed that all but one, have dark to black heads, could this be from the dark Cornish in their breeding? and should it be culled?

 

[CanuckBock]

Tara has beautiful facilities and a cooperative husband and the means to finish the job. She has a great start if she chooses to finish what is started. The temptation is always to keep too many different projects going. I have found myself in that place too.

Mike (and others...); if you'd like to see some of our facilities with complimentary critters and supporting items, I started up a post using the My Coop function on April 22nd.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/higgins-rat-ranch-conservation-farm

I have a ways to go to get all of it up there, but got a good start on the go none the less. I'm laughing because I am getting tired out just posting words and photos...can't imagine starting over from chicken scratch again.

Correction...Rick is as involved in the poultry hobby as much as I am involved in his vintage vehicle hobby. We just tend to wear different hats in each of the two hobbies our family has. The blue hat constructs the buildings and does the vehicle restorations while the pink hat tries to help (paperwork & hunting out supplies)...and when the vehicle is driveable, I sit as head swamper in the passenger seat--waving pretty good. Then when the animal building is completed...my job is to FILL them up...Bwa ha ha--what a TEAM, eh. One digs, one fills? We got 90+ years of experience between the two of us to fall back on.

Honestly, Rick prefers the bigger birds (geese, shels, & turkeys--he had pigeons as a child) and I voted for all the ducks (trucks & ducks) and the ruminants (sheep, goats, llamas). We both like the chickens, pheasants, & swans and them dogs of ours...the whole rotten reason we have the poultry--Australian Cattle Dogs as in STOCK dogs!

Standard breed Chantelcers in Partridge variety

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Ask a child this question as the child will often SEE with clear eyes and a true heart...no baggage to screw them up...ask the child!

You have TWO crayons...one is RED, one is Black...for the chest of each of the birds above...Choose one crayon that best sums up the colour of the bird's chest.

Child will use BLACK for exhibition MALE...child will use RED for exhibition FEMALE. It is that simple...black birds for male exhibition, red birds for female exhibition. Sums up double mating principles in PARTRIDGE variety of the Chantecler.

I agree, there are many that do not believe in double mating...their loss, my gain!

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Quote:

Pardon my up front bluntness, but why in the world would you cull based on feather colour expression? Be like people that cull solely based on comb types--get a cushion comb quickly, sure but is that all there is to a Chantecler--its comb? I surely hope not!

Have you been able to judge "vigour & disease resistance, fertility & production, temperament, and finally longevity" already? I need at least a two year old to even begin to judge the first five, potentially the sixth and well at 2 years of age, longevity to at least then is a given to 24 months.

These traits should all come BEFORE colour pattern...at least in my books they do.

We keep only the top three percent back...but it takes time for culling criterion to show up. I am not going to toss a bird based on comb type when by that fact alone, some of the most awesome characteristics can get "tossed like a baby with the bathwater."


Dark to black heads...I expect this is feathers & not facial skin, beak, eye colourations in the head...will go with feathers are dark then and hope I am guessing correctly. Photos always work nicely to clarify!


Dark Cornish have melanotic (Ml) and although the White Chant was used to save Dr. Wilkinson's Partridge (Albertans) from extinction in more recent times...the original influx of Dark Cornish was so long ago (the first initial cross by Bro Wilfrid in 1908), I would find it hard to believe someone let Ml slip thru so many generations of first the White and then the Partridge variety in the Chants. I mean Ml/Ml in a hen results in much more eumelanin expression than just the HEAD being dark--sure dom white and rec white and the white enhancers seem to work better on a black based bird than red but Ml would be expected to have been bred out decades ago. All said and done unless some "person" crossed Dark Cornish recently into the line of Parts? No accounting for integrity sometimes...they know not what they do!

Expect these "dark to black heads" to be cockerel-breeders. Hackle Black in combination with NO Pg as in Pencilling pattern = male exhibition Partridge variety.

You will NOT show these Chants if females but use them to breed with up exhibition males (clean black chests). These "should be" potential exhibition if they are males.

What age are the 7 and do you know genders yet (pointy feathers in the saddle = male since cushion combs in Chants should be small and hard to differentiate male from female re: head gear)?

