Faverolles Thread

[Lifesong Farm]

Quote:
A buff orp male on a salmon hen could give you white cockerels or white cockerels with colored tails. I'm not sure about chicks, maybe you could tell by the toes.
Dick

I should have mentioned that the BO is a hen. Will the bird colors still be the same? I have 3 Faverolle cockerels and Brahma, BO and Faverolle hens. I plan to build breeding pens for the Faverolles in Feb. Till then I am trying to learn how to use my incubator but my one friend wants a couple Faverolle hens for eggs and pets. She has fallen in love with the breed.

 

[pfmerlin]

r

 

[Cloverleaf Farm]

Quote:
Cindy, do you feed table scraps to your birds?
peter

Ok, now I'm intrigued because I do on occasion...what's the connection to wry neck??

 

[pfmerlin]

I have a question about wry neck. I've had a couple of silkies with it before, and that wasn't much of a surprise as they're prone to it.

 

[faverolles]

Quote:
Ok, now I'm intrigued because I do on occasion...what's the connection to wry neck??

Because wry anything never gets better so I would be more than willing to bet it would be a mild case of botulism, which in a mild case will produce the symptoms of wry neck. As far as silkies having a predisposition to wry neck, not that I'm aware of. I know they can have "head between the legs syndrome". Some people choose to give silenium injections but I have always considered it more of the current and past (20 yrs) breeding for vaulted skulls ( bigger crests). Now let's examine that a bit closer. Vaulted skull can leave the brain exposed as in not closed completely. The main breeds that have shown the most of this are the polish and silkies. I have a friend that has had silkies forever and she's done the routine for the head between the legs routine. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn't. I hatched for her one season and funniest thing - there were no head between the legs syndrome. Well, that lived. She took the hatching back over and did see it occur again and again.
I had never had this with my favs but when she hatched some chikcs (only a couple) in her incubator they too came up with it. Later on she sold me the incubator and I used it once after a thorough cleaning and guess what, I saw it then too. I took that incubator to the dump and have never seen it again.
I can only remember one female that seemed to have it in the very first chicks I got from a hatchery setting. Looking back, she too could have had a more pronounced case of botulism. Even regular feed can go bad and give a case of botulism. Scraps are very seldom eatten right away and some scraps are just not good. ie Tomato. Way too acid. I used to do it but now limit to a left over turkey carcus from the holidays and yes, that'll be cleaned off before night fall. lol
Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Peter

Didn't think of that Pete, good info.
Dick

 

[pfmerlin]

t

 

[pfmerlin]

One

 

[keesmom]

Quote:
This is the head between the legs syndrome similar to what happens to some silkies when they bonk their heads. This happened once before (to this same bird I believe) and after a few days he was fine with no intervention. I had a silkie do this on me last year too, one I did not hatch myself. She also recovered without intervention.

He had nothing other than his usual feed prior to this and none of the others in his pen are affected, nor are any of the other pens that got feed from the same bag.

 

[imusa76]

Is it normal for them to peck out each others beards?
My 2 white favoralles I noticed there beards are gone !!!!

are they getting board in the coop ?

 

[hcammack]

Quote:
I think its just a bad habit that some birds have. Feather picking can be caused by over crowding as well as protein deficiency. What size coop are they in and what % protein is their feed. I believe Peter said he culls birds that develop this habit. Its not a good habit. My hens sometimes pulled the feathers on the roosters but not each others.

Henry