The Welsummer Thread!!!!

[Orchid]

Quote:
Cute!

 

[EweSheep]

Congratulations on Opa for joining the WCNA........another one in the making!

 

[Hens and Roos]

okay question for those who have been working with the Welsummer breed: as some of you remember we hatched out a chick with weird feathering and couldn't tell if it was a pullet or cockeral as it showed salmon chest feathering but boyish characteristics. It turned out to be a cockeral. Well he is now about 3.5 months and here is his updated picture.

Our friend who does our poultry testing and has had birds for years now was over today along with her daughter who is working on her poultry degree and they looked at him-"Boygle" Her daughter was thinking that he could possible be a hen line male due to the color pattern gene and he has red on the breast compared to the male black. Has anyone ran across this before with the Welsummers?

The thought is to put him with a hen and see what hatches out and if the idea is correct the pullets pattern should improve but the cockerals would not be useable.

Any thoughts would be great!

 

[NCSprout]

that's a very interesting looking cockerel.
I'm interested to see how that goes, I hatched out 3 wellies in the last hatch and the pullet is off color, lots of black...the cockerels have only little bits of black in their chest.

Here's a couple of pics...

they're not the best pics, but it's as good as i could get so far, I'll try to get individual pics later.

*ETA: pics*

 

[Froggy with chickens now!]

vanalpaca - Kellogg was a pet when I got him. He had just turned 1 year old. He ate from my hand every day. I had him about a week when he turned on me. Spurred me twice before I could move since I was squatting to feed him from my hand and the next morning my foot was huge with cellulitus. He never got any better. I tried to be the head rooster, it just didn't work. My heart would pound so hard when he charged at me and I would shake all over my body. I really didn't want to get rid of him, I just couldn't continue to be scared. I could not walk in the yard at all. Even with my stick and my knee boots! I don't know what happened to him, why he turned on me. The people that got him caught him with a net, then held him in their arms like he was a puppy! He even rode home with them sitting in the front seat of the car in a person lap! Made me feel like I didn't do enough to settle him down. I really feel guilty, but I have to remind myself of how scared I was of him. And, I want my grands to be able to walk around in the chickens. They can now, they couldn't as long as Kellogg was here.

 

[vanalpaca]

We would have this problem with hand raised parrots. For about the first two weeks after transferring owners, the parrot would be sweet, calm, nice, quiet. Then it decided it had figured things out and would start to TEST the new owners.

Had a friend that made a living as a BIRD PSYCHOLOGIST, to go help fix the birds by training the owners. If he was good for a week, sounds like he was figuring things out and then he went for top rooster.

In chickens, I have no idea how to correct this bad behavior, not with an attack chicken. Not with little kids involved either. Getting rid of him was a good solution to your problem. Hopefully you got some fertile eggs from his visit?? Maybe you can raise your own roo??

Care,
Bonnie in Sopping Wet Ohio with huge hail under Tornado Watch again.

 

[Froggy with chickens now!]

vanalpaca - I didn't get any fertile eggs. I had thought about keeping some before I let him go, but the timing didn't work out. I was at the feed store looking at their chicks and commented I needed to let him go before I got new hens. Someone came in looking for a rooster so I let them come get him. I am not set up for hatching anyway. I miss his crowing, but I think I will just stick with my girls. At least they feed me!

 

[Opa]

Maybe being an old rooser has made me hard and callous but I wouldn't tolerate a bird that I couldn't be around. If a couple of field goal attempts didn't break the aggressive behavior I send them to freezer camp.

Since I consider each day I am given to be a gift, I don't want to waste any of them. Breeding an an obviously rooster I would consider to be a waste of time. It would take too many generations to improve the progeny. Then there is the problems of what do you do with all of the inferior birds that you have created.

 

[vanalpaca]

Smoked chicken sounds better than freezer camp.......

Opa, the rooster arrived at the age of 1 year as someone's friendly pet rooster and had been there a week. Then it turned tyrannical and attack mean. Probably just situational and establishing pecking order. But once they learn they can do it, they aren't turning back.

So maybe he got his hormones, too. That would happen with parrots, fine for seven years (like the cockatoos that mature for breeding late), then hormones hit and they are monsters.

But roosters really don't get second chances, not good being afraid in your own yard. I was thinking fertile eggs more along the line that he had been someone's friendly sweet rooster and that the transfer of ownership had caused the problem. That it wasn't inherant in the rooster. So that if she could hatch the eggs and RAISE her own rooster, she would be top rooster in its mind and have a friendly one.

Guess what I was going for was to RAISE up your own rooster to make sure it learned the rules from the beginning instead of taking on a roo from someone else.

But I agree, not breeding bad behavior into the flock.

SO MANY things to cull for. More smoked chicken?

Dang, next I'll have to go get a smoker. Maybe I can get a local to smoke them for me....

Cheers all,
Bonnie listening to the boomers, can't believe we got golf ball sized hail in town today! Under tornado watch through the night and storm tomorrow is supposedly worse.

 

[pinkchick]

Quote:
NC~
I'm sorry....I think I am a little confused (which for me is very easy to do

) but am I reading this right and you are saying that the pullet that is very dark and has black hackles is from a Welsummer hatch?

If I didn't know any better I would say that she looks identical to a Welsummer Barnevelder crossed bird. Were these your hatching eggs or did you purchase hatching eggs?

I have had MANY Welsummer Barnevelder crosses.......not on purpose I am sure, but they are what hatched out of 3 different breeders eggs I purchased early last spring. I grew them out and sure enough they were crossed...but I knew the moment they came out of the egg they were crossed. From one of the breeders I purchased both Wellie eggs and Barnevelder eggs.......Welsummer looking chicks came out of the Barnevelder eggs and a couple Barnevelder chicks came out of the Welsummer eggs and the rest were all a mixture, even though some "resembled" Wellies and Barnies....they were not pure. I did not use one single bird from any of these breeders, I grew them out for reference and so that I could share with the breeders in case they were unaware of the issue. I recently rehomed all of the pullets that I grew out and had in the laying flock, their heads were pure Barnevelder looking right down to the coloring and the body was Welsummer. The roosters I ate a long time ago.

I can see a Barnevelder head on your dark girl. Do me a favor and look at her feathers coming in on the back of the head and hackles very closely......are they tight and compact and of a different shape then the other Wellie girls, Barnies have a sort of rounded feather shape at the end of the feather? Barnies have different feather type and I noticed that it showed particularly well on the crossed birds heads and hackles. Barnies also have a complete and total different body type and as these crossed birds mature the differences will really start to show.

Please PM me to discuss in more detail.


Here are a couple photos of Welsummer cross Barnevelder pullets that I grew out from those eggs I had shipped in.

This gal was not happy with me at all for this photo shoot.

This is a few photos of her feather pattern as well......Barnevelders are laced partridge, not just partridge like the Wellies, this gal should have had a double laced pattern going on.

This gal was not going to have any of my nonsense, I had limited time to snap a photo of her.

Her wing and feather pattern.

This gal resembled more of a Welsummer in the body...but take a look at the head and hackles.

This is my pure Barnevelder pullet, Stephanie.