Are you breeding for show females or show males, neither or both?

Standard Partridge Chanteclers

Cockerel breeder female on left -BLACK / Pullet breeder female (show female) on right -RED



Hackle Black in Chantecler female

Oreille is expressing 'hackle black' - see the beetle green sheen we want to see in the black (eumelanin)?

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Grant Brereton discusses in his publication 21st Century Poultry Breeding Hackle Black on page 59. Talks about it being a requirement in Columbian varieties (Buff Columbian, Light and Buff Sussex) and Exhibition Partridge males.

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21st Century Poultry Breeding, By Grant Brereton - page 109:

Go ahead and cull the dark feathered ones...but you do this at your own peril if your objective is ever MALE Exhibition Chants of the Partridge variety. The UK has LOST black chested Standard Partridge males for a reason...once the hackle black is gone...it is GONE and you will see the inability to produce decently marked males for exhibition. NO BLACK clean chests!


DOUBLE MATING...

Standard Chantecler Males
Pullet Breeder on Left -RED / Cockerel Breeder on Right -BLACK​

In center, extreme examples of males - pullet breeder left (red) / cockerel breeder right (black)

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I prefer more black (lacing) in the chest of a pullet breeder partridge Chant male than the one on the left above. I find the females too weak in the black pigments then.

Here is an extreme on the other end of the colour wheel of misfortunes...spin spin spinny to the DARK SIDE!

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This is male Partridge Chantecler "Soot." He is SO dark he oozes black...his narrow lacing on his hackle are suppose to be a "shade of medium rich, brilliant red," ah but it is like this cherry black mahogany. My word he is DARK! Too dark and what an awful cushion comb and dangle wattles he has! Wonder if he huffs and puffs too?

Here are some of his kids...


Sing a song of sixpence​

Again, my opinion, colourations are TOO DARK--almost a purple cast to these ones! Nice combs and wattles for juveniles but...too dark to be proper Partridge variety. Keep in mind, the hens chosen help a lot with comb/wattle expression if the male used needs a little improvement in that department! Balance your breeding pens (if he don't have it, she should and vice versa) and you up the anti to make progeny closer to your take on perfection.


Always a balancing act to get just right...can you say Goldilocks was SO right?

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This is the famous Bucky D...D for Diamonds in the saddle and hackle...above his chest shows he is a pullet breeder but lookit his saddle and hackle below...good diamonds...so whilst DIAMONDS are important in a nice top side of an exhibition male, Bucky D is a pullet breeder for exhibition females giving them sharp concise clean diamonds in their hackle AND decent pencillings.

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Nice thing about Bucky D...he can also produce males with better coloured chests along with the good diamonds in his sons for more pullet-breeders...this is Darrel below.

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Darrel has the same nice diamonds in his saddle/hackle like his father and Darrel also has a bit more black in his chest...he is another in the line to go forward on making more pullets for exhibition and more males (sons) to keep up on the breeders required to do more of the same.

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Hate Darrel's cushion comb and his wattles are a tad too large, but "Hey NOW!"...his sire Bucky D (as in a play on words for Buckeye) has a Pea Comb...so at least Darrel now has a Cushion Comb...work on its better expression in generations that follow. Never see me get caught up on just a comb or wattles in the Chantecler. Not so difficult to improve a line or strain's head gear expression when required...but much more difficult capturing all the OTHER things in our general purpose heritage chickens need to be, eh?

And yeh, I guess some tend to "think" if you don't pay special attentions to head gear, you can't get it back later...here's some rather decent ones.

Red Male Chant



Buff Male Chant​

Partridge Female Chant



Red Female Chant
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So watch your widdle blacksters grow up--not all will be keepers due to all the things we select for and in order of importance to you or me... As said, my list goes on down from: vigour & disease resistance, fertility & production, temperament, longevity--all these come BEFORE colour pattern or what the birds L00K like as in phenotype!

Use your Standard of Perfection for the Partridge variety to judge the chickens for the exhibition variety colour patterns and then also note the complimentary pullet and cockerel breeders that produce these birds for showing...if you are an advocate of the two pen system as in double mating.

