SLW comb doesn't look right??? *update w/ pics*

[newchickmom09]

I was looking at my two wyandottes 3 weeks old(one silver and one golden) and they have two totally different combs growing in. I thought both were supposed to have rose combs. Right? My SLW's looks like any other regular comb long with points and my GLW is looking flat and wide. I have never seen a rose comb in real life, just in pics. I thought they were both supposed to have the rose comb or am I mistaken?

**pics on page 2**

 

[Katy]

Yes, they should have rose combs, but a lot of hatchery SLWs have the single combs.

 

[speckledhen]

And some breeders keep single combed Wyandottes to deal with low fertility issues, which can happen with the rose combed breeds, I understand. Out of six hatchery Wyandottes, I had one single combed girl.

 

[Chris09]

This might help.
A wyandotte should have a Rose comb.
Chris

 

[NYREDS]

Quote:
I keep reading that here & have never heard it anywhere else. I know breeders of some of the best Wyandottes in the country, large fowl & bantah, & this is not their practice. That said I have also never seen a single combed "Wyandotte" when visiting their farms.

 

[speckledhen]

I have read it in several studies and have repeated it here. Can't recall the links or the sources, but it's late and I'd have to locate it for you. If I do, I'll post it here.

Here is one link that I can locate quickly. Will have to look for the others:
http://www.rosecomb.com/federation/articles/infertility.html


Poultry breeding and Genetics By Roy D. Crawford says the same thing on Page 192. It's not just Wyandottes, but several rose combed breeds.

Those tell about reduced fertility, but as to the practice of keeping single combed versions, I'll have to check further for that reference, though it may be in that same book. There is a Google thing where you can read excerpts from the book, but cannot copy and paste them.

 

[jjdward]

I too have been told by a breeder that sometimes he keeps single combed birds. As a matter of fact, I got a pair from him and the rooster has the single comb. From what I understand, every now and then, you will get a single comb. I'm by no means an expert though.

 

[Black Feather]

A Wyandotte is supposed to have a rose comb, but it is not supposed to look like the rose comb in the picture above. The spike is supposed to be much smaller and follow the curve of the skull. The rose comb on a Wyandotte also tends to sit closer to the skull than rose combed breeds like Hamburgs and Rosecombs.

My friend also breeds Wyandottes and has excellent quality stock. He says he does get the odd single combed birds. Mostly this happens because there has been a bit out out crossing with rocks in some of the lines he has. Breeders tend to have good reasons when the out cross from different breeds. My friend was trying to improve the tail type on his bantam wyandottes since they had next to no main tail feathers. His solution was to find a Plymouth Rock with Wyandotte type and cross it into his line. This gave his Wyandottes the tail feathers he was looking for, but also caused birds to pop up that had single combs. In his case it had nothing to do with fertility.

It is true too that rose combed birds have been studied and found to have lower fertility rates than single combed breeds. I'm not sure how many Wyandotte breeders keep single combed birds for breeding, but I'm sure there are some. Like everything, different breeders have different practices.

Do you have pictures of your birds? That would help a lot in determining what sort of combs they have.

Urban Coyote

 

[tadkerson]

I have a hypothesis about rose comb and single comb genetics. I think that the recessive single comb genes (p+ or r+) influence the shape of the rose comb; or in other words the recessive single comb genes act as modifiers of the rose comb gene or genes. The same would be true of the pea comb. I do not have any data to back this up; it is just a hypothesis.

Tim

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
I keep reading that here & have never heard it anywhere else. I know breeders of some of the best Wyandottes in the country, large fowl & bantah, & this is not their practice. That said I have also never seen a single combed "Wyandotte" when visiting their farms.

There is a giant difference between show breeders and commercial hatcheries.

If you were a show breeder, yeah, you would not want to be producing bunches of chicken that were massively useless (single combed), and you would ideally be well enough in control of your gene pool that you were not having ongoing fertility/hatchability problems ANYhow.

If you are a commercial hatchery, however, you do not care if you produce some percentage of single combs, as you sell them right along with the other chicks for the same price; and a high premium is placed on the highest fertility/hatchability possible, without people being likely to want to fuss around with it by selection and multiple lines and so forth.

So I do not think the two situations are particularly comparable.

Pat