Exhibition RIR question

[Krys109uk]

Please will you describe the colour of chick down you expect from dark exhibition strain Rhodies?

Any photos would be appreciated.

 

[speckledhen]

Not sure what I expect, but this is what I got from them:

Trying to locate other pics, but this is one I did find.

 

[Chris09]

Krys:

Well I have some pictures of the two lines of Rhode Island Red that I have one is Rose Comb and one is Single Comb.

this chick is about 2 to 4 days old.

And this one is a young rooster about 4 to 5 weeks old

This is a young rooster about 4 months old. Please dont mind the "tie out cord" on his leg it was only used so I could get this picture then it came off.

Chris

 

[tadkerson]

Krys,

I do not believe you will see any difference in the down of a show quality bird. My birds are not show quality (SQ) and have the same color as the birds in the pictures. I believe the difference would be in getting a consistent down color from the SQ birds while other birds will produce a wide variation of down colors (lighter and darker red); back striping and head striping (top of head) are common in hatchery stock.

The color of the down can be made to be a lighter or a darker red depending on how one breeds the offspring. Research shows that breeding can produce offspring that consistently have dark down or light down, so there is a genetic component to the down color beyond the documented genes.

If NY Red reads this string, I am sure he will make comments also.

Tim

 

[Krys109uk]

Thanks all & Tim.

The reason I asked was that I'm in the process of doing red Orpingtons. I want the colour to be a proper red, reasonably dark. I might be being a bit amitious if I want birds quite as dark as some of those almost black exhibition rhodies. But my birds are pretty dark; a similar colour to Chris' bird. Now the thing that strikes me as odd is that there seems to be, in my birds, a correlation between down colour & darker red feathers. I cannot see why it might be, but most often, the chicks which mature to be the darkest seem to be the chicks which had the lightest down.
Any ideas?

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

When we had RC RIR's the chicks were a dark brown/red, almost like a dark wood, darker than the chicks pictured. Then we sold them and got SC RIR's which produced lighter chicks. I think like Tim said, it all depends on the line.

 

[Chris09]

Krys:
Here is one that was real light in color but you can see the dark feathering starting to come in.
She is one of the hen that I hatched out this year and turned out quite nice and dark. Now her mother was light like her as a chick but darkened up nice all so..
Light chick:

light chicks Mothers:

Rose Comb Rooster I used this year on all the Rose Comb hens.. (Father of that light chick)

Chris

 

[tadkerson]

Chris and Krys,

I have not paid much attention to the dark down/light down in my birds verses adult color. I have been working on adult color and sexing chicks based upon their down characteristics.

I have read quit a bit about down color in RIR. The research states that dark downed chicks tend to have dark color as adults but not always sometimes light colored chicks were dark colored as adults.

I think mahogany red (like in Chris's birds) is a handsome color for any bird. But I am not a judge but I think it is great eye candy.

Tim

 

[aveca]

Great Birds Chris.

 

[Smoky73]

These are pics of some of my Exhibition RIR's. First pic is the only pic I have of the ones I hatched last year as chicks so might not be helpful.

These are them as they grew

And these are new pics of the ones I hatched this past March, so they are about 5 months old now. (Ignore the black birds, those are my leftover Ameraucanas- I am not raising anymore)