Welsummer or brown leghorn

[babyrnlc]

This chick is 4 months old. She was sold to me as a Welsummer, was originally from Ideal.

I just wanted to check one last time. If she is a leghorn, she is going to a friend (that almost has their coop finished), if she is a welsummer, or still a chance that she could be, then we are keeping her. Her earlobe is not red, but her comb has not even started turning yet (most of my other pullets are at least pink.) My white leghorn pullets have pink, almost reddish and much larger that this girl.Thank you

My other girls, see all the pink!!

 

[al6517]

Yes and unfortunately the hatcheries know this and it works to their benefit, the hatcheries know their customers best, they know they don't care if the bird only kinda sorta resembles what people think they ordered, they just have to market it as pure bred with pictures to match an industry wide discription hence the 400,000 post per day of people wanting to know what breed their hatchery mutts are. the problem is hatchery buyers don't really know how the business is structured, and to be brutaly honest they don't realy care one bit if they are mixed breeds or not, it's not an issue for them eggs is what they want and the hatcheries give them that in abundance. certain breeds are popular for certain reasons and if those popular breeds don't lay well then the problem for the hatchery is two fold.

one is they will never be able to have their contract breeders supply them with enough eggs of quality birds to hatch and fill the orders, so they instruct the contract breeder on what other breed of birds to stock and breed back mix breed it with another breed that looks sorta similar but lays like crazy. Some birds are known to have several other breed mixes in the recipe. it may have different color legs, feathering, head and combs, body type. So now they will have enough eggs to hatch and fill orders. secondly by mixing these good egg layers of like appearance to the popular breeds the offspring will also be good egg producers and that makes the Hatchery customer happy. so the customer get's a bird they are not sure is what they had in mind, they post asking what in the world is this ?? a few folks make close guesses and say how cute and fluffly it is and the customer is once again tickled to death of having a mix breed bird who lays eggs, and they say well .....as long as I don't plan on showing it's Ok to have a pure bred mutt. The hatchery wouldn't intentionaly miss lead me, they are a hatchery after all, and I trust they know birds better than me, Right ????

So you see it works out for both the hatchery and the buyer, the hatchery get's all the eggs it needs to hatch and fill money making orders and the customer get's a cute mutt that everybody on the forum loves and it also lay's a ton of egg's. The real underlying problem is both entities don't care what the other is doing LOL as long as they get the end result. It really is a wonderfull racket.

 

[babyrnlc]

Except the only reason I got a welsummer is because it is hard to find marans here and we wanted dark eggs! Sigh.

 

[Baymule]

You have a lovely flock. I don't know the answer, but hopefully someone with more knowledge than I will tell you.

 

[sharol]

My Welsumer has red ears. (as does one of my adolescent, alleged EE's from a hatchery, go figure)

 

[babyrnlc]

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when did it turn red? was it right before it laid, when the comb changed?

 

[babyrnlc]

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thank you, these are just the chicks we just got. (Got them all when we went to buy the "welsummer" lol)

 

[egglicious]

Looks like a welsummer to me.

 

[lovinlife]

That would be a brown leghorn pullet.

Welsummers lay brown eggs and have red earlobes. They don't start out with white earlobes that turn red, they have red earlobes from the get-go.

 

[babyrnlc]

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Now I am confused, cause in the welsummer thread someone said that they are flesh colored like the combs and then turn red as the comb does.

I know my other brown egg layers did not start out with red earlobes, they turned red when the combs and wattles did. I have never seen a chick with red earlobes.

I will be fine if this is a leghorn. I just dont want to give it away and then it turn out to indeed be a welsummer.