What's wrong with their feathers?

[BeardedLadyFarm]

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Thanks Julie - I meant to write to you directly, but I guess in all my excitement, I just forgot!!!

Thanks so much for everything!

Can you (or anyone else?) tell me if these silkied Ameraucana chicks are "feather sexable"? I'm not sure I understand the whole feather sexing thing and it may not even be accurate for all I know, but the chick I hatched yesterday has VERY short primary wing feathers that are all one length.

Thanks!

I don't think there are enough of these birds out there to guess if they have have any feather sexable traits. I'd say no. Ameraucanas are always hard (part of why I'm working on silkied Wheatens somewhere down the road). My boy's comb did get red pretty early. He also had the 3 rows of "peas" on his comb that you sometimes see in male Ameraucanas. I could see that at hatch. Of course I've seen it in my wheaten girls too, but not as distinctly.

 

[TurtleFeathers]

Thanks Bailey - guess only time will tell with this little one then...

Another question while I'm here: I've been watching this thread from its inception, and have read and re-read all the posts numerous times. But since we're up over 100 pages, I really can't read back to find the answer at the moment, and was hoping one of you could just quickly fill me in - I've been of the understanding that these birds are PURE Ameraucanas, correct? I mean, as in no silkies in their background, more like a spontaneous mutation. Am I right? Or did I miss something somewhere along the line?

 

[wolftracks]

I was going to get in on this thread way back. Had just been showing these birds to Bill before he passed away and wanted to see if I could also get hold of a few eggs or a bird.

I've been trying to see if there is anyone who hatched an extra roo or 2 that is near me.

If there are none available near me yet, can someone put me on a list?

I've spent the last couple of days catching up in here since July. LOL

Also I was wondering how the progress is from who ever it was that was going to try to mix the AMs with the Silkie. Do you think anything from those future breedings could be bred back to the offspring from the original silkie feathered AMs to help continue? I know it would much better to stay with the originals, but just wondering.

 

[BeardedLadyFarm]

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Kat, it's hard to say how PURE they are as Ameraucanas. It does seem that they have most of the features you would look for in an Ameraucana. A couple of Julie's birds have had some red leakage which you wouldn't expect in true Splash Ameraucanas, but could well happen. Of course splash isn't an accepted color in Ameraucanas yet anyway, I don't think. I've had a number of pure Ameraucanas from top breeders in different colors, and you do still occasionally get a straight comb, or off colored legs, or some other trait here and there.

There do not seem to be any silkie traits though. Smaller size, black skin, 5 toes, crests and other features would be expected if silkies were in the background. So, it seems it was a spontaneous mutation among more or less pure Ameraucanas.

The main reason most of us with these birds so far are crossing them to pure Ameraucanas, or planning to at maturity is to add some genetic diversity. The other reason would be to get them closer to the Ameraucana standard. I sort of doubt they will ever be recognized, but it's a fun project. The blue eggs and sweet personality are enough reason for me to keep Ameraucanas. The silkie feathers are just fun, and I enjoy that they can't fly over fences. That's a big help to me here in the city.

 

[BeardedLadyFarm]

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I think Julie did cross these birds to silkies just to see if they offspring came out silkied. There are some other genetic conditions that modify feathers. There is a "frayed feather" gene that can spontaneously show up. The easiest way to see if this was the silkie feather gene was to cross them with silkies, and see if the offspring were silkied as well. They were.

There is no reason you couldn't cross them to silkies, but silkie genes are very dominant and hard to breed out if you are trying to keep birds that resemble Ameraucanas. The best way to improve their genetics and type as Ameraucanas is to cross them to good lines of Ameraucanas, to create birds that are split for the silkie gene, and then either cross them back to one parent, or cross them with their siblings to make more silkied birds.

There are still soooo few of these out there, that I doubt anyone has extras at this point in the year. Several of us should have laying birds late this fall or next spring, and would be happy to share eggs.

 

[wolftracks]

I have black and blue and would love to get hold of a roo to see what I can produce.

 

[alicefelldown]

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The chicks Julie hatched out from the test mating with some pure Silkies from Kathy came out with hookless (h) silkie type feathers. This proved that the fray (fr) gene was not in play.

However, the chicks did come out with all the other silkie traits, the black skin, the 5 toes, the vaulted skulls. This, while not being the absolute smoking gun, lends itself more that the original 'silkied' birds Julie hatched were a spontaneous meeting of recessive hookless (h) and not something anyone had bred into the flock. The amount of work to breed out those Silkie traits from Ameraucanas would be staggering, as PhiladelphiaPhlock mentions above. We've talked to 10 years + of breeders that started the line Julie's birds came from - and none of them would have missed those obvious signs of 'cross contamination'.

 

[Redcatcher]

I was EASILY able to sex my F1s at around four weeks of age. The cockerels were much larger with reddening combs. I have two cockerels and two pullets. Three blues and one black though one of the blues might be genetically splash. The cockerels are also unusually aggressive and bold.

 

[Kat's Silly Chickens]

I have read nearly every page of the thread, and Jubaby no matter how your chickens came to be so Beautiful, They are.
I'm in Burleson, south of Fort Worth area and if I knew a day old chick could handle the multiple hour drive home I'd want to buy an already hatched chick. Not to breed it, just to have 1 of your Beautiful Breed of chicken... I'm subscribed to this post so. Maybe in the near future I'll e-mail you to see if it would be possible. It's late in the AM so I'm off to bed.

 

[SteveH]

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alicefelldown wrote
The amount of work to breed out those Silkie traits from Ameraucanas would be staggering, as PhiladelphiaPhlock mentions

I'm not well versed on Silkie traits or genetics in general for that matter , but while I can see the recessive silkie feathering easily going undetected untill inbreeding paired those that were carrying it , why could the dominate or incomplete dominate traits of silkies not be selected for or against with relative ease ? Isn't it possible that their ancestor's breeder [ Pat from Josephine , TX , who was making crosses of pure B/B/S Ameraucana from Pips and Peeps on McMurrey EE and selling them as Ameraucana { http://www.ovabid.com/detail.asp?id=2251 } ] also accidently mixed in F1 or F2 from the large fowl Silkies she was breeding ? { http://www.ovabid.com/detail.asp?id=1737&bigpic=0#img }
I see that large fowl Silkie roo in the second pic of the second link had already lost the black skin .​