Just have a few questions for people who breed crested like Sultans, Silkies, Polish etc.
I just pulled a dead chick from it's shell to figure out what went wrong(sultan). It was missing a eye, no socket there it seems since I could not even see a opening for the eye ball and it was severely cross beaked.
Do crested have a higher percentage of abnormalities due to the skull malformation? Are there a higher number of late DIS for no apparent reasons?
I prefer a high skull dome on my sultans and was highly unimpressed with practically dome free hatchery chicks. But my own hens make large domed babies. Should I actually be trying to reduce the size of their head dome? My goal is to maintain or even improve the breed, but if high skull domes are a issue I need to rethink this.
I just pulled a dead chick from it's shell to figure out what went wrong(sultan). It was missing a eye, no socket there it seems since I could not even see a opening for the eye ball and it was severely cross beaked.
Do crested have a higher percentage of abnormalities due to the skull malformation? Are there a higher number of late DIS for no apparent reasons?
I prefer a high skull dome on my sultans and was highly unimpressed with practically dome free hatchery chicks. But my own hens make large domed babies. Should I actually be trying to reduce the size of their head dome? My goal is to maintain or even improve the breed, but if high skull domes are a issue I need to rethink this.
