First feathers.

[kesrchicky16]

My chicks are coming up on a week old. The first hatchers are starting to get their tail feather and I'm able to start see patterning on the flight feathers. Are these first feathers indicative of what they will look like as adults?

Also in trying to remember molts. They start with hatching down, grow in first feathers, molt at ?????, refeather with juvenile feathers, molt at 18 months or first fall, grow in first true adult feathers and then change out adult feathers every fall.
Pretty sure that's wrong.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Those first wing feathers sometimes show a final coloring but other times they don't.

They will go through multiple baby molts as they grow or else they would grow out of their feathers. You won't notice most of them.

The final adult feathers will come in between 4-7 months generally and they won't molt until the following fall, but others don't always follow the norm. Some will molt earlier or out of season, but in general most will molt every fall after their first year, and some will do a partial neck molt in the following spring.

Molts can be predictably unpredictable.