The "Ask Anything" to Nicalandia Thread

[3KillerBs]

I don't know if I would recommend Anconas based on my experience with her, honestly. She isn't what I would call flighty, actually she's very tame and human friendly, loves to sit in your lap (and I mean yours or your friend's or their friend's lap, she is absolutely not picky!) or be picked up and have her feathers stroked, but she's very meek with the other birds and was bullied pretty harshly when she was younger. She's reached the age where few are older than her so she finally is more intimidating than intimidated by the majority of the other birds, but her first couple years were pretty tough. But, of course, she's the only Ancona I have ever had, so who knows if that's a breed thing or just her.

I've been very fortunate in that my Australorps are quite laid-back in their personalities and I haven't had any significant bullying issues beyond some hatch-to-hatch conflict between "teenagers" and newly-integrating chicks.

Mine have had decent sized eggs, and they do just fine so far in both winter and summer out here.

You get some pretty brutal summers, right?

It seems to be much harder to find breeds evaluated for heat-tolerance than for cold-tolerance -- though it's a given for anything Mediterranean.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I've been very fortunate in that my Australorps are quite laid-back in their personalities and I haven't had any significant bullying issues beyond some hatch-to-hatch conflict between "teenagers" and newly-integrating chicks.



You get some pretty brutal summers, right?

It seems to be much harder to find breeds evaluated for heat-tolerance than for cold-tolerance -- though it's a given for anything Mediterranean.

High 80s to low 100s, late May-eaely September

 

[nicalandia]

Interestingly enough, my Ancona hen (another breed that is black mottled) has stayed pretty consistently black with about the same amount of white on her every molt, and she'll be 10 years old this year.

They have a different mottling mutation which is allelic to the other mottling mutations found. There are several, some have been genetically sequenced, most remain in obscurity. The difference between exchequer Leghorns and Ancona is just that

 

[nicalandia]

What causes these upright feathers?
Is it just because he's got the genes for long feathers?

Yes, thats it

 

[MysteryChicken]

What causes these upright feathers? They've gotten more and more upright as he's aged and lost his comb. They're always up, he doesn't flare his hackles anymore with his age and their size
View attachment 3384177View attachment 3384178View attachment 3384179
Is it just because he's got the genes for long feathers?

He's got some funky Brows .

 

[nicalandia]

Exchequer Leghorn vs Ancona

 

[JacinLarkwell]

He's got some funky Brows .

They're his old man brows

 

[MysteryChicken]

@nicalandia, Would my Blue mottled bantam hen be good to test for mottling, with Dino, the Chameleon hen's father?

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

They have a different mottling mutation which is allelic to the other mottling mutations found. There are several, some have been genetically sequenced, most remain in obscurity. The difference between exchequer Leghorns and Ancona is just that

Interesting, I knew there were several alleles for mottling but don't know much about it beyond that. Those three of my Mottled Cochins definitely more strongly resemble my Exchequer Leghorn than they do my Ancona or the fourth Mottled Cochin I have.

The Leghorn and the Ancona side by side. Bear in mind they are both hatchery specimens.

 

[nicalandia]

We may never know how many allelic mutations of mottling are in total, research sequenced mottled D uccles and they did not find any mutantion. They speculated that the mutation was actually located just outside of the coding region of the allele. Non coding DNA is called junk DNA