Delawares from kathyinmo

[finnfur]

They have really nice type but all have barred tails and am down to keeping only six. Don't think I will be breeding any of them back to Dad, just the original Moms to a son or two and then see where I am for 2016. Leslie and I may do some swapping............

We are starting to put the dorm room on the cockerel coop today so we can keep growing out all the males we hatched this year. Meanwhile in the breeding coop where all the females are living with the one original F4 male, the dust bath seems to be helping answer some of the questions we have about color.

After the younger birds have a bit more time to mature and the F4s finish molting I'm hoping you can come take a look at what we've got here and then we can pick the best of both our flocks to breed to the best for "better" results next season.

I think we can make some progress. Maybe not patiently, but steadily.

Good idea troops
Were the tails on any F4s good ? I only had five F4 hens but tails were good on two.

 

[newmanmichael]

Hey Everyone,

Sorry I've been MIA, I have a lot going on. Here's some of the Delaware's that I got from Finnfur. I have another group as well but didn't get photos of them yet. Feel free to comment the good, the bad and the ugly.

These birds still have some filling out to do but overall I'm liking what I'm seeing. There's definitely some culls in here but thought I'd share anyway.

Sorry for the all the watermarking but I don't like putting images up on the web without them.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Good idea troops 
Were the tails on any F4s good ? I only had five F4 hens but tails were good on two.

I've got tail envy for good reasons.

This photo was taken after one of the two F4 females started to lay last December.

The one that had just started laying at the time of the photo is closer to the camera. You can see she's been mated quite a bit and her feathers are looking dirty and ratty. She got a breeding injury later, so we need to improve feather quality going forward. I think her tail color was closer to being correct than the other female. This is the female that now has lots of buff barring throughout the white on her body.

The other pullet had more barring, less black in her tail. Maybe no black. She's the smaller, matured later, and is still molting. Fingers crossed she is not turning brown.

As for the male, his tail is messy and has too much black.

This trio produced VERY sturdy looking F5s. I have few complaints about general body shape -- I bieve that's the area we made improvements.

We got nice color on legs, too.

We still need to work on color & quality of feathers.

Combs could use work.

Wings could use work. It's a big question mark.

Eventually I'd like to speed up maturation, especially getting females to POL.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Great photos, Michael.

 

[Zanna]

Good idea troops
Were the tails on any F4s good ? I only had five F4 hens but tails were good on two.

The four F4 hens i used all had correctly coloured tails, black with the white border. All of the F5 pullets have tails barred like in the pics of Michaels pullets. Three different F4 cockerals used over the four F4 pullets and not one good tail unless there were a few I lost to predators.

Here is my favorite F4 Mom:

 

[newmanmichael]

The four F4 hens i used all had correctly coloured tails, black with the white border. All of the F5 pullets have tails barred like in the pics of Michaels pullets. Three different F4 cockerals used over the four F4 pullets and not one good tail unless there were a few I lost to predators.

Here is my favorite F4 Mom:

I like that hen A LOT!

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

She's got one of those cool wide "butt head" foreheads.

Here is progress on the dorm room extension for the cockerel grow out coop.

Here are the older cockerels hanging out in part of their run that is a weird enclosure left over from when it was the duck habitat.

From what I can see now only one of the bigger cockerels of this batch still has wings with dangling primaries when wings are folded.

 

[1zooman12]

Hello Zanna,
I concur. Yours is a truly magnificent specimen! I'll have to photograph my two pullets for comparison. Mine are great but I'm not sure they are the equal of yours. I'll know tomorrow. It is dark here now so thus the wait. My hope is that we might trade to keep the quality up and the inbreeding coefficient down. Nothing ruins a genetic line more than non-directional willy nilly inbreeding. It is the piling up of deleterious genes that does it. The magic comes about that by using unrelated stock, even if the parents themselves are heavily inbred, the off spring of such a cross are no longer inbred. Think about it. Neat huh? I have two goals: 1) to follow the general intent of several breeders to contribute to genetic and subsequent phenotypic improvement and 2) to use the better pullets this coming spring to see if I can (re) develop a better line of Red Star (sex linked) hybrids. The commercial production run from the feed store have been a disappointment.
Okay, see you tomorrow if I can get some decent photos for your inspection and judgment. The weather and light around here has been very drab, gray and dreary. Mine are a trio I got from Kim (I'm not sure if I have permission to give her full name but I still want to give proper credit.) in Capay Valley which are F5 (?) descendants of stock originally derived from KatyinMo, 1 cockerel, 2 pullets to be exact. If she reads this blog series and wants to give out any additional information it will be her call and I won't have invaded her privacy nor stolen her thunder. Hers are beautiful birds which she claims as yet are a work in progress. I'm not yet familiar enough with the line, despite being a geneticist, to say whether she is being modest or if indeed hers is the case. I find her claim hard to believe given how large and magnificent these creatures appear. Some folks are perfectionists, you know, and that is a trait that keeps hobbies such as ours in trim. Enough of my blather…
My best to everyone,
Neal, the Zooman
P.S. Almost forgot… any and all of you have an open invitation to call me at any time, day or night as I often hear from such as high school classmates going back more than half a century, even at three in the morning my time, so I'm used to it and rather enjoy it actually - I'm wired like T.A. Edison, minus the brains. 209-327-2068

