Cubalaya Thread For Sharing Pics and Discussing Our Birds

[4hmom]

i was thinking pheonix at first but when i contacted a breeder he suggested ohiki. and he said he often gets culls that look somewhat like a cubalaya with a high tail and a single comb. i know jim zook has bantam yokohamas, do you know what varietys?

 

[fowlsessed]

I need some advice. Yellow legs, face shaded with color and high tails, which of those are the easiest to get rid of to get back on track? Thanks guys.

 

[saladin]

Easiest to get rid of would be yellow legs: white is dominate. However, it then 'hides' as a recessive they could haunt you in future generations is you aren't careful about your selection. One easy way to beat it would be to keep the male side pure and breed to just the pullets each year for a number of generations.

The hardest thing I know to get rid of is white in the earlobes. Never grade Cubalayas to hens with white lobes; it's a real pain to get out.

 

[gallorojo]

Hard to answer. Yellow legs are fairly easy, as white is dominant over yellow. The problem is that yellow and blue legs can hide under white legs and pop up again and again down the road. The only way to know for sure is a process of test mating. Just always make sure you never breed yellow to yellow or blue to blue and try to avoid breeding birds with yellow and blue legs if it can be helped. Sometimes it can't be helped though.
I am not sure what you mean by face shaded with color? Do you mean dark faces like a sumatra? Do you mean white in the earlobes? Either one of these things will be very very hard to get rid of. White earlobes seesm to be a very stubborn, persistent problem. Even when using parents with all red lobes, it still pops up all too often. Just don't breed white to white or white at all if you can help it, but, if I have an excellent size and type bird with blue legs or white lobes, I will still breed it. Thats just me. I feel conformation and size trump color.
High tails are actually pretty straightforward for me. As best I can figure, the long tail itself is dominant, but the well spread and low carriage part are recessive, or mostly so. Mostly-lol-I have had high tails pop up from perfect lobster tail parents before.... For me, the high tails has been the easiest area to make progress. The white lobes folllowed by off color legs has been harder to fix, but, honestly, part of that is because I've made a concerted effort to get the tails down the past 2 years, and have not made the same effort with ears and legs. I've personally chosen to fix the overall conformation first, and worry about color later.

Edit I was typing this as Saladin was and he beat me to it....

 

[wood&feathers]

What he means is colored feather - like red smearing the white.

Background - I am in EKy. Fowlsessed isn't prohibitively far away. I have a white cockerel I don't have space to keep - I need to segregate my breeders, since I have only a dozen cubalayas and many would be culls in another flock, just can't spare a pen. I would like to give him the cockerel and maybe sell one laying pullet, probably for less than gas money. Hopefully we can trade stock down the road. The problem is I only have 2-3 decent hens. So which flawed hen would best complement the cockerel?

Pictures will have to wait an hour, they are on my DH's work computer. I thought I could pull them from my message string but apparently not.

 

[4hmom]

can white earlobes be a sex linked gene, because i have on ly gotten males with red earlobes all of the females i have gotten have white earlobes

 

[gallorojo]

I have seen the same trend, but I don't think it's an issue of sex linkage. I would imagine it's more a function of the males simply having redder faces naturally. Most of my females have had some degree of white in ears...it seems to come and go with their condition, etc. At times they will seem nearly all red, at other times rather white. It does show up a lot more in the females for me than the males, but, I have had it some in males too, especially in really young ones. Seems to go away most of the time as they age.

 

[wood&feathers]

Here's the cockerel:



Two potential hens :

another possibility:

 

[gallorojo]

Saladin will have to answer this one. I'm no help here...

 

[wood&feathers]

I did a close look and found a few hens showing white or partially white earlobes. Is this an all or nothing affair? They didn't have any white at all before they came into lay!