Show Off Your American Gamefowl and Chat Thread!!!

[centrarchid]

Maybe a little. Should I worm her?

That is your call. Check feces for sigh. If not confident in a negative, then treat. Next go watch her nutrition closer before and during incubation.

 

[alroy82]

 

[centrarchid]

Can any guess the sex? Still too early for me to tell

On some I can tell by looking for dark breast feathers coming in. If those wheaten then they need to go another two weeks. I can tell on one of my lines by looking at the first of hackle feathers. Pattern on stags with broader stripes and less pattern if present.


Stag they are hanging with likely to go broody if anything like mine.

 

[alroy82]

On some I can tell by looking for dark breast feathers coming in. If those wheaten then they need to go another two weeks. I can tell on one of my lines by looking at the first of hackle feathers. Pattern on stags with broader stripes and less pattern if present.


Stag they are hanging with likely to go broody if anything like mine.

The stag will go broody?

 

[centrarchid]

In a manner of speaking, yes. For some reason many mature male games have the capacity for going into a parental mode beyond simply tidbitting and providing alarm calls typical of the Red Jungle Fowl side of their ancestry. Breeding and keeping systems for games may have had a very strong selective force on males not only not harming offspring but also investing more when chicks involved are their own offspring. At least part of the last few thousand years games where kept such that hens were kept in close proximity to the cocks / stags they where bred to and chicks could benefit from nurturing and protective actions of the adult male.

 

[alroy82]

In a manner of speaking, yes. For some reason many mature male games have the capacity for going into a parental mode beyond simply tidbitting and providing alarm calls typical of the Red Jungle Fowl side of their ancestry. Breeding and keeping systems for games may have had a very strong selective force on males not only not harming offspring but also investing more when chicks involved are their own offspring. At least part of the last few thousand years games where kept such that hens were kept in close proximity to the cocks / stags they where bred to and chicks could benefit from nurturing and protective actions of the adult male.

This is what im hoping for so they can have some protection from my cats and such and that I can free range them. Right now they are all locked up with stag in coop. Have heat lamp for nightime. All 10 chicks 2 different clutches 2 weeks apart with same stag

 

[centrarchid]

Alroy, I assume you have seen the following thread.


https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/882368/what-to-look-for-in-a-broody-rooster

 

[alroy82]

Alroy, I assume you have seen the following thread.


https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/882368/what-to-look-for-in-a-broody-rooster

No I haven't. But thanks I'll check it out

 

[alroy82]

Very interesting thread. Awesome how you have took the time to study the behavoir of the cock with young ones. And I nust hope my stag/cock will imprent on the younger ones I placed with him also. Niether batch are his offspring. I penned him with mama and babies about a week ago and he took to them.

 

[centrarchid]

Very interesting thread. Awesome how you have took the time to study the behavoir of the cock with young ones. And I nust hope my stag/cock will imprent on the younger ones I placed with him also. Niether batch are his offspring. I penned him with mama and babies about a week ago and he took to them.

They do not have to be his, especially in confinement. Imprinting comes pretty quick and is a process you can see.


I remember walking past my great uncles row of flypens where he kept the core brood cocks and brood hens that where used to generate pure birds used to make battle crosses. Those core birds were of the highest value so had to do their breeding under lock and key. Most eggs put under broodies but late in season some of the brood hens got broods off in the flypens. More often than not the cock would tend those chicks so it was nothing to several broody cocks within a hundred feet of each other.