- May 19, 2009
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Hi!,Would you mind explaining how you cull for color in the young chicks? I was wanting to do that next year, so I don't have to raise a ton of birds to the selling age( way too much feed/money goes into raising 80+ brahmas). I was planning on doing this with my buffs since my lights seem to throw the correct coloring much more often. I think I still won't cull for color immediately next year, just separate them and let them get some feathers in, then cull, until I get more comfortable with the culling for down color.
One thing I learned from working unsuccessfully with BBR and Black-Tailed Buff Marans was that the chick down is definitive ( unless one's breed has some kind of genetic exception like the wildly colored landrace Swedish Flower Hens) . If something is off in the chick down, I better watch as that chick grows to see what is going on. I don't know if this works for eb birds. My Light Sussex are eWh/eWh S/S Co/Co.
Here's what happened. I was familiar with the concept of "warning blood" from breeding collies. I knew that the classic correct Light Sussex down was a nice clear yellow throughout. Last year I bred 1/2 brothers to 1/2 sisters ( as my foundation trio was all sired by the same cock, but 3 different dams). I got 2 different types of chick down. One was the classic clear yellow. The other (I now know) contained warning blood that was telling me I was reaching the end of Co's ability to hold back the black from bleeding out into the white feathers on the back). It manifested as a slightly darker patch of down on the nape of the neck where the hackle would be. As last season progressed, chicks of both downs feathered out into correctly colored Light Sussex. Hum... That left me wondering.
Then this year, I inbred mother to son. The dam being one of my my foundation hens. So it was a really close breeding on some fine genetics. This time I got 3 kinds of chick down. The 2 from last year and a 3rd which was the classic yellow with a slightly darker patch on the nape of the neck where the hackle would be ( same place as last year's "tint") . It was not just a tint ( like last year) , it was just slightly darker, I would call it a "hue". Ok, that was interesting. So I watched the chicks grow out. The chicks with the hue on the nape of their necks feathered out (males only, into wider hackle feathers ;completely laced, no superhackle) and both sexes had black bleeding out onto their backs. This is not the same as the bleeding caused by improper color balancing of the underfluff in eb based breeds. Because Light Sussex is eWh based (thus the down is white to the skin), this bleeding is because the breeder mated too much black into the mating. The feathers were scattered across the top of the back in a "V" shape like they were an incomplete extension of the hackle. They were light charcoal in color ( not Blue or Lav, I don't have those genes in my strains) and the outermost 1/3 of the feather was affected. We are talking 12 to 16 scattered feathers here.
The strain-crossed Light Sussex were perfectly colored in the down and juvenile feathering. I raised the 7 hatches staggered from 3 weeks to 3 months old so got to see all this happening at different stages at the same time and compare the chicks.
From now on, I can watch my chick down and know whether I am seeing correct down ; warning blood ( mark these chicks to remember and mate them to a "correct down" chick so we don't cross the threshold into "too much black") ; or too much black ( cull these chicks).
Best,
Karen
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