Delawares from kathyinmo

[capayvalleychick]

I'm going to post photos of wings of two Dels that looked as if they had wing defects - one post for each bird to keep them separate.
First, Y16. His wings may be ok, they are looking better. I try counting feathers but you can see, they don't look exactly like the SOP illustration. Click on the pic to see it enlarged.

left wing exterior


left interior


right interior


right exterior

 

[capayvalleychick]

Now Y15. He is huge and heavy. I've been hoping that his wings would improve but I think his axial may be missing. The feathers also may be slipped. They just don't look right.

right exterior


right interior


left exterior


left interior


left wing folded


right wing folded

 

[finnfur]

I'm going to post photos of wings of two Dels that looked as if they had wing defects - one post for each bird to keep them separate.
First, Y16. His wings may be ok, they are looking better. I try counting feathers but you can see, they don't look exactly like the SOP illustration. Click on the pic to see it enlarged.

Thanks for doing the Pics- thats what we are seeing here also- It is like the primaries don't close up correct and show below the wing line when folded - some are worse and usually it is one side that is bad.
Its like if you took your four fingers and held them flat put together for correct wing and spread them for incorrect wing - we have a little twisted feather also

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

I moved 9 older cockerels to a different coop today and was hoping to get a good look at their wings. It was hard with just one free hand. I'll try again maybe tomorrow ...? The rest of the males are still too little to move, I think. Some of the older cockerels are getting really big.

It will be interesting to see how the coop dynamics change now.

 

[1zooman12]

Hello Lady Jellybean,
Count me in with respect to obtaining SOP styled Delawares. As a lad at university I remember the days when these birds were extant in the hundreds of thousands out in commercial holdings on the Eastern Shore of Delmarva. What a beautiful scene to see 2 and 3 story buildings each with twenty or so thousand! When the Cornish crosses became the chosen subject for the broiler industry, the former became passé and nearly went extinct. I'm glad to see them making a comeback and would wish for a trio or two of the best for my own collection. These are most elegant representatives of Gallus g. domesticus.

I wish for one and all great health and contentment!
Sincerely,
Neal, the Zooman

 

[rancher hicks]

Has anyone heard from Kathy? PM me if you need to.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

So we built this quick modular cockerel cage to help keep the hormonal youths from tearing the flock apart before they are properly culled/integrated ... Taking what we learned from last year's failed attempt to segregate the cockerels in their own little coop/run right up against the existing poultry pasture we wanted a completely enclosed space for this year's cockerels, so we planed this. We have 9 mutts in there at the moment as they were being completely obnoxious. So obnoxious. I always forget how totally obnoxious cockerels can be.

This modular coop/run is 6 modules long -- 25' -- and about 7.5' wide. The tarp is a little too low-tech for long term use ... we'll rethink that as necessarey. I'm hoping the Mutts aren't in there for very long. This coop/cage is set up under a huge evergreen. The open end is facing north, which is our most mild side weather wise. Plus our winters here are relatively mild. I'm curious to see how dry it stays. If it ever rains.



I think the modules are pretty awesome. They are just wire-wrapped cattle panels bent up between T-Posts. Each one (or two) could be made into a small coop/cage for breeding purposes when I have more than one trio working for me. In that case, I'll probably pre-wrap each module in shade cloth and greenhouse plastic and partition off part of a pasture to make a run. Here I just strung them all together and secured them with wire twist ties (google re-bar ties for the general idea of the pre-looped wire ties and the twisting tool we used) and put it in the middle of the free-range area. I made the door at the top of the coop/run out of a cattle panel, just bent some end wires to make hinges (full disclosure, I invited someone with man hands to do that part for me) ... here is a photo of the door hinges before we put the wire on the door end. The idea is the door can be lifted off the ground a bit when it is swung ... to clear any bumps and stuff. It works slick. I did add a little wire "skirt" all the way around the bottom of this coop/run to discourage predators and digging under.





Back to Delaware SOP:

The Delaware Cockerels are actually being pretty nice. I didn't feel too much pressure to segregate them. I do, however, want to keep better track of them (particularly their wings at this stage) and make sure the younger birds have good access to food and roosts, so I put the 9 oldest Delaware cockerels in a pallet coop (no photos of that coop yet). You can see these guys aren't exactly SOP quality ...

These two are probably the darkest:


(That's Dad's hand using his iPhone as a flashlight. My hand is a little less hairy and manly.)


There are 7 cockerels in this photo ... still way too much black going on there. Some of them have this funky highlighter greenish yellow tinge on some of their feathers which I'm hoping is food/grooming related. A couple of the birds in this photo were pretty heavy, so I think those are the two are from my earliest hatch this season.



Sorry for the crummy photos. There is only so much you can do with an iPhone in the dark.


Before I moved those cockerels Gust and I were playing extended Frisbee Catch in the poultry pasture, so I dragged a chair up and sat along the Delaware pasture fence line. These guys came to chat/watch. Besides being able to see lots of color problems with those birds, you can see they are decently round. That's one of the cockerels lounging on his breast and when he stands he is at least as tall and long as his sire already, so I have some hope the males will have in size what they lack in color correctness. I'm hoping one male will have decent size, color & wings. I'm not working with an overabundance of cockerels (the forty Delawares left in the Delaware coop are mostly females, and a few are DelaMutts), so

 

[finnfur]

So we built this quick modular cockerel cage to help keep the hormonal youths from tearing the flock apart before they are properly culled/integrated ... Taking what we learned from last year's failed attempt to segregate the cockerels in their own little coop/run right up against the existing poultry pasture we wanted a completely enclosed space for this year's cockerels, so we planed this. We have 9 mutts in there at the moment as they were being completely obnoxious. So obnoxious. I always forget how totally obnoxious cockerels can be.

