The Welsummer Thread!!!!

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Tailfeathers said:
That's a very common trait with hatchery Welsummers.

God Bless,
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It occurs so often in hatchery Welsummers and once in a while, feather stubs do pop up. I even have a friend that bought was told the stock was pure Lowell Barber birds, no hatchery...it had feather stubs on every so often in a chick she would hatch out. She does not use them for breeding, just egg laying flock. The harder she culled, the problem persisted. So she got rid of them and not getting into Welsummers anymore.
 
Stubs have long been a problem with the Welsummers. In fact, when we had the qualifying show in Vancouver, WA, I had to examine every bird the I entered (I entered quite a few, and also some that Lowell Barber shipped to me to enter for him--between the two of us, we had more than half of the birds there). Several of mine had stubs, and also two of the ones that Lowell had sent. The birds that were the offspring from ones I had from a gentleman in Oregon (from England, but he insisted on remaining anonymous) were all clean, and I crossed these with my/Lowell's line to address the problem, and there was significant improvement though constant vigilance was required to weed out any that had stubs. Lowell also received one superb cockbird from this other English line to use, and he was very pleased with him, and the eggshell color was beautifully dark in all birds stemming from these. What I observed was that any hen with stubs should never be bred for exhibition purpose, as cockbirds from her would have a severe issue (between the toes and down the legs). Perhaps stubs are somewhat sex linked...? My next move in breeding (other than type and leg color) was breeding only two-year-old cocks (i.e., after their second adult molt) without any white at the base of the tail or in the flight feathers and birds with combs not growing too much toward the tip of the beak. The original birds that Lowell and I had were too large-combed, whereas the ones I got from Oregon were far better in that respect. The German type Welsummers I acquired from Canada did not have problems with stubs, white in tail/wing, leg color, or comb size, but the overall type was not like a Dutch/British Welsummer and the eggs were not at all comparable, and I did not care much for the ones there were from the German type/British type crosses either. I did try to hang on to them as a separate group, but they fell victim to one of my many raccoon/owl/coyote/dog raids so I lost them. If the gentleman from Oregon had still been around, I would have tried to get some more from him, but--unfortunately--he is no longer with us.
 
400

Just a few of my wellie eggs today
 
This is one of the nicest hens (in my opinion, that is) I have seen pictured on this thread--wonderful balance and back line, nice small head, good color including shanks, nice comb. Only observable fault, though that may have to do with the snapshot situation is the tail angle, which is too low (60 percent is called for in the APA standard). Thank you for sharing this picture. It is always a delight to see some representations of our better Welsummers.
 

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