Gary, thanks for the pictures. IMO, some of your white cropouts currently look as good or better than the purebreds as Cornish. I bought a couple of white Aseel hens thinking them necessary to cross for a harder feather in the chicks you blessed me with. However, the one white cockeral I have from your eggs looks to be of as hard of feathering at this point as my purebreds, and the ones I see pictured here. I also have a double black laced pullet from you that has good hard feathering, and only the more pointed shape of her laces [though she's bigger than most, older I think] distinguishes her from the oldest DC pullets.
Al, I don't think any of the project chicks are what I call loose feathered, but several are softer feathered than Cornish. I would have described the larger DC cockeral I used to have as hard feathered but loose feathered................... they didn't hug his body tight enough, but were hard enough to be brittle and no fluff under them. I'm glad I have some that are softer feathered, they will work well in my meat bird project. Seeing Big Medicine's purebred and project chicks side-by-side makes me think you might have over-estimated the age of my new DCs. I recall you guessing them in their late teens, and I don't think any of them have yet reached their teens; they were from several very late hatches. The youngest [yet to be pictured] was under two weeks old when I brought it home, the oldest still had whisps of yellow down on their heads, and many inbetween those ages. [You can see the whisps of down on the one head shot, and that's what the oldest looked like the day I brought them home.] I'm pretty sure the oldest were hatched in July and I know the last chick was hatched past the middle of August.
