I got my first CL that didn't 'breed true'. --
Well she kind of did...but not really. I have a pullet with feathered legs. This is the first CL I have seen with this defect. Isn't that awful? There are 3-leg feathering genes - and since she is the first to show up - it has to be the only one that is recessive. In another thread Sonoran Silkies put up this info-->
"There are three genes for feathered legs; none are sexlinked (meaning that they come from BOTH parents). Two are incompletely dominant; meaning that if present in the bird, they will show. They cannot be hidden, and one two copies will have more feathering than a single copy. One gene is recessive. Pti^1 has two foot feathered alleles as well as the wild-type not-foot feathered allele; Pti^1B is found in brahmas; Pti^1L is found in langshans."
So, please help me out here oh ye genetics wizards.... the gene I need to breed OUT of my flock is the wild-type not-foot feathered allele; Pti^1.... The feet are not feathered.
Only by line-breeding did this recessive show up. Now I need to keep the feather-legged pullet to breed to each of her brothers--- in the event no chicks from that pairing have feathered legs - then he has no recessive Pti^1, so I will know that he is clean for that recessive. - If I decide to breed him to his grandmother who has the recessive, then I will need to breed the hatched females to a feather-legged male with wildtype and breed the males to this same feather-legged pullet to be sure that none of them have inherited the recessive gene.
Does that sound right? So suddenly the feather-legged pullet goes from being a cull to being a detective for the males in my flock. And I will need to try to find a feather-legged male to check all the pullets in the future -- til I am 100% certain that I have that gene eradicated.
Any insights? Anyone else have this happen, or does anyone know more about the wild-type non-foot feathered allele?
I am one person who has posted about feather stubs but they did not disappear after the first molt, so there is more than one person out there with some feather stubs.
I am not upset about the stubs and it is just one more problem to be worked on and solved with this breed. All breeds have their own issues to work with and this is not the first breed I have had with stubs. One hatchery hen had them (decent type otherwise) and one cockerel out of 12 Wellies I hatched in the spring also had them.
The story with my Cream Legbars: I got a set of hatching eggs from Blackbirds13 and hatched 2 cockerels. One had 3 feathers on one foot/shank. Worried that there may have been a marans in the mix, I contacted Maria. She said that the only rooster of breeding age was a Cream Legbar and that the egg came from the rooster that had been taken by a predator, so no further testing was available to me. She said (and I believe her) that she had never seen feather stubs in her chicks before and she has hatched a lot of chicks.
Here is Barnaby as a chick. This is the most obvious of the feather stubs:
At 1 year, I checked him and thought that they had disappeared, but when you look really, really hard, you can see the tiny stub on the left sticking out about 2 mm from the leg (black background). IT pulled out easily. My guess is that the stubs are so small, the majority of the feather got rubbed away by normal activity and only the base of the shaft was visible.
I theorized that the shipping may have messed with the genetics since Maria's flock was clean so I have used him becasue overall he has good type and color and this is his only major fault besides his comb.
I have bred him to 2 crestless hens I have (yes I am starting with pretty rough stock, but what do you do but try to make lemonade from lemons!) this spring, and only one of the chicks--a cockerel that is almost identical to him in color and type has feather stubs. I contacted the breeder of the hens and he said he had never seen stubs on his chicks and in fact had never heard of them before. I believe that he it truthful as well and he has bred quite a few birds. So what are the odds that I have one hen that has recessive for stubs from a breeder that has never seen them and a cockerel with feather stubs (2 recessives) from a breeder that has never had them? Not sure but it makes me wonder about mutations and epigenetics from shipping or possible linkage between type that allows the stub gene to be expressed.
Its on his right shank, but not the left--didnt get one close up:
And here he is at 14 weeks, very similar to dad but on the opposite foot and he started out with more feathering down the lateral aspect of the shank. The feathering is not gone but is not as obvious (not that you can really see it in the first photo) but you can see the remnants of the stubs going down the shank but they are disappearing faster now since the original stubs were more downy/finer:
I have not culled him yet. He is decrowed and seems like a reasonable boy in all other ways, but was not planning on using him for breeding since he is so similar to his father and has the stubs. I have not rechecked the stubs since September and was going to do that after the holidays when I get a little more time.
I have to run, but will provide additional info later on regarding some info I dug up when I looked for info last year.
Getting lots of cockerels out of them and only one pullet that I can tell so far. The good news is that in my area the Olive eggers are worth as much as (if not more than) the legbars. I'd hatch more of them if my hen would stop going broody. It's OK though since she's a great momma. My olive pullet is 6 weeks old now, so I'll be looking for that first egg in about 20 weeks...
