Whats up with these ear feathers?

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CluckinOnTheYakus

CluckinOnTheYakus

Songster
9 Years
Sep 15, 2015
398
126
206
Middle of Nowhere in Idaho
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Just a barnyard mix out of an olive egg a friend from church gave me, I asked her and she said none of her chickens have crazy ear feathers like this lol. It's only on one side of his head. His name is Chief Crazy Hair. Thoughts?????
 
WoDia said:
@MESOFRUFFEH Be sure to post updates, so we can see how that feathered out. Very adorable chick! 🥰
Click to expand...
I didn't do a very good job keeping y'all updated, mainly because we had a problem hen that kept eating Chief Crazy Hair's tuft and there wasn't much to report on lol. Said problem hen ate quite a few of his other feathers to be honest, and also the butt feathers off of my other hens. She got relocated for a spell and Chief Crazy Hair's tuft looks like a lollipop that fell on the barbershop floor at the moment. Not really sure if this is it's final form, time will tell. But I have attached a pic.
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But gather round for some story time lol. So I got these previously mentioned olive eggs from a friend last year, 11 of them. Only 5 hatched. 4 roosters and one hen (shocker lol). None of the other hatch mates had tufts. Just this guy, and I kept him. Fast forward to this year, I wanted to add some blue eggers to my flock so I put some feelers out and there is a local lady who breeds Araucanas and has a "Blue Egg Project" where she has an Ameraucana rooster over Araucana hens.

I acquired some eggs from her, since we are extremely rural there are only so many places to get chicks around here, it's even harder to get blue layers, and near impossible to get pure Araucana unless it's from her, and she has a waiting list. She also has a few olive eggers. She has people from all over the west coast and PNW coming to her for Araucanas. She said the genetics from her flock are floating all over this area and beyond and she only knows of one other lady anywhere near here breeding Araucanas several hours north of us. I've chatted with her at length over the last several months about all things chicken, Araucana, and tuft related.

Out of the eggs I got from her (6 pure Araucana and 12 from her blue egg project) only a couple are double tufted and several from the blue egg project have beards and double tufts. I mentioned my Chief Crazy Hair (which I will from here on abbreviate as CCH) to her and low and behold, since she's the only person anywhere remotely near to us with araucanas, we have come to the conclusion that my friend (who has only purchased chicks locally) must have gotten an olive egger from her or someone else that has chickens with her genetics floating around in them. So even though CCH is just a barnyard mutt, his genetics are almost definitely rooted in her Araucana flock. Which I found very entertaining, small world and all.

Fast forward to about a month ago. The one hen (her name is Olive, I know, so original) I hatched out of those 11 olive eggs from a friend decided she was going to go broody while I was out of town. My mom was in the hospital and I was 4 hours away with her and had a neighbor checking on the chickens. I told him not to bother gathering the eggs because my brother would be home soon and I'd have him get them, we only have 4 hens laying so no biggie - or so I thought. 2 days after I leave my brother gets back from a trip he was on and was able to relieve the neighbor of his chicken tender duties. My brother informs me that Olive is broody. I told him to just let her do her thing.

Olive and CCH are half siblings, she is an unassuming lavender hen, no tufts, but evidently carrying the tufted gene. 6 of the eggs she hatched are from some RIR hens and fathered by CCH, 2 were her own eggs. Of the eight that hatched 7 of them have at least one tuft, most have 2, but they arent too terribly impressive, they are smaller tufts like CCH's. More akin to a barbershop lollipop than anything. All the chicks were black except for one of Olive's eggs, which is lavender just like her. Lavender is by far my favorite color so I was thrilled that the little lavender one had two very nice looking tufts! I will attach a pic of the little lavender baby too, because wow!
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For coming from two barnyard mix mutts with who knows what sort of genetic background floating around in their gene pool this babys tufts are stunning! I told the Araucana lady that she ought to be mighty proud of how strong these genetics are because CCH passed his tufts on to 7 out of 8 of his babies and really knocked it out of the park with the lavender baby!!! The Tufts on this baby are 10x more stunning than any of the tufts on the pure Araucanas I got from her. it's just crazy to me how voluptuous this little guys tufts are to be so far removed from a pure Araucana! Genetics are crazy! Who would have thought CCH with his one barbershop lollipop could have done such great work!

I am really hoping it's a hen, but I always assume it's a rooster until proven otherwise, just to keep my heart from breaking. The comb is getting awfully large to be a hen, but CCH has a massive comb so I'm holding out a very small sliver of hen hope.

I just thought you fellow chicken folks might get a kick out of my story coming full circle with CCH and his lineage, how he passed his barbershop lollipops on to all but one of his offspring, and enjoy the pics of his voluptuous tuft baby!
 

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