The Welsummer Thread!!!!

[bwalden]

Hi Tailfeathers, thanks for your concern as well as the info on yellow leggedness........

She does have yellow legs and skin as well. The pics are taken with a cell phone in low lighting. Doesn't really show their color so well. My coop and chicken run are under group of cedar trees (very little direct sunlight) but great protection from hawks from overhead. The pic of my roo has a hen in it and you can see a little better, but again from me cell phone so not the best. Cell phone camera doesnt take too good pics sorry. Just wanted to show a couple candid shots as they followed me around the coop. Bigtom has lovely roos. I have sold him hatching eggs before.

I am fairly new to Welsummers, only about a year and a half. My flock is still a project at this point, breeding towards the APA standard. I've mainly been working on egg color the last year and I will continue to work on all other aspects of the standard as my flock progresses.

 

[20736]

Ok y'all, here is my best roo so far. His tail needs work, but I like everything else about him. He is 7 months old, so I still hold hope for his tail to improve.


So have at it and let me know your opinions on RC.(for Rooster Cogburn)
thanks.

 

[Dr Bjorn Netland]

Hello buddy,
My missive 7718 was about your hen. She looks gorgeous! I can't quite tell whether her leg color is very yellow though. I loved her high tail carriage and tail spread (I think we prefer them moderately spread and not as pinched as do the Dutch and British). Most of the pictures of cocks on this thread show birds with too low a tail and in some cases birds with too black a breast (our standard calls for brown mottling but not the "droplets" of black against brown along with a light grey down color as in the German types). The breast color also impacts the coloring of the hens.
Another concern of mine is the type with the wrong balance; often I see birds with a pronounced sloping back toward the tail, which I think ruins the type altogether. In fact, I have seen birds place champion continental with this defect, which should never happen. Your bird is nicely balanced, so you have obviously eliminated that problem. I hope you have been able to maintain the dark eggshell color and productivity as well.

 

[Dr Bjorn Netland]

Looks well balanced (though hard to tell from this picture), but his breast is too black and his tail is too low for our SOP.

 

[Dr Bjorn Netland]

Ok y'all, here is my best roo so far. His tail needs work, but I like everything else about him. He is 7 months old, so I still hold hope for his tail to improve.


So have at it and let me know your opinions on RC.(for Rooster Cogburn)
thanks.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Welcome back Bjorn! It's great to see you back here.

20736 - I think his tail angle is due to how he is standing in the picture. I like his darker, copper colored hackle/saddle feathers - but I like the darker coloring personally. My rooster has a lot of black in his chest as well, but as he has aged, he got more red in his thigh area and some in his breast. They change a lot between 6 months and 1 1/2 years. He looks like he will have a nice, wide chest in a few more months as well.

 

[20736]

Thanks Doc and 'chook,
I like the black breast, but i need to conform to the SOP. I'll reconsider my direction in breeding the male color.
This male doesn't have enough main/lower sickles for my taste.
I really appreciate your input.
Oh, by the by, my Welsummer hen laid her first egg today!


She is 7 1/2 months old. I thought eggs would be here in the Spring, now that the days are so short.
Nice egg.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Thanks Doc and 'chook,
I like the black breast, but i need to conform to the SOP. I'll reconsider my direction in breeding the male color.
This male doesn't have enough main/lower sickles for my taste.
I really appreciate your input.
Oh, by the by, my Welsummer hen laid her first egg today!


She is 7 1/2 months old. I thought eggs would be here in the Spring, now that the days are so short.
Nice egg.

Beautiful egg. I have the most recent copy of the SOP and it states the breast should be "black with red mottling". I've heard no more than 20% mottling, but it's not listed in the copy of the SOP I have.

 

[Tailfeathers]

Hello buddy,
My missive 7718 was about your hen. She looks gorgeous! I can't quite tell whether her leg color is very yellow though. I loved her high tail carriage and tail spread (I think we prefer them moderately spread and not as pinched as do the Dutch and British). Most of the pictures of cocks on this thread show birds with too low a tail and in some cases birds with too black a breast (our standard calls for brown mottling but not the "droplets" of black against brown along with a light grey down color as in the German types). The breast color also impacts the coloring of the hens.
Another concern of mine is the type with the wrong balance; often I see birds with a pronounced sloping back toward the tail, which I think ruins the type altogether. In fact, I have seen birds place champion continental with this defect, which should never happen. Your bird is nicely balanced, so you have obviously eliminated that problem. I hope you have been able to maintain the dark eggshell color and productivity as well.

Hello Bjorn! Nice to hear from you and thanks for the kind words about my pullet. You are correct in that her legs are a little light. She's definitely carrying a yellow gene but her legs are not where they need to be. I just became aware this year that the yellow-leg gene is sex-linked. I did hatch out a bunch of chicks with white legs (and white skin) and obviously either got rid of them or will be keeping them solely for eggs but definitely will not be breeding them.

I agree with you on the tails too. Personally, I like to see the tail exactly half way between parallel with the back and a vertical line draw from the base of the neck. Hers is pretty much there. I also like to see a nice spread in the feathers with a wide "V". Pinched tails don't make the cut. As for the males, if you look at the three pics at #7701, the one on the right is closest to his normal set. I'm not sure why it was, maybe because it was the third day in the cage for him, but all three pics show his tail really low. In actuality, he usually holds his tail a bit too high believe it or not.

With regard to your comments about breast color in the males impacting the coloring of hens, I thought I'd add something I saved from a Forum I was on somewhere many years ago:

"The shafting in your LF Rust Partridge Welsummer is easier to explain if you look at your hens. Your hens hackle feather has a dusky gold shaft on a black feather that is trimmed in the dusky gold. The body feathers will have a pale yellow shaft that should be on each feather out to but does not include the tail although there is a slight hint of a yellow shaft when you have a bird with strong shafting. The body feather color and shaft are out onto the wing but the primaries do not have any shaft color. There should also be a Rusty Hue on the body feather color of the wing but the Rust must not go up onto the back or the body. When you look at the brown of the breast feathers the shaft is slightly lighter and hints of a shaft. There is no unusual shaft in the tail feathers. The quality of shafting comes from the correct choosing of a roo --- mottle chested. A Black chest erase's the prominence of the shaft. It fades from the tail moving forward on succeeding generations. It can be reversed and brought back --- takes years and many generations though."

I too have seen those Welsummers you refer to with the sloping back and it definitely throws the Type completely off. I look for a parallel back for both my males and females.

Egg color and productivity is good. Though I often find it difficult to not breed a bird that may lay the darkest egg. Thus far I've been able to hatch enough chicks to maintain. Although that meant hatching 100 chicks this year and only keeping 1 male and 3 females. I have continued to keep the dark eggs without any spots or speckles and have the nice smooth uniform color. Obviously you know that they don't always lay an egg like that and occasionally I'll have spotted or speckled eggs but for the most part they don't.

Productivity is down a bit but I've also moved to breeding birds that are 2-4 years old instead of pullets. Honestly, I've been more focused on productivity with my Ameraucanas so, truth be told, I haven't been keeping any records yet on my Welsummer productivity. It is on my list of "Things To Do" though.

God Bless,

 

[Dr Bjorn Netland]

Yes, I was aware of the excerpt that you quoted concerning the cockbird's breast color impacting the coloring of the hen. Our APA judges could do with a bit of more exact understanding of the Welsummer coloring, both for the male and the female. I once entered birds and put down "rusty brown" as color and was met with a lot of derisive comments from other exhibitors and one judge, even after I tried to explain why I did it; too often, people assume the coloring should be like a light brown leghorn. Both judges and breeders should study the SOP: the tail angle should now be 60 (sixty) degrees above the horizontal, which was reduced from the original 75 degrees when the breed was first accepted by the APA. This tail angle gives the breed a look that differs substantially from the American class breeds as well as most of the heavy British ones, whereas the German type resembles the RIR. Another issue is also the quality of the "peppering" on the hens, which sometimes tends to be too coarse almost bordering on penciling (though the very fine stippling of the light brown leghorn is not what we want in our Welsummers). I think your work with the breed is laudable. Take care.