Yay! I found pics!
Hey Randall!
Patrick forwarded me the message and we were talking about your birds, but I couldn't see the pictures, so I thought I would hunt here.
Are they both white birds that are molting like this? I'll see what we can figure out, but they shouldn't be curlies (or Frazzled? is what some are calling them)
unless the eggs were somehow fertilized by a roo that the hen had long been removed from in a "keeping" not breeding pen..... BUT I dont think we have ever kept a breeding frizzled
white roo. We generally have smooth whites to cross with frizzled white hens. (Some might have a bit of red around the head, since that is a newer line and we are still working out that part as it pops up.)
We've had the frizzled white males but usually sold them, since we have colored frizzled roos that are from older and more typey lines.
Ill have to ask Patrick though, and look at my bazillion chicken breeder's pics, but from the ones I have seen in the last few minutes of quickly searching, the young white frizzled males were in the "sell" pics.
I think I had one that was nice and I was going to raise him out, but very young and didn't make it through the winter. Must go record hunting......
One answer I have now is an experience with Phyllis.
Here is her picture.
She had nice soft thick feathers, but in her second year she had the worst molt
ever. I have records of her breeding back for generations, since she was one of the first nearly "pure" frizzled serama and there are no curlies, or frizzled crossings in there.
I probably don't have any pics of her in the molt, but she just went mostly bald and looked terrible.
I nicknamed her "Skeletor" for this occurrence.
She just had a few feathers on her body randomly, with long primaries, but without the webbing. She just had long naked quills sticking out of her wings,and a little bit of fuzz on her rear. She looked like she had been plucked. She never did this but once, and I have no idea why, she was on the same regimen as the other frizzles. I've never had a frizzle molt like that. Sometimes they do have a bit of baldness at the top of the wing (more often) and back of the neck (less often) like yours when molting but I dont think I've seen one that didn't grow them back. I think we have had that happen with first molts, Im going to have to see if I wrote down anything like that, or have pics.
With Phyllis, I gave her her own pen with deep shavings, kept her inside my building, made sure she was parasite free, added protein to her diet, and just waited. She grew them all back in time and never did it again. I think I gave her vitamins as well in the beginning... probably PolyViSol.
Im thinking that yours will do the same, but keep us posted. I know that Patrick would love to have a curly to keep indoors if there is one already out there from our line to get 100% frizzles out of.
Thanks! Keep us posted. Id like to know what they do!
