PouleChicks chooks!

[Quik1th]

A lovely flock!

 

[lazy gardener]

This may be why your hatch rate was poor:

http://www.cashsblueeggs.com/araucanahistory.htm

The Araucana chickens originated in an area of Chile ruled by the Araucana indians. The Araucana chicken is a combination of two distinct breeds. The Collonocas, and the Quetros. The “Collonocas” laid blue eggs and were rumpless. The “Quetros”, had tufts a tail and laid brown eggs. Over time a combination of these two breeds created the Araucana, a breed that is rumpless, tufted, and lays blue eggs.

The tufts are unique to the Araucana chickens. The tufts are a group of feathers that grow from a flap of skin near the ear called a peduncle. The tufts gene is lethal when two copies are passed to the embryo, and the chick dies in the shell and does not hatch. So living tufted birds only carry 1 copy of the gene and that is why a tufted bird can have cleanfaced offspring. A cleanfaced bird is one that does not carry the tufting gene and cannot pass it on.

Since it only takes 1 copy of the tufting gene to produce tufts and two copies are lethal. Many breeders pens are mixs of clean faced and tufted birds. If you mate a tufted roo to a clean faced hen you will get 50% tufted and 50% cleanfaced and have none die in shell from tufting. If you breed tufted to tufted you will get 50% tufted, 25% clean faced, and 25% dead in the shell. You end up with the same amount of tufted chicks either way.

Araucanas are rumpless which means they do not have a tail or tail bone. The trait that producess rumplessness is a non-lethal gene unlike the tufting gene. Though the gene is non-lethal it can cause difficulties. It can produce very short bodied birds that are not only unbecoming, they have a tendancy to have what is called poopy but. Because of this some breeders have a few tailed birds in their breeding pens. However mating a rumpless bird to a tailed bird results in 50% rumpless and 50% tailed. Some of the birds will only be partly tailed or rumpless due to various modifying genes.

The is also a lot of variance in the shape and size of tufts. The shape of a parents tufts can have little bearing on the tufts a chick will have. A unilaterily tufted Aruacana (a tuft on only 1 cheek ) can have a chick that is bilaterily tufted ( a tuft on each cheek ). A bird with huge georgous tufts can have offspring that have tiny little barely there tufts.

 

[PouleChick]

Also, for having a LIGHT SUSSEX! I have Coronation Sussex and just love them!

She is lovely - so kind of solid and dependable looking I nearly lost her not long after we got her at 7 weeks (turned out to be a vitamin issue so luckily we saved her) I was saying to dh how sad I would have been not to have her in my flock.

You can post your photos at "what breed or gender is this,"

Thanks I will try that - I hadn't yet as I just thought it was maybe just too early to tell anything but I'll post and can always add more pics as it grows!

A lovely flock!

Thank you

This may be why your hatch rate was poor

Thanks for that - it is so interesting! Funnily enough LG it was the Aruacanas that did the best! Of the 5 eggs there was 1 not fertile, 3 live and only 1 dead so I think that is OK. The breeder I got them from tends to breed the non-tuftless to get around that issue as most people get them from her for the eggs not the 'breeding' - she only has 1 tufted I think she said in her flock. It was more a fertility of the eggs issue - 4 of the 9 just weren't fertile (only one of them an Aruacana) but she replaced all those eggs (plus 2 more!) at no charge which was lovely.

 

[lazy gardener]

Good that you have a responsible breeder. I sent you that b/c not all folks who buy from local breeders are so blessed. Some breeders start pumping out eggs and chicks without having an understanding of the genetics of their specific breed. Nor do they have any idea about how to breed forward for the betterment of their flock.