Yellow welsummer chick? PICTURES ADDED

[tadkerson]

I would agree with Krys. The chick could be recessive white.

Welsummers should be a gold wild type and the chicks should have gold wild type down.

The chick that is yellowish could also be wheaten at the e locus. This does not make any difference in the males ( wheaten males and wild type males look the same) but will produce females that look wheaten.

Purebred gold wheaten males will have a light reddish undercolor while brown or wild type males will have a gray undercolor.

Welsummer chicks should have wild type down. I have seen pictures of welsummer females that were not wild type but were eb or brown. Heterozygous (split) wheaten and wild type chicks have a pseudo wild type down and are hard to distinguish from wild type chicks. The same is true for brown and wheaten (split) heterozygote chicks.

In the future, please wait until the chicks dry out, then post pictures. It is difficult to determine the down color with a wet chick. The third chick also looks to be wheaten???????


I would not be too hard on people that supply eggs that are the proper dark color. Dark egg color is difficult to obtain and easily lost. If a persons focus is dark egg color, the other characteristics sometimes take a back seat.

Tim

 

[becky3086]

Well, it is just possible I am not actually wrong here. I just heard from someone else who bought welsummer eggs from the same person as I did and got a yellow chick that was a Delaware.

 

[halo]

I hatched several batches of welsummers last year from 3 or 4 different sellers, and never got one even close to yellow. They were all very consistantly marked.

 

[therealsilkiechick]

here is my siblings to ur's bought from same seller. i ended up with a delaware, welsummer and a delaware cross welsummer. no u r not wrong and i informed the seller when they hatched there was a problem. first set of eggs was so light colored they looked like orpington egg color i was very upset and to find they were something else was even more of a let down.

i got a replacement sent which were beautiful nice dark eggs(totally different than the first set) i was really happy to which none hatched so i had to get eggs from others. i gave away these 3 because i could not use or sell them they were either hatchery quality, wrong breed or a cross and i didn't want none of that in my lines. my ones in brooders now(from ebay eggs, which were so dark they looked like marans eggs) r just fully feathered and these guys pictured where hatched before them so they r a good 2-2.5 mths old now roughly. i'm saddened to see this is still occuring like 2 mths later and someone else end up with chicks they can't use either. all the wellies i have hatched from others have been purebreds and excellent stock only this seller did i get wrong color and breeds with.

 

[tadkerson]

The white chick looks like my rhode island silver ( they look like delaware). They are white with very little gold pigment in their down, they are silver, barred, columbian restricted and wheaten.

Tim

 

[McSpin]

How dark were the eggs?

 

[becky3086]

My eggs were as dark as my (REAL)welsummers are laying now.

 

[becky3086]

If you look in my incubator, in my pictures, you can see one of the eggs and how dark it is. I did notice that they were bigger than my eggs but I didn't think anything about that since mine just started laying.

 

[becky3086]

Quote:
I left negative feedback on the feedback board, if you do too maybe we can save some people from getting mixed birds.
I can tell people this, I got my first welsummer eggs from AussieSharon and they were the right color, I don't want anyone wondering about her eggs.

 

[chookster77]

The yellow chick appears to be wheaten and the brown is probably half wheaten and half wild type. Most likely what you are seeing are genes re-segregating (NOT to be confused with the oft-misused term sport). If the yellow chick was a purebred Delaware or RIW I don't think the egg it hatched from would have been so dark reddish brown.

The fact is, if breeds are not kept strictly separate, unintentional outcrosses are virtually inevitable. Also, since wheaten and wild type cocks look so similar, it's reasonable that they could be confused and thought to be a different breed.

But more likely what you are seeing is the result of an intentional outcross at some point in these birds' ancestry. Rare breeds are usually highly inbred and often suffer from inbreeding depression. Ultimately, without a new source of purebred blood, the only alternative to oblivion is to make an outcross. I have heard reports of people outcrossing Welsummers to RIRs (which are usually wheaten based), Wheaten Marans, and both Partridge and Wheaten Penedesencas. They do this to increase fertility, hatchability, health/vigor, and productivity while trying to maintain or improve egg color--all worthy goals. Problem is they start selling the progeny off before they've bred the line back to standard/purebred status.

Breeding back to standard after an outcross isn't easy OR quick in the best of circumstances--(I understand the absolute minimum is eight generations). There are genes in those other breeds I mentioned above that are VERY hard to breed out, e.g. feathered legs and carnation combs-- to name only two. To breed back to standard, you really and truly have to know what you're doing. You must have the capacity to hatch, raise, and house sometimes hundreds of birds in order to produce progeny with the correct combination of genes. Making it even more difficult is that you will produce birds along the way with the correct phenotype (how it looks externally) that still do not have the correct genotype (genetic make-up). These birds have to be raised to maturity and then test mated to determine "purity." It's a long, tedious, and expensive process that very few successfully accomplish.

So, to make a long story a little shorter

, it's no wonder there are loads of Welsummers (and other rare breeds) out there that readily produce those unwelcome surprises. Unfortunately, just because a person or hatchery claims or believes their birds are purebred doesn't necessarily make it so... That old maxim holds true, though: the proof is in the pudding!

Cheers and good luck!
TC