Well, last night I finally got caught up on this thread. It's been way too long since I've been here. Took me awhile but I did it. Then I tried to post a few comments on things I had seen and upload a few chick pics that would help show the difference between male and female chicks. Unfortunately, when I did, everything froze up and I lost the whole post. So I tried again tonight and the same thing happened.
So, the next time someone is looking for a visual reference on how to tell the sex of Wellie chicks, I'll try posting them again. For now, here are a couple of comments that I can remember from what I've read thus far.
First, someone mentioned that a bird pictured could not be the result of a cross between an Ameraucana and a Welsummer because it would've had legs that were darker if that were the case. Just wanted to say that's not true because I cross Ameraucanas with Welsummers all the time and, while it would take way too long to detail all the different results that I've seen, suffice it for now to say I've had birds that looked just like Welsummers with beards. The beards are not muffs but rather look like feathers that someone hacked off with scissors but it's there nonetheless. And, more to the point of this post, the legs were either pale whitish or even yellow. I've also had them with blue legs.
Second, Diane showed a pic of one of what she calls her "bad birds" for an example of what not to have. I would agree with everything she said except the comment about the hackles being too orange. This is personal preference as the SOP does allow for some variation. The SOP calls for a female's hackle to be "golden brown or copper, the lower feathers with black striping and golden shaft." Personally, I prefer the darker "orange" color or copper (look at a penny) than the "golden brown". In fact, most of the Welsummers IMO are far to "yellowish" and I have intentionally bred my birds toward the former and away from the latter as one of the traits in my birds to distinguish my lines from others.
That's all I can remember for now. I was gonna say with the pics that I wanted to post, that unfortunately I had some personal stuff that came up this year which prevented me from making the photo album of my Welsummers which would chronicle chicks from Day Olds through one-year old. I did manage to get Day Olds, One week olds, and two week olds though.
God Bless,
Royce
As always you're input is great! I hope things settle down enough next year to get your photo project done, but just seeing what you have will be great. Are you going to send them to Robin to put on the WCNA site or are they for your website?