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

- Edited to add photos of decent combs and wattles plus extremes in black feather expression.

 

[Chantecler7]

If the penciling on the bird below is good enough to suit your personal taste, then single mating is all you need. She is out of a totally black breasted male, and single mating is what I have chosen to do. Despite some type flaws, she was deemed good enough to win a best of variety at the last CFI National Meet which was held in Birch Run, Michigan last October. The standard is silent with regard to the width of the penciling. I do agree some prefer a much finer, narrower penciling than what this bird shows, but it is not required. With regard to "hackle black", I was always under the assumption that just means black in the hackles, and does not necessarily mean Cha (charcoal), which is what puts the dark heads on the females, is present. You certainly don't need Cha to produce correctly colored cockerels. Therefore, why not cull it if you have enough female breeders that are just as good and without it? Always willing to be corrected.

 

[oshun55555]

If the penciling on the bird below is good enough to suit your personal taste, then single mating is all you need. She is out of a totally black breasted male, and single mating is what I have chosen to do. Despite some type flaws, she was deemed good enough to win a best of variety at the last CFI National Meet which was held in Birch Run, Michigan last October. The standard is silent with regard to the width of the penciling. I do agree some prefer a much finer, narrower penciling than what this bird shows, but it is not required. With regard to "hackle black", I was always under the assumption that just means black in the hackles, and does not necessarily mean Cha (charcoal), which is what puts the dark heads on the females, is present. You certainly don't need Cha to produce correctly colored cockerels. Therefore, why not cull it if you have enough female breeders that are just as good and without it? Always willing to be corrected.

If the penciling on the bird below is good enough to suit your personal taste, then single mating is all you need. She is out of a totally black breasted male, and single mating is what I have chosen to do. Despite some type flaws, she was deemed good enough to win a best of variety at the last CFI National Meet which was held in Birch Run, Michigan last October. The standard is silent with regard to the width of the penciling. I do agree some prefer a much finer, narrower penciling than what this bird shows, but it is not required. With regard to "hackle black", I was always under the assumption that just means black in the hackles, and does not necessarily mean Cha (charcoal), which is what puts the dark heads on the females, is present. You certainly don't need Cha to produce correctly colored cockerels. Therefore, why not cull it if you have enough female breeders that are just as good and without it? Always willing to be corrected.

 

[CanuckBock]

Bravo, more people will keep this breed if it does not get so complicated.

Do you mean the variety of Partridge is complicated? Yes, we have two quite popular and very difficult colour pattern varieties in the Chantecler--hardest self colour to get right is self-Buff (not recognized yet) and one of the hardest patterns besides say spangled, laced, and pieds in waterfowl...the Partridge variety.

Dr. Clive Carefoot refers to Partridge variety as "royalty of the showpen" and I agree! Not for the faint hearted, not for a person that wants to hatch just a dozen chickens a year...not for a person that does not want to embrace and attack this complicated colour pattern. I love the challenges of the varieties in the Chantecler... I find most self white or self blacks to be tres boring...no challenge once you got them breeding pure. Dullsville and NON-complicated.

But no worries, if you don't want it complicated...the original first variety of the Chantecler breed in White that Bro W chose is pretty easy peasy!

I believe our practical monk chose the White variety so one could focus more on the production aspects of the breed, not having to leap tall buildings to achieve the colour pattern!


Partridge in females is simple genetically (eb Pg Mh ) but it has taken 100's of years of selection to perfect this expression...thanks to plus or minus modifiers and a keen understanding of how to achieve this thru selection.

As Sigrid says:

If the penciling on the bird below is good enough to suit your personal taste, then single mating is all you need. She is out of a totally black breasted male, and single mating is what I have chosen to do. Despite some type flaws, she was deemed good enough to win a best of variety at the last CFI National Meet which was held in Birch Run, Michigan last October.
...

The standard is silent with regard to the width of the penciling. I do agree some prefer a much finer, narrower penciling than what this bird shows, but it is not required.
...