 

[Zanna]

Hello Zanna,
I concur. Yours is a truly magnificent specimen! I'll have to photograph my two pullets for comparison. Mine are great but I'm not sure they are the equal of yours. I'll know tomorrow. It is dark here now so thus the wait. My hope is that we might trade to keep the quality up and the inbreeding coefficient down. Nothing ruins a genetic line more than non-directional willy nilly inbreeding. It is the piling up of deleterious genes that does it. The magic comes about that by using unrelated stock, even if the parents themselves are heavily inbred, the off spring of such a cross are no longer inbred. Think about it. Neat huh? I have two goals: 1) to follow the general intent of several breeders to contribute to genetic and subsequent phenotypic improvement and 2) to use the better pullets this coming spring to see if I can (re) develop a better line of Red Star (sex linked) hybrids. The commercial production run from the feed store have been a disappointment.
Okay, see you tomorrow if I can get some decent photos for your inspection and judgment. The weather and light around here has been very drab, gray and dreary. Mine are a trio I got from Kim (I'm not sure if I have permission to give her full name but I still want to give proper credit.) in Capay Valley which are F5 (?) descendants of stock originally derived from KatyinMo, 1 cockerel, 2 pullets to be exact. If she reads this blog series and wants to give out any additional information it will be her call and I won't have invaded her privacy nor stolen her thunder. Hers are beautiful birds which she claims as yet are a work in progress. I'm not yet familiar enough with the line, despite being a geneticist, to say whether she is being modest or if indeed hers is the case. I find her claim hard to believe given how large and magnificent these creatures appear. Some folks are perfectionists, you know, and that is a trait that keeps hobbies such as ours in trim. Enough of my blather…
My best to everyone,
Neal, the Zooman
P.S. Almost forgot… any and all of you have an open invitation to call me at any time, day or night as I often hear from such as high school classmates going back more than half a century, even at three in the morning my time, so I'm used to it and rather enjoy it actually - I'm wired like T.A. Edison, minus the brains. 209-327-2068

Hello Zooman. Thank you for the compliment but this hen is not of my breeding, I purchased her in a group of 20 or so day old chicks from Kathyinmo, the same breeder Kims birds originated from. She is an F4 of Kathy's line and kathy deserves all the credit! My F5's compare in type but do not have the correct colour of this hen although she is a little too columbian marked around the necklass than what is called for in the Standard for Delawares.

I was not successfull in getting very many of her eggs to hatch. They are very round and just did not hatch as well as her 3 other sisters eggs did that I used for breeding early this past Spring. I am hoping they will hatch better when I use one of her sons over her this coming season and that I can make some pretty close replicas of her

Look forward to seeing the pics of your trio. Kim is doing great job moving forward with this newly created line, it is certainly not without its challenges. I am a novice breeder having only been breeding chickens for about 6 years and am learning as I go but plan to be in this for the long haul!

 

[Zanna]

Here are the older cockerels hanging out in part of their run that is a weird enclosure left over from when it was the duck habitat.



From what I can see now only one of the bigger cockerels of this batch still has wings with dangling primaries when wings are folded.

I was going to wait a little longer but I could not wait and stretched out the wings of a few of my favorite cockerals the other evening. They are looking better/more developed but still not quite how I think they should. I am counting 10 primaries, the axial and 11 secondaries??? Some of the feathers look narrower than they should while most look wide and what I consider "normal" comparing to my Marans and NH. Still hoping with more time this may resolve. Wings look perfectly folded as the birds are out doing their thing, you would not suspect a problem.