hehe I'll revisit this in another 8 weeks. I think I have until early Feb before male on male aggression becomes intolerable. On the positive side of things those saddle feathers interacting with the back feathers are really amazing to watch the iridescence in light.
Ok I was just curious as access to food is pretty much the same for all of them. The have been free ranging since I had an army worm outbreak here in the last 2 weeks, had to force my flock to get to work. Also I supervise and offer FF about 3 times daily as they range noone is getting forced off food yet. Based on that dataset I was assuming they should have similar growth rates and when put to bed at night I do crop checks and they are all full.
I did not know that they had multiple spurs. Can they have multiple spur buds, of which all might not develop?
I've seen images of show chicken with 5 spurs and additionally the females should have a minimum of 2 buds for breeding SQ's. That isn't my goal but I want to move these closer to the standard. But yes I was looking for buds to see if I could make the call sooner rather than later. For SQ birds any number over 2 spurs doesn't matter but one spur is a DQ. From what I read that is affirmative aart the buds should all become spurs.
Well, on most breeds, as far as I know, the spurs buds are apparent at a pretty young age, probably at hatch.
I've tried the eyeball and the touchy feelly methods. I'm just not seeing it on either the inside where that rearward facing toe is or the backside. I just see what look like normal scales. Oh well i'm sure in time all will be made clear.