With regard to "hackle black", I was always under the assumption that just means black in the hackles, and does not necessarily mean Cha (charcoal), which is what puts the dark heads on the females, is present. You certainly don't need Cha to produce correctly colored cockerels. Therefore, why not cull it if you have enough female breeders that are just as good and without it? Always willing to be corrected.

Mike...

I find her groundcolour too dark to my preferences. I like the contrast of a beetle green black to a "deep reddish bay" to pop...if you look to far from a distance...a hen with this shade of ground has her black pencillings fade away instead of being crisp and vivid. No, not as light a ground as in the UK Parts...but you do have to tip your hat their way as the lighter the ground, the more dilute any potential smut, dots instead of crisp, and more "fuzzy" the edges on the pencils will be. Genetically speaking, the lighter the ground colour, the more achievable the crisp pencils are and the more contrast is achievable (highest contrast is white to black...polar opposites of the colour spectrum).

Complaint by some about some of the Partridge varieties in NA are that they are too dark.



Have a look at her wings...can't see very well but I do believe there is colour lacking in her secondaries. I don't really see the BLACK??? Maybe one feather perhaps or??

This female lacks the black in tail and the black in wings...she also lacks much of the black diamonds I prefer to see in the hackle of the hens. Tail carriage sucks, but this is the one that sanctioned Judge Rico did a virtual judgement on and yuppers...we got an issue with less than three pencillings in her. Many of the Partridge varieites are weak in this aspect...so not like we are to pick on the Chants...Wyandottes, etc. have an issue getting enough in this trait. This bird does have a nice contrast of groundcolour to pencillings...good facial gear, she is still living so longevity and gives me Jumbo sized nice rich brown eggs...I like her for many of her attributes but heavens, not guilty of being "kennel blind!" to my own flocks less than perfection!

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The tail colour in this one is better but this is where we want to take out the sharp scissors (try never to run with scissors!) and the hot melt glue gun...start snipping this, that and the other thing off and then building the Frankenstein perfect Chanteclers...LMBO Pin the tail on the donkey?? Never mind...so long as the theory holds that each season we have enough birds to put in our breeding pens that in combination, all have the traits in the entire pen that could make the perfect bird...we are good to try tossing our luck in breeding up better ones.

Without hackle black (don't see where Grant talks about cha...will have to re-read his book and note if he even mentions this--no idea if hackle black and cha are the same?). Sigrid lists cha as"charcoal - melanizer, moorkoppe factor." My Dutch sucks (my Hollland imported Oz Swan cob can attest to that--we are not on speaking terms--so confusing!) ...what is moorkoppe factor??? LMBO

I cannot comment on cha because I don't know IF hackle black = cha. Just like all the name switcheroos over autosomal red or autosomal phaeomelanin...LOL My head hurts never mind the ringing in my ears...Hello?



Back to Grant's book...page 109:
It is also my opinion that the Hackle Black genes don't only Blacken the neck and saddle hackle striping in fowl, but have another role in darkening the whole body, and making Black Breasted males possible even when the Pattern gene is present in pure form.

Grant believes pretty much that hackle black (Hb) is required the exhibition male Partridges....even in presence of pure Pg. I am not so sure just yet and have not been a full convert. Still think the fuzzy wuzzy, lots of black females are the exhibition cockerel breeders...but then again, maybe the sharp pencilled Pg/Pg girls will make exhibition males...where is that backyard DNA lab to test the chicken genome of our home flocks when you need them, eh?

Using Grant's theory then...all we would be selecting for is hackle black and keeping the Pg in pure homozygous form...which would be GOOD in my opinion...have to chaw on that a while and see how much it works in the pens tho. Theories, nothing till proven, eh>

Always something new to try and follow up on.

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[CanuckBock]

Heel low:

Kinda off the wall (but totally CHANTECLER!) but we make an annual pilgrimage to a spring vintage vehicle swap...I always find something antiquey and non vehicle...

I have these two holders already and never had the cig papers...was given TWO sets by a vender there...now that is kindness, eh?

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Thrilled to pieces...now that these are a proper SET! LOL

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Gonna get my licensed photo SIL to get a pic of the papers themselves...you will die when you see how the watermarks is done...Sing Brightly indeedy!

I also collect the early Chant cartoon postcards too.

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada