D'uccle Thread

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Is there any way that we can SEE some of these fascinating colors?

Still working on combs, and yes they have been "nit-picking" eachother as most young boys do. May post silvers later. Really windy here today, lucky I got these.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/39809_000_8786.jpg

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/39809_000_8789.jpg

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/39809_000_8790.jpg

I Love the dark one!!!
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I agree with everything that Cetawin said except for one thing, it's about No 4. I totally agree that your climate sounds wonderful for them, the fan in the summer is fantastic, I wish I could get electricity back to my set up (I'm working on it), but I disagree, (with conditions) with putting a heat lamp in their coop. Please understand I am sharing only what I do and think should be done. There are many, many people who do things very differently, and they get alone perfectly. My issue with the heat lamp are a couple of things: 1. I'm concerned about condensation, and humidity in the coop. With applied heat you could be setting up the perfect conditions for a petri dish, so it could become the ideal place for mold and fungus to begin to grow. I thought long and hard about this when I started with d'Uccle because they have a reputation for not being as cold hardy as many breeds. What I did was build them SMALL coops, about 2 x 4 x 3. I put a roo and his hens in one of those coop. They can hold quite a few because they're bantams. Anyway, those little bodies are furnaces and they either sleep squished up against each other on the perch, or they cuddle up with one another in a corner of coop. Either way, they stay toasty warm and dry when they are in their coops, and I've never lost one to cold, or for that matter, had frostbite from being in the coop. I insulated the roof of each of my coops, particularly because of the summer. I wanted them to be a comfortable place for the hens in particular when it gets hot and it seems to have worked, they do like their homes.
As far as a big market, I don't think I would call it a big one because they are bantams and all bantams are limited in their appeal to folks. I see that as the one big drawback to breeding them, they appeal only to the pet market, so there is the potential for a lot of birds that need to be culled. At lease with LF there is a use for and market for the superfluous birds. However, with their advocates they are VERY popular and some folks end up wanting more and more the deeper they get into the breed, ultimately becoming collectors.
I don't know of any books that are available that a specific to the d'Uccle. That doesn't mean there aren't any, it's just that I don't know of them myself. I believe the d'Uccle thread and the breed web site http://www.belgianduccle.org/ are the best resources available.
All that I've said here is IMHO of course.
So happy to have you joining in on the tread and becoming a fan of these little gems.
Nancy

Thanks for your input Nancy. A friend of mine got up to feed her birds last winter and found that her coop had burned to the ground. A heat lamp had fallen down and caused the fire. She losts all of her birds. It was so so sad and a hard lesson learned. So now I don't use those red heat lamp bulbs. I use just a regular watt light bulb. My lamp is also tied up so if it gets knocked down it won't fall to the coop floor and start a fire. It's more for a night light. As for humidity, I tried to design my coops so they had a lot of ventalation. I added vents (with screens) at the top & bottom to help move the air through. They all have windows too. I have guineas and ventalation is the number one thing when setting up a coop for them. The only time I had a problem with mold was when I was still new to birds, I put the waterer in the coop instead of outside in the run. Water leaked under it onto the pine shavings and mold was growing by the time I figured out what was soooo smelly. LOL! Every time I went into the coop I kept smelling myself to try and figure if it was me!!
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Quote:
Is there any way that we can SEE some of these fascinating colors?

Still working on combs, and yes they have been "nit-picking" eachother as most young boys do. May post silvers later. Really windy here today, lucky I got these.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/39809_000_8786.jpg

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/39809_000_8789.jpg

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/39809_000_8790.jpg

WOW!!! Your black and silver, I'm guessing it to be a BIRCHEN!!! OMG!! That is fantastic! How in the world did you get there?
Nancy
 
Quote:
Still working on combs, and yes they have been "nit-picking" eachother as most young boys do. May post silvers later. Really windy here today, lucky I got these.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/39809_000_8786.jpg

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/39809_000_8789.jpg

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/39809_000_8790.jpg

WOW!!! Your black and silver, I'm guessing it to be a BIRCHEN!!! OMG!! That is fantastic! How in the world did you get there?
Nancy

Thanks Nancy, it's taken a lot of time, patience and love, of course
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He's not 'silver', BTW...He's a Lemon cockerel. Will have full color this time next year. The other one is the Birchen
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Quote:
WOW!!! Your black and silver, I'm guessing it to be a BIRCHEN!!! OMG!! That is fantastic! How in the world did you get there?
Nancy

Thanks Nancy, it's taken a lot of time, patience and love, of course
wink.png
He's not 'silver', BTW...He's a Lemon cockerel. Will have full color this time next year

OK, even MORE interesting, I hope that wasn't too offensive that I missed what he is? I thought he could have been silver because my Birchen roo turns kind of a shade of gold or something like your guy when he sunburns.
 
Quote:
Thanks Nancy, it's taken a lot of time, patience and love, of course
wink.png
He's not 'silver', BTW...He's a Lemon cockerel. Will have full color this time next year

OK, even MORE interesting, I hope that wasn't too offensive that I missed what he is? I thought he could have been silver because my Birchen roo turns kind of a shade of gold or something like your guy when he sunburns.

No problem Hun, at all. They have only been outside for the last couple days as I have a 30 x 40 heated/air building but wanted them to range for a while. I wont even "look" at them again until this fall, then I'll make my final cull of who to keep and who to give away
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Will try to post more pics, but may take me a day or so...We are still cleaning up storm damage, so time is kinda limited.
 

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