I'm always learning by asking, so I ask if I have questions. Plus I like genetics, I am geeky like that. I mean in no way to poke, prod or otherwise irritate. My questions are in pure curiosity, nothing more.
In regard to the vaulted skull issue... does it only happen with crested birds? Has it ever come about when crossing two uncrested birds that anyone knows of?
@ Rafter H - Do you know if the parents of the eggs you hatched had vaulted skulls or were they just crested? Heavily crested or smaller crests?
I know some think the landrace type seems to be depicted as a "free love" type breed sometimes... but I don't think anyone here is naive enough to think that nobody ever chose a bird for a certain trait or reason. I don't think anyone is saying there was some random crapshoot at the farm and whoever won got to stay out of the pot and make the next generation. I personally believe that they are just trying to say that there wasn't anything in particular that was bred for, like lavender coloring, or blue legs... or large crests... There was no "standard of perfection." Please, do correct my interpretation if I am wrong. I'd rather be knowledgeable than right.
I am really interested in the genetics of the skulls though. I'm very interested to know if it can crop up several generations forward.
You are surely right about the possibility of problems arising due to the jostling eggs get during shipping. Some outfits , who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent , apparently play football with egg packages to break the monotony at times. Also , there are no doubt problems that occur in the incubator. We had 3 in our Icelandic hatch (18 eggs)that had issues and 2 in the Swedes (30 eggs). In our second Icelandic hatch (10 eggs) Non-crested roo/crested hens , all the chicks are normal and healthy. I'm sure some of them will be crested but no sign of a problem an no vaulted skulls.Thank you for the reply, interesting!! How many chicks in your hatch had the deformity? I'm wondering if hatch environment or jostling around during shipping could affect whether or not it presents. But what I'm really wondering is if the breeder was just lucky enough to have used two recessive carriers and that one particular pair was the culprit. My brain will work on this today... Very interesting...
I know and I dislike that practice with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns .... My wife says I shouldn't hate. My post was just to warn the folks who care but didn't know the risk. It appears not to be so common a problem as I was worried it might be and it seems that most folks are truly interested in breeding a healthy , viable population of Icelandics. Hopefully , we always outnumber the horse traders !
Have you ever had issues with the SFH's and vaulted skulls before? Were the two breeds incubated together that had the issues? I do appreciate your entertaining my questionsYou are surely right about the possibility of problems arising due to the jostling eggs get during shipping. Some outfits , who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent , apparently play football with egg packages to break the monotony at times. Also , there are no doubt problems that occur in the incubator. We had 3 in our Icelandic hatch (18 eggs)that had issues and 2 in the Swedes (30 eggs). In our second Icelandic hatch (10 eggs) Non-crested roo/crested hens , all the chicks are normal and healthy. I'm sure some of them will be crested but no sign of a problem an no vaulted skulls.
. I'd like to make sure I make good choices when breeding.
Actually this was our first hatch of Swedes but our third hatch of Icelandics. Our first hatch of Icees were via the mail and and we set them with a clutch of our own Delaware eggs. The Delaware hatch was par for excellent as usual and the Icees ... not so much but all were healthy. It was when I set the second clutch from the Icees we'd raised that I first saw the vaulted skull. It didn't occur to me just then that there might be a correlation between the crested to crested mating we had at that time and the deformed chicks. I accidently ran across that tid bit a little later on and it hit me like a brick. To be honest I felt pretty bad that it was my fault the poor little Freds had to suffer. The Swede eggs were also shipped and in this case I did not expect a problem but later I realized that one of the breeders we got our eggs from did have crested roosters and crested hens . I might be temped to blame some of these problems on the incubator but in both cases where deformed chicks were born we had other clutches that hatched without a hitch. This could lead one to believe that shipped eggs could also be a part of the problem. We have shipped eggs of non-crested breeds to various locations all across the US and thus far we have yet to have any complaints about birth defects in our eggs. What I do know is that with our Icees when I mated crested to crested we had birth defects. When I mated non-crested to crested we had zero birth defects. Of course this was only two matings but when we saw the same problem in the Swedes the decision was easy for us. I do hope that someone with more experience in this area will chime in but until then we are going to be content to use non-crested roos only on our flock.Have you ever had issues with the SFH's and vaulted skulls before? Were the two breeds incubated together that had the issues? I do appreciate your entertaining my questions
Yes , the Icelandics with vaulted skulls were from our own birds and entirely my fault but we have remedied that problem now , me thinks , by cutting the crested rooster out. And you may have raised a point in that it may have just been the rooster at fault and may have nothing at all to do with his crest???? I had to make a husbandry call on that one so ... I don't really know much about the SFH other than the pictures that went with the ebay auction and the breeders assurance that they have never seen this in their flock before. I'm not calling this breeders honesty to question but simply saying that we have seen vaulted skull from their birds. There well could be something happening during shipping that is wreaking havoc on the poor little Freds before they get where they are going. I only have very limited experience with the crested birds so far and am learning as I go and trying to share what I learn with others who are raising these dandy critters. As, I run across pertinent info I will pass it on. Thanks for your reply mlmddh. You said " When I had SFH ". Might I ask why you gave them up ? I'm sure hoping it was just because the Icelandic chickens are so awesome.
