Iowa Blues - Breed thread and discussion

[debs_flock]

Lots of new IaB around here. The chicks I ordered from Sandhill last year arrived a couple of weeks ago. There are two chocolate chicks, I'll have to take a picture. I hatched the first two from my own little flock and I just hatched ten out ten of the eggs I got from Jim.

 

[Jake Levi]

I think I am going to try dryer this year, I didnt hatch any this past year, but the year before I had a very poor hatch, and had a temp spike so I added more water, right now we are in a dry spring, no rain in two weeks, I am going to be watching the humidity real close this year. I am going to be incubating in the basement and will be watching it down there.

I'll be incubating for a couple of months, at least.

I'd like to hear what others are doing on this.

Of course the area makes a huge difference as well as home humidity.

 

[karimw]

Quote:
Oh come on Deb, you know we have to see pictures

 

[spartacus_63]

These are some very adventurous birds!

 

[karimw]

Quote:
Pretty girl!

 

[Hurley]

The last of my eggs are hatching this weekend. I'll be shutting down the incubator until the silvers are up and producing (especially since I have so many chicks right now). This weekend's batch are all birchens, but am currently growing out some nice looking silvers. Also have a handful of much prettier birchens than the parent stock from my own birds that I'll keep and push into the next generation to keep improving.

Hoping this weekend will be nice so I can finish working on my pair of covered runs/coops to have multiple breeding groups.

The silver trio from Kari from NYD hatch are getting bigger. The cockerel this week is really thinking he's a big boy, starting to stand up to the other roosters in the adjacent cage, girls are pinking up in the comb, so hoping for some eggs sometime soon.

Hopefully will get some photos this weekend of the birds.

 

[karimw]

I trimmed down my breeding flock to just the SP girls. I'm happy with how they're laying though. Hope to isolate the hen with the e+ gene. Rex will be retired from flock master soon and hopefully paired with just her for a while. I also plan to show him so he'll need some handling.

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Just got a dozen eggs from Kari yesterday and popped them into the incubator! WooHoo! It was fun to get together Kari and chat about the birds and how they're all developing/observations we're noticing in the breed. We don't get enough of that now that the Standard Committee is over!

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Lastnight Kari and I were discussing something quite unusual that's been happening with her flock. Kari has had some of her SP cockerels developing with a crow wing (meaning that the primaries are solid black like on a Birchen colored male.) Our thoughts up to this point were that the SP (brown mottled chicks) produced males with duckwing and the Brichen (black and white chicks) produced males with crow wing. This would mean that the SP chicks would be based on eb and the Brichen chicks based on E. However.......Kari has some of her SP chicks developing into cockerels with crow wing (the remainder of course developing the expected duckwing). This is something exciting and unexpected! As best as we can figure at the moment is that our SP chicks coming from Kari's flock are based on BOTH eb and E.

I assume the Db combined with Melanizers are allowing both the eb and E based birds to look the same. But the roosters cannot hide thier true base once adult feathers have come in. Discerning which base the hens are could prove problematic until further observations have come to light.

Penciled birds based on E are not unheard of. The Fayoumi is based on E and with the right modifiers you can have a perfectly laced Fayoumi (of course this bird would be worthless for show and not within the breed's standard, but it does prove that one can have a nicely laced hen based on E). And it appears that some of Kari's SP's are based on E as evidenced by her upcoming cockerels.

It seems everyday this Iowa Blue restoration project is turning up something new and exciting!!!

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Kari-

Lastnight we were discussing the differences in the early chick feathering. Most notably the lighter vs. darker chick down on the SP chicks (due to what I speculate is the result of the Pg gene in action), the early wing growth differences (clearly barred vs. irregular barring), and lastly the length of the tail growth (longer tails vs. shorter tails). My initial thoughts were that this was the result of sex differences and that maybe it would be possible to sex at an earlier age due to down/feather pattern/tail growth indicators. However.....

Is it possible these differences (particularly the early wing feather pattern) could be the result of the base (eb vs. E) and not the sex? Maybe the base would alter the early feather pattern and could give us some sort of indicator as to which base the chick is based on. I guess only time will tell (and tons of observation). However, if the chick's base could be determined and an early age due to feather pattern, then maybe we could segregate the eb and E chicks. It would be interesting to see what two E based SP birds would produce when crossed.......I would expect E based SPs, but with genetics you never know.........

What are your thoughs Kari?

Connie? Anyone else?