Early feathers?

[LeadHead]

I decided (sort of late in the summer, yes) to incubate some eggs from our 8 Rhode Island Reds and 1 Ameraucana to begin replacing our layers. We have 1 roo. We saved 3 dozen eggs over the course of a week or so, keeping them in the cool basement and turning them each day. After accumulating the desired number, I placed them in the incubator on a Sunday morning around 1am, and used an automatic egg turner. My hatch was pathetic--16 surviving live chicks (2 or 3 of which I had to help out of their shell), 2 others were deformed (1 with an external brain, the other had splayed legs) and 1 other hatched but died soon after. The thing is, I disovered the first one beginning to pip when I went to remove them from the automatic egg turner, and once he hatched the others soon followed, a day or more earlier than they should have. When we figured the rest of the unhatched eggs were not going to hatch, we broke them open and found 4 or 5 infertile, 5 or 6 fully developed but dead, one was rotten, and some were in various stages of development. Not a good experience.
Anyway, the 16 seem to be doing quite well in their brooder. My question is regarding how soon they begin feathering out. It's been a couple years since I hatched any and I don't recall their wing feathers coming in this quickly. At the age of 3 days or so their wing feathers were visible, and now that they're about 4 or 5 days old those feathers are approaching 1" long! They literally appear to be longer each time I check on them during the day. Is this normal?

 

[Flawedatdesign]

I was wondering this myself I have a Mutt we call Monster Chick at 2 weeks old his wings are almost fully feathered and tail is close to being fully feathered. I just thought it was a freak thing lol

 

[dianaross77]

That's normal. I got mine as day-olds the day they arrived at TSC. They already had little tiny wing feathers starting. By the middle of the second week they had 2 rows of wing feathers and little tails.

 

[LeadHead]

Ok, I posted that message at 1am this morning--at 6:45 their feathers are noticeably longer. It appears that they even have secondaries at this time! It's weird because I don't remember them growing this quickly.

 

[TravisME]

oops

 

[Ridgerunner]

Those deformities and them hatching early tend to indicate your incubation temperature was too high. You need a calibrated thermometer good to within 0.1 degrees to know what your actual temperatures are. I'd suggest trying to drop the incubation temperature by about 1/2 a degree before your next incubation.

There is a gene that determines if they are going to be fast feathering or slow feathering. Sounds like yours have the fast feathering version.

 

[Lollipop]

LOL, that is quite fast, but the bright side is that pullets feather much faster than cockerals, so chances are you will be pleasantly blessed........Pop

 

[TinyChickenLady]

I was actually wondering the same thing. Mine are 2 weeks old and have their wings and tails completely feathered.... And the feathers on their backs are starting to come in nicely as well

Hopefully that means I have some pullets.

 

[LeadHead]

Hopefully you're right, Lollipop. I set 36 eggs because approximately 15 hens would be nice to add to my flock, so if the hen/roo ratio is high that would be great.

 

[bobbieschicks]

I was surprized by how fast they went from cute fuzzy chick to feathered chick. Now our Leghorns have lots of feathers on them and they're just 2 weeks today. And they are starting to show their personalities.

Going by the early pullet feathering rule I've divided my flock into 3 cockerels & 2 pullets - the girls had their long tail feathers by 1.5 weeks and the boys just started getting tuffs of tail feathers yesterday morning. The girls & boys have their wing feathers & - but the girls got them within about 3 days and the boys got them around 5 days. Plus the girls have long feathers on their wings and the boys have long and short. I also noticed that the boys have much higher comb peeks as of yesterday.

What to do with 3 roosters and 2 hens... oh yeah - get more hens! Who knew chickens could be this much fun to watch!