Frizzled Serama feather care

[spiritbrook]

Help! My poor frizzled Seramas are having the world's worst "bad feather" day. My original pair was a smooth black mottled hen and a frizzled black mottled rooster. They are probably full brother and sister from eggs gathered from a pen that had a frizzled rooster (wheaton type) and smooth black hen. Bred together I got 2 black mottled frizzled roosters, a white mottled frizzled hen, 2 black (mottled probably - although nearly no white) silkie hens, and a smooth black mottled hen. The problem is the original rooster and one of the silkie hens are loosing all the feather off of the shafts of the wing feathers. This leaves ugly feather shafts and that is all. The son of the original rooster hasn't started breaking feathers as badly, yet, and all the half serama/half bantam frizzles who are the same age are in beautiful feather. The two original birds are 16 months old, the kids are 10 months old. I have one April 2017 pullet who is tan/wheaton frizzle and one May 2017 "sizzle" white mottled pullet who are in great feathers - but I want to keep them this way. They are not caged birds now, but the purebreds were for a long time.

I am about to swear off frizzles entirely. I'd like to start showing this fall (2017) and need to know what to do to care for these feathers or what to avoid when breeding to stay away from brittle feathers.

Below is one of the September 2016 roosters. You can see the feather damage beginning on his wing feathers.

 

[I Love Layers]

Frizzles need a lot of extra protein in order to keep their feathers in proper condition. Also keeping them in a conditioning cage and off the ground can also help

 

[spiritbrook]

What's a conditioning cage? My guys have a chicken yard to hang out in. I realize that I will need to cage folks who are being shown, but still want to make it fun for them.

 

[I Love Layers]

 

[spiritbrook]

Thanks. For Seramas I think I would give them perches, and the cages would need to be taller to accommodate their tall tails. Currently I have lined up a condo (was a tall ferret cage which has been partitioned - probably cost $600 new) and was thinking that dog crates would work as well. Are they there all of the time? Do you put them in when you decide they will be shown even if the shows are some months away? Thankfully none of my Seramas have feathers on their legs, but even if they did I don't think Seramas ever have the feathers like the feather feet breeds do.

 

[I Love Layers]

Thanks. For Seramas I think I would give them perches, and the cages would need to be taller to accommodate their tall tails. Currently I have lined up a condo (was a tall ferret cage which has been partitioned - probably cost $600 new) and was thinking that dog crates would work as well. Are they there all of the time? Do you put them in when you decide they will be shown even if the shows are some months away? Thankfully none of my Seramas have feathers on their legs, but even if they did I don't think Seramas ever have the feathers like the feather feet breeds do.

all of that is up to you. I'm really serious about showing and since I have LF blue, black, and Cochins i don't like them being on the ground. And the blues bleach so easily they are not outside ever

 

[spiritbrook]

For years I showed dogs. My own breeds were Belgian Tervuren, Siberian Husky, and Labrador. I showed many other breeds as well. Everything has their own way of preparation and maintaining show ready. All this chicken stuff is new to me. I figured that I might need to keep folks in some but was also hoping they could spend time outside too. I was hoping to get a solid grey Serama or something that was predominantly grey (there is no "blue" in Serama I'm told) I've got a dark fellow who is nearly chocolate colored, I wonder if I will need to keep him in and out of the sun.