So...I just hatched out 34 chicks of several breeds and crossings. I had Blue Laced Red Wyandottes, BBS Ameraucanas, Blue Am/Black Copper Maran crosses, Blue Am/Welsummer crosses, Blue Am/Speckled Sussex crosses, Blue Am/Silver Laced Wyandotte crosses, Blue Am/Gold Laced Wyandotte crosses, and Wheaten/Blue Wheaten Ameraucanas. I can easily identify the Blue Laced Reds, the Wheaten/Blue Wheaten Ams, the 4 Splash Ams I got, and the Maran crosses (they all have feathered legs and white eyeliner), but I cannot for the life of me identify the others. All of the rest are either blue or black and don't have a whole lot of identifiable differences. I have 10 that look to have some sort of cushion/walnut/rose comb, which is weird because I should only have 8 of the Wyandotte crosses, and there should be 4 more of the Blue/Black Ams, 5 of the SS crosses, and 2 of the Wellie crosses, but I can't tell any of them apart. Is there any way I could identify them by shank color? I know the Wellies and Wyandottes have yellow skin, so I should have willow shanked babies from those crosses, and the SS and pure Ams should all have slate shanks because of their white skin, right? Only problem is, nobody seems to have noticeably willow colored shanks yet...they all look slate to me so far. And there's not a lot of difference in comb shape in any of the non-rose comb looking babies. I'm having a heck of a time and I want to start selling the ones I don't intend to keep. They were supposed to all be separated at hatch, but my second bator was having issues getting up to the proper humidity so I had to throw all the eggs in together at the last minute and couldn't keep my purebreds separate from the EEs. Does anyone have pics of chicks produced from any of these crossings to help me out? I'll post some pics of them in just a sec to show you what I'm up against here. Any tips/suggestions/advice would be greatly appreciated, as this is my first time with most of these crosses and I could really use the help!! Thanks for reading!
