Is Something Wrong?

[BlueCamas]

I've noticed that a few of my young cockerels that are between 4-5 months start to develop funny colored hackle feather. It's usually a silver almost like Birchin and sometimes a dark mahogany. My birds are Blue and Black so it's pretty noticeable if it happens. I don't have this problem in any of my older birds, only young cockerels that are maturing. It's really starting to worry me as I show most of my birds and these odd colored hackle feathers would DQ them. I have always culled the cockerels who are being affected so I don't know is it goes away as they get older or if it gets worse. The birds seem completely healthy, but I'm wondering if it's some sort of mineral or vitamin deficiency or something

I have no clue to what it could be. All of my parent birds are completely normal. What could be wrong!?!


The bird on the upper left corner is a good example of what I'm talking about. He should be all black

 

[jonaedna]

Keep him and start a different color if you have the room for it. What breed is he?

 

[BlueCamas]

He's a Bantam Plymouth Rock and I breed for SQ birds and and I have limited space so keeping him isn't really an option.

 

[speckledhen]

It's base color leakage and it doesn't go away. It also can pass to the chicks. Had a gorgeous black Ameraucana rooster out of show stock with serious leakage and some of his sons got it and some did not, but it made for too many culls.

 

[BlueCamas]

I guess that would be better than something health related. None of their parents have anything of the sort so I'm not exactly sure who it came from. I am certainly not going to keep anything that has any leakage so hopefully the issue will go away on it's own.

 

[BlueCamas]

Here is another example of the "leakage". This time it's reddish colored in one of my young blue cockerels

 

[speckledhen]

Yup, that's leakage. Here is the rooster I mentioned to you, out of good show lines, too. He should be solid, shiny black with beetle green sheen, but you see the gold and silver streaking:




And the reason you don't use them for breeding? Here is one of his sons, a wild and crazy extreme example, one that never came up again, but you get the picture. Most didn't have leakage, but many did have it like their sire, both the blue and black males (he had blue hens). Leakage usually shows most on the males:

 

[BlueCamas]

That's as bummer. I have 3 cockerels who are totally clean and hopefully they will produce clean chicks as well. It would be a shame to have to stop breeding/cull this line since this variety of Bantam Rocks is so rare.

 

[speckledhen]

Bummer, for sure. You could breed them and cull the ones with bleed-thru, but then you'd have to sell all of those as pet quality if you want to breed to the Standard.

 

[BlueCamas]

Not to resurrect a "dead thread" or anything, but I just wanted give an update. The blue cockerel in the last picture I posted apparently doesn't have "leakage". An APA judge walked up to me at a swap, handled him, offered to buy him (he was for sale), and when I pointed out the "leakage" he promptly told me that "leakage is when a pipe drips water" and that what my bird had was not leakage. He then told me that he was going to take him down to CA to use in a BBS Bantam Rock Breeding Program and then set $5 on the table and walked away with him. So yeah, I kinda just "sold" a potential BQ cockerel, and now I'm just more confused