This modular coop/run is 6 modules long -- 25' -- and about 7.5' wide. The tarp is a little too low-tech for long term use ... we'll rethink that as necessarey. I'm hoping the Mutts aren't in there for very long. This coop/cage is set up under a huge evergreen. The open end is facing north, which is our most mild side weather wise. Plus our winters here are relatively mild. I'm curious to see how dry it stays. If it ever rains.



I think the modules are pretty awesome. They are just wire-wrapped cattle panels bent up between T-Posts. Each one (or two) could be made into a small coop/cage for breeding purposes when I have more than one trio working for me. In that case, I'll probably pre-wrap each module in shade cloth and greenhouse plastic and partition off part of a pasture to make a run. Here I just strung them all together and secured them with wire twist ties (google re-bar ties for the general idea of the pre-looped wire ties and the twisting tool we used) and put it in the middle of the free-range area. I made the door at the top of the coop/run out of a cattle panel, just bent some end wires to make hinges (full disclosure, I invited someone with man hands to do that part for me) ... here is a photo of the door hinges before we put the wire on the door end. The idea is the door can be lifted off the ground a bit when it is swung ... to clear any bumps and stuff. It works slick. I did add a little wire "skirt" all the way around the bottom of this coop/run to discourage predators and digging under.





Back to Delaware SOP:

The Delaware Cockerels are actually being pretty nice. I didn't feel too much pressure to segregate them. I do, however, want to keep better track of them (particularly their wings at this stage) and make sure the younger birds have good access to food and roosts, so I put the 9 oldest Delaware cockerels in a pallet coop (no photos of that coop yet). You can see these guys aren't exactly SOP quality ...

These two are probably the darkest:


(That's Dad's hand using his iPhone as a flashlight. My hand is a little less hairy and manly.)


There are 7 cockerels in this photo ... still way too much black going on there. Some of them have this funky highlighter greenish yellow tinge on some of their feathers which I'm hoping is food/grooming related. A couple of the birds in this photo were pretty heavy, so I think those are the two are from my earliest hatch this season.



Sorry for the crummy photos. There is only so much you can do with an iPhone in the dark.


Before I moved those cockerels Gust and I were playing extended Frisbee Catch in the poultry pasture, so I dragged a chair up and sat along the Delaware pasture fence line. These guys came to chat/watch. Besides being able to see lots of color problems with those birds, you can see they are decently round. That's one of the cockerels lounging on his breast and when he stands he is at least as tall and long as his sire already, so I have some hope the males will have in size what they lack in color correctness. I'm hoping one male will have decent size, color & wings. I'm not working with an overabundance of cockerels (the forty Delawares left in the Delaware coop are mostly females, and a few are DelaMutts), so

Good job on the Hoop Coop - I see Gust is doing his usual fine job as construction inspector.
Keeps the crew on the straight and narrow procedure path LOL

Yes wings. Yuk ! - and have not figured what to do - have seven cockerels this year and all have at least one wing problem - they are from #1 Cock but #2 has more of the wing symptoms than #1 .
So don't know if changing Cocks will help matters but will try in spring

And yes they are all healthy developed and should be great table fare.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Good job on the Hoop Coop - I see Gust is doing his usual fine job as construction inspector.
Keeps the crew on the straight and narrow procedure path LOL

Yes wings. Yuk ! - and have not figured what to do - have seven cockerels this year and all have at least one wing problem - they are from #1 Cock but #2 has more of the wing symptoms than #1 .
So don't know if changing Cocks will help matters but will try in spring

And yes they are all healthy developed and should be great table fare.

Gust does keep us all honest. If there is a problem he WILL find it. Yesterday he found funky duck water left behind when we moved the ducks onto new pasture. So he and I were up all night running him to the toilet. He even threw up on the rug in my room -- that for sure woke me up. He took a sick day from chicken chores. I get to keep him company.

I think I found one wing that looked great during the move. I could really only look at one wing on each bird I moved without getting flogged and waking everybody up. That one wing seemed to have much shorter and more even feathers than the crazy looking wings. Dad and I have an appointment for tomorrow to take each of the 9 older cockerels and get as good a look as possible at both of their wings. My eyes suck, his aren't much better, so I'll try to take photos for a good assessment. I'll share if that works out.

It would be interesting to repeat wing photos at regular intervals to see how/if things change over time.

I'm pretty sure my senior Delaware cock has okay wings. I didn't meet him until he was well past the current age of his kids.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

While we all twiddle our thumbs and wait to see wassup with our wings, I thought I'd introduce one more thing to worry about: Combs!

File this one under Things Change.

Here is a closeup of the comb on my original cockerel (now cock) the day I picked him up, which was October 21, 2013 when he was about 6 months old.






And here is the same bird's comb on December 11, 2013 ... not even two full months later (this was the day I got my first egg from one of his pullets).




I double checked these photos today cuz I was feeling kinda meh about the combs on the 9 oldest cockerels I just moved to the bachelor pad. Now I have hope.