What's wrong with their feathers?

[Jubaby]

I took some pictures this morning of my 4 chicks. They are six weeks old today. It is still a little early to tell, but I think I may have 1 cockrel and 3 pullets. I also took a couple of pictures of wing feathers to show you.

I believe chick #1 is probably a cockrel

Here is a picture I took of his wing feathers

Chick #2 - I think a pullet

Chick #3 - I think a pullet

Chick #4 - I think a pullet. She is very petite.

Chick #4 wing

 

[kathyinmo]

Great pictures Julie! Thanks for posting them.

 

[averytds]

Love the pics. They're so perfect. Higher powers at work maybe.

 

[alicefelldown]

Those are great pictures Julie.

I'm really starting to become a 100% sure that these birds have nothing to do with any Silkies - either with a capital S for the breed or lower case s for the gene.

With these new pictures, plus the feathers that Julie sent me, are really helping to narrow down the cause of these feathers. Jean and I have been conversing a little about this - it looks a lot more like a case of Fray (fr - an autosomal recessive that affects mostly wing flights & tail feathers) instead of having anything to do with being a crossbreed.

The bird's wings and tails all have 'chunks' of barbs that are functioning normally. But there are also sections towards the tips that are heavily 'damaged', not growing in at all. I've looked at the feathers Julie sent up close, and yes, there are functioning barbs - just scattered all over the place instead of uniformly.

I don't have any of their body fluff to compare to a Silkie's but I believe I've read, that in extreme cases, the smoothness of the body feathers can be disrupted as well.

If this were h alone (the silkie feather recessive gene - causes feathers to have no hooks in the barbs) then the tail and wing sections wouldn't have those clumps of working feathers. My money is on fr.

I'm also going back to my old name for these: the Defective Gene Ameraucanas.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Julie.....those pics are just too cool! I'm loving following the progress of these birds. They are beautiful.

 

[alicefelldown]

Something else to think about - most of the documentation freely available on the fr mutation mentions lowered viability, however it doesn't specify if this is due to inbreeding or to the actual fr mutation.
- http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/29/3/93
- http://chla.library.cornell.edu/cgi...of+the+Fowl&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=124-0

 

[averytds]

Could explain the one chick not appearing frayed. Simply a less extreme case. However I don't see much difference between say breeding for fray vs frizzle other than fray being recessive therefore needing to put more emphasis on varying the gene pool to increase/insure viability.

Either really you're breeding for aesthetic purposes. Would have been impractical if not almost impossible when the condition was documented.

 

[Jubaby]

alicefelldown,

Thanks for the info on the fray feathers. It was interesting reading. I noticed a reference to flightless birds, and I wanted to add that none of these chickens ever get up on the high roosts. They all sleep on the lowest places they can get, usually a couple of feet off the ground. Ozzie sleeps right in the doorway at the top of the ramp, but never inside the coop. And even though they have nest boxes a few feet up off the ground, I always find the eggs on the ground in a corner. I never really thought that much about it until now, but maybe they can't fly with these feathers. Very Interesting!

 

[alicefelldown]

It would make sense that they would be unable to fly or leap up to the perches if their wing/flight feathers are underdeveloped. Poor things!!

Julie, did you see them try and fail to reach the high spots? I had a rather 'large' hen who would sit on the ground for a good half hour/40 min every night, hunched up like she wanted to be with the other girls on the roosts, but just mentally struggling with her impending failure. Watching her actually attempt the leap though, that was a sight!

 

[aveca]

I think and this is just me, A lot of anciet breeds like emu, kiwi ect... have those feathers.. the origional south american breed may have been a good ground nester, there were as many enemys in the air as on the ground in south american jungle . Does anyone know exactly what the origional aracuana looked like befor domestic chickes were added? It was pretty much wild fowl. Im just cuirois as to what the origional bird looked like, does anyone know? there must be some record. It origionated in chile, forgive my spelling

Here is a bit on ancestry

Ancestors
The ancestors of the modern Araucana chicken were purportedly first bred by the Araucanians Indians of Chile -- hence the name "Araucana." The Araucana as we know it today is a hybrid of two South American breeds: the Collonca (a naturally blue-egg laying, rumpless, clean-faced chicken) and the Quetro (a pinkish-brown egg layer that is tailed and has ear-tufts). The Collonca male and female are very similar, with very few secondary sexual characteristics like comb, wattles or tail coverts to distinguish them. Naturally, after centuries of introgression with other South American races, for example, Quechua, Huapi, Ona and Mapuche, South American Indian villages Colloncas are more often than not, composites. The Quetro or Quetero is also nearly combless but the sexes are markedly dichromatic. The male of both Colloncas and Quetero have unusual voices. The Quetero has a multi-syllabilic laughing crow. Colloncas have a slightly musical crow. Muffs and beards are present in most South American domestic fowl. The European equivalent of the North American show standard variety Araucana is what one comes across in South American villages. Quechua and Mapuche do not have tufts and resemble the Ameraucana. The Quechua is larger, and more powerfully built. It is shaped more like a game fowl than the Mapuche which is smaller, lighter and less domesticated in the sense that it is a semi-feral bird while the Quechua is a domestic bird reared for meat and eggs. The Mapuche is also known as the Chilean Passion Fowl and the Aymara Fire Fowl. Mapuche are generally crested and exhibit markedly colorful plumage in both sexes. The Quechua is unremarkable in plumage, closely resembling the North American standard Ameraucana. a composite between many of the South American domestic fowl races is known as the Falklands Isles Hen. These birds are descended from many different strains of birds purchased from Indian villages on the eastern coast of South America. The Falkland Isles hen is the progenitor of the Shetland Isles hen, U.K. Araucana and Ameraucana.