Having progressive pictures to help ID chicks

[Chirpy]

One of the most asked questions is "what is this chick?"

If there was a place (like the Breed section) that we could post pictures of as many different breeds of chicks from day old up to full grown (pullets and roos) so people could go there and see which picture looks like what they have - I, personally, would be eternally grateful.

My suggestion would be to post a picture of each breed at one day, one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, then maybe skip to six weeks, then eight weeks, then skip to 12 weeks, etc.

Be consistent with the pictures - meaning that each breed should have a picture at the same ages so we can really compare to what we have.

I know that this would be a lot of work and we'd really need BYC'ers help sending in correct pictures stating Breed, age, sex (when known - edited later when it's for sure) and color.

I'm right now taking pictures of the new chicks that I have so I could cover several different breeds.

Is this doable? Does anyone else care? Should I go stand in the corner?

 

[KellyGwen]

This is a GREAT idea!!! I have started doing this with my own chicks - even though I'm not positive what they all are...

I would contribute pictures! I know for certain that I have Lakenvelders, EE's, Brown Leghorns... the rest are "possibles" but once they're grown I'll know what they were and my pictures will help other people!

The pictures should be clear, against a solid background (like white paper) and show the leg color and combs...

Again... GREAT idea!!!

 

[Guitartists]

I was trying to compile images to put together a website to help ID chicks.... but only one member sent me pics!

LOL Maybe someday

 

[Dawn419]

I've been re-working my "breeds" pages to include more pix of them as chicks.

But it will only be helpful to anyone who has Banty Mottled Cochins, Silver Sebrights, Black Tailed Buff Japanese (roos only), Silkies (Blue, Black, Splash), Easter Eggers and Silver Spangled Hamburgs.

Dawn

 

[Chirpy]

Dawn - Is there a place where we can all post pictures of the different breeds (after being run by someone who can verify the pictures of being correct)?

People can add to it as they have pictures of a breed, sexes, colors not included.

I can cover: Buff Brahma pullet, Dark Brahma Roo, Black sex-link pullet, Buff Orp pullet, Silkie (not sure on sex yet - maybe both), Welsummer (not sure of sex yet), Andulusian (not sure of sex yet), Americauna pullet, Sussex pullet, Silver-laced Wyandotte pullet and Golden-laced Wyandotte pullet.

Do you think we could put this together?

 

[silkieluver_07]

I did this for a science project for raising silkie chicks, I found it to be very helpful! I would donate pictures sometime if needed.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Chirpy, you're a genius! I've been watching this thread and I love the idea and would really like to see the members pull together to make it happen. It would be a lot of work, but would really be worth the effort in the long run!

If someone (or multiple people) want to get together to organize and manage this we'll throw in the full support of BYC and we could host the page and images on our server.

Here is how I think it could be setup (not dictating, just brainstorming):

A 7 column page with the following columns. Each cell would have a thumbnail image that would link to a much larger / full scale picture.

1) Name of breed (alpha order)
2) Picture of an egg from that breed
3) Picture of a 1 day old chick
4) Picture of a 1 week old chick
5) Picture of a 1 month old chick
6) Picture of a full grown hen
7) Picture of a full grown rooster

I agree with Chirpy on consistency and I think best case (and remember I'm a bit of a perfectionist) would be to have all the pictures be about the same size, same angle, same direction, same quality, etc. This makes comparing two very similar birds MUCH easier.

Honestly... if this works out really well, this page could replace the existing breed page listings on BYC. If everything works out perfectly we can link the breed name to the member submitted breed pages.

Here's a sample I whipped together for a basic idea of what I'm thinking:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/breeds/chicken-breed-chart.html

So, I'd suggest (again, just my two cents) that 2-4 people volunteer to be co-managers of this project and they can be in charge of soliciting for pictures, filtering out the best ones, uploading the pics, etc.

 

[KellyGwen]

This is something I made up for my blog last week...

 

[Chirpy]

Nifty - Great.... I'm in (obviously) to help in anyway I can. You do need to know that I'm slightly computer illiterate... for some reason they don't like me.

I love the idea of the page you are talking about putting together, I would like to add either a 2 or 3 week old picture also as they change so much in that first month. Then, I think a "teenage" picture, maybe around four or five months old before the adult picture.

I agree that it would help enormously to have all the chicks facing the same direction and roughly the same distance from the camera. We'll have to come up with hard and fast 'rules' for the pictures so people know what to do.

The egg picture is a great idea. They would have to come from people who know for sure which egg came from which hen. I have three different brown egg layers and don't know which shade of brown comes from which hen. I can tell my two white egg layer eggs apart very easily however.

I guess we need a place to start to collect pictures from people. Then, whoever is helping can organize, sort and all that and actually put it together.

I'm personally very excited about this going together.

Tell me how to get started.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

I'm glad you're in!

Next steps:

Finalize the ages at which the pics will be taken. Worst case it is always better to have more pictures and cut back later than to have too few and wish you had taken more before.

Finalize the "rules" or "requirements" for submissions: Picture size, chick facing direction, angle of pic, etc.

Take one breed and use really good pictures as the example for which the others can be based on. It is easier to take a picture at a specific angle when you can see an example.

Crop and resize the images to "match" the examples. We have a bunch of people on the forum that can edit images. You could even horizontally swap an image in the case that the chick isn't facing the right direction.

Create thumbnails (could use the BYC upload tool ) and add them to the main page. Again, we have lots of people that can do this and can even use the BYC Pages tool to create the pages.

To keep things organized the image naming convention should be something like:

breed-age.jpg

for example:

australorp-egg.jpg and then australorp-1day.jpg

Soooo... Chirpy, let's see if we have any other volunteers that want to help get this party started and we'll go from there!