Dominique Thread!

[centrarchid]

Melissa,

Based on my experience using plummage and leg coloration I agree 5 males and one female.


# Plummage Leg
1 female male = likely male (guess)
2 male male = male
3 male male = male
4 female female = female
5 male male = male
6 male male = male

Another variable I think works is relative leg size. Males have larger feet. Presently I must have birds in hand for that to work. Auto-sexing coloration (plummage) does not work consistently with all Dominique strains I have seen. Other genes may complicate matter.

 

[buffalogal]

Quote:
You would be fascinated by the sheep study; researchers trained sheep to respond to pictures of faces they recognized, both flock mates and human. The sheep were able to remember and recognize faces up to three years after the last time they saw them again, both human and other sheep. Really gives you second thoughts about the morality of eating lamb chops when you realize you are talking about a sentient being. How would we go about devising a similar study for chickens?

Quote:
Some of my cocks do this, some don't. The senior Dom is like that, not to the extent of brooding, but tid-bitting, protecting, and general babysitting, and at least one of the Anconas is very protective of "his"new chicks. He claims the "front yard", which is where most new birds start out here, so he thinks they're all his. I have a game cross cock that will fly up into the Junior room and roost with the youngsters. I've noticed he won't bully them so I don't bother with trying to keep him out. I just open the door in the morning and he's ready to go out. I suspect he's returning there because it's his 'happy place" .

Quote:
Now that is interesting, I'm going to have to start weighing mine to see if that's the case here, and if so, with what breeds. I can understand the lack of eating while setting eggs, but once she's out with the chicks, it would (I would think) be in all of their best interest if she were to quickly regain her weight and overall health. Nature favors saving the life of the mother over that of her offspring, which makes sense when you consider that there is alot more invested in an adult of reproduction age than a chick or cub or lamb. A hen that looses her chicks can always hatch another clutch, but a chick that looses it's mother is pretty much going to end up as someone's dinner long before it has a chance to reproduce.

 

[buffalogal]

Quote:
I'd say you're right.

 

[centrarchid]

I am not familiar with the sheep work although if similar done with chickens, then food may needed as reward for correct ID and duration of experiment will likely need to be of shorter duration. Breed in chickens might be more important in respect to mental performance than in sheep.

The brooding I saw only occured when a single hen was present. When it came to defense of chicks, it came in two contexts;. First when hen initiated engagement against threat (cat, small dog, me) and rooster came in and attacks from behind. Hen did bulk of defending, rooster ultimately was a distraction. Second was with the broody rooster without aid from hen. Defense similar to hen but rooster again seemed to put himself at less risk than a hen would. Seems to me only roosters confident in their being sire would protect bitties.

The parental investment / risk of hen can be quite variable. Some hens take little risk and readily abandon chicks to save themselves. Others seem to invest more and waite too long before abandoning chicks or eggs and they are lost as well . Relative to songbirds that likely live only a couple years, hens seem to die a lot in defense of young, even games that could otherwise get away. Have you ever seen give the killdeer like display to lure predator away from nest or chicks?

 

[buffalogal]

Quote:
Aside from the fact that a still photo, shot full frontal of the head is an unnatuural pose for a sheep to recognize at all, to me, the most amazing thing about the sheep study was not that they remembered faces for up to three years after they had last seen them, but that the researchers really had no idea how long a sheep could remember, since the study *only* lasted three years. I remember there was very little, if any decline in their accuracy in three years; I wish my memory for faces was that good. I believe the amount of time that passes that an animal's memory is still accurate is relative to the lifespan of the animal; a sheep can live 12, 13 years; how old can a chicken live to be?

Quote:
It sounds like the defense you're describing is simply the normal senior cock defense of his flock. The bird would of course have no way of knowing if the chicks were his or not, he is simply defending part of his flock. I've seen the broken wing chick/nest defense in a several wild birds. The point is to get the predator away from the nest, without sacrificing the parent. If the parent is actually destroyed as a result of carrying the ruse too far, what we would see as a selfless act is a complete failure from an evolutionary standpoint. No adult bird = no chicks.

 

[MelissaR]

Thanks everyone!

I'm beginning to think my incubator is cursed. Every hatch with this one has had this ratio of pullets to cockerels.

 

[buffalogal]

Quote:
Can you trade roosters with someone?

 

[centrarchid]

I see general flock defense by dominant rooster as a low risk effort. Investment risk taken much lower than when a single rooster with offspring from single hen involved. Rooster never certain of paternity, but is a game of odds. Risk taken by hen also a game of odds, sometimes you win, sometimes you loose everything.

 

[Delight in Dominiques]

It has been too quite on here so I thought I would throw in a picture of a pullet for everyone to size up. What do you think?

 

[adubsroit]

Okay, open and honest critique. These are my boyfriend and I's first set of Dominiques and though we supposedly purchased show quality birds it is obvious that these are not (but I like to think they are not horrible). The following picture is one of the first (from almost 2 months ago, when they were about 4-5 months):

Here are the birds, the cockerel and the better of the pullets:

Ms. Thang (not her real name) was MUCH more curious as to the living room and what all could be under the sofa, lol. Really wish I had better photos of her:

She seemed to genuinely enjoy the bath, much more than the cockerel