Question for other serious breeders

[tadkerson]

I have not found any research on wry tail. Some breeders say it is recessive and others say it is polygenic, a poultry geneticist believes it is polygenic and may also have a physical component. Such as, weak muscles that control the tail or a deformity in the skeleton ( the caudal vertebrae). I have seen a case where the wry tail corrected itself over time.

I have no experience with wry tail but can only report information I have gathered from other individuals.

Tim

 

[Krys109uk]

Thanks Tim,

I'm not sure I know a wry tail from a lazy tail. I have a pullet now, the first I've had like this. Sometimes she holds her tail normally & sometimes she does not. When it goes to one side it always the same side. Is this wry tail or lazy tail?

 

[rodriguezpoultry]

Quote:
Well now that is awesome. Where do you put the food coloring? on the outside lips of the vent or just inside the opening?

 

[JanieMarie]

Quote:
Scoliosis of chickens?
I've always thought my pullets wry tail was physical. In this case injury. She was fine to start but I moved them to a different pen and at night all the birds in this pen would cram into one nesting box and she was always in the back all bent. Oddest thing. And I never figured out why they crammed in there. Fright? And they only did it a short time. I assumed she had gotten injured. Just the same I'll cull her this fall. Too bad too she has beautiful lacing.

 

[Black Feather]

This thread has turned out to be way more interesting that I thought it would

I'm unfamiliar with the genetic of wry tail myself. I know for certain that my flock did not have it until last year and I have been breeding from the same bloodlines since 2005. It is a relatively young show flock that I've been creating from molding a number of different bloodlines together, so I wasn't completely surprised that wry tail suddenly cropped up. The first few years I was working with the flock there was no wry tail and I did not add new birds so it was present in the original lines somewhere. Last year I noticed my first wry tailed youngsters. I did ask a friend and he said it could be genetic or also possibly due to incubation issues, specifically an incubator that is too dry. I did have problems with my incubator being too dry that year, so kept my fingers crossed and culled all the wry tailed youngsters, or so I thought. One hen slipped through. It was one of those irritating situations where I didn't discover her until she was in a show pen at a show. If I went out to the barnyard right now, I probably wouldn't be able to pick her out solely based on her tail.

So far this year I've only notices two birds that seems wry tailed in this years hatch. One thing I will mention though is make sure your birds tails are fully grown in. Rosecombs will look lop sided in the tail if they are missing feathers on one side, but not the other. Which reminds me, I should probably check her to see if her tail is growing in. I may be stressing over nothing.

UC

 

[NYREDS]

Yard full o' rocks :

I currently have 2 Heritage Delawares that were "culls", only becasue they had minor defects to the standard. One roo and one hen. However, the original breeder said that "what one doesn't have , the other does and vice versa, they should throw beautiful babies". Soooo....unless the trait would be inherited by all offspring, I wouldn't cull it.

I have heard many sellers put forth this same opinion but unfortunately it doesn't always [or often] work that way with animal breeding. It's just too simple. If this really worked on a regular basis people would be in the market for complimentary culls with which they could produce champions. Chicken salesmen, like used car salesmen, don't always tell the truth.
Personally I have never kept a bird with a DQ for breeding. I did one year keep a couple of pullets with a major defect [feather width] because I liked everthing else about them. The first year it worked out ok. The second year the feather defect showed up everywhere & it took me several years of heavy culling to breed it out. IMO the risk of screwing up a breeding program is too great to take the chance of breeding in a DQ or serious fault.​

 

[Smoky73]

Quote:
Well now that is awesome. Where do you put the food coloring? on the outside lips of the vent or just inside the opening?

I take the dye and do like I do when I am AI'ing my hens. I rub them so they squat and then grab and lift tail so vent is open and drop a few drops in and she sucks it up. Sometime though, I will actually use a syringe though and put it in a bit further.
Sometime the bird will poop most of it out with her first poo after, in that case I just redo. Also, keep in mind this will dye their butts so do not use if your planning on showing the bird soon LOL. I had my nice blue silkie hen running around with an obvious blue butt for some time. Often the eggs will only have faint streaks, but sometimes its more noticeable. Can last up to 2 weeks depending on how much she retained. Also colors like yellow do not work well and I try to resist using red. Blue greens purples and pinks work well, and you can mix the colors up too for different shades.