Weird Markings

[Tailfeathers]

John, your post on the weird colored Silver is ironically very timely.  Mike, this is the chick I was telling you about.

I\'m attaching some pics of one of my young Wheaten Pullets.  Notice the black tipped feathering.  It reminds me of when one takes a blow torch to a piece of wood.

My questions are:

1) Has anyone else experienced this?
2) I\'m guessing this is a cull but is there any correlation between the black markings and anything else?  (i.e.  I was told that black ticking in the hackles of the female leads to black striping in the hackles of males.
3) Should I be concerned about this condition popping up in the lines of offspring of other hens/cocks that are of her same line?
4) What other feedback, advice, counsel, can you all give about this condition?











I forgot I wanted to take some pics of my BW Rooster today.  He is developing black spots in his hackles.  This made me check the parentage of the above chick.  However, she is the result of my #11 Wheaten rooster and my #13 Wheaten hen.  So there is no correlation there because neither of them show any black ticking at all.  

Btw, I was having a dickens of a time trying to add the above attachments.  Thankfully, the method that I was shown for BYC works here too.

So what do y\'all think?

God Bless,

[Mike Gilbert]

It looks like some male hormones could be at work in this one too, though not as severe as those two of John\'s.   I think I would give this one some time to see.   She will likely change in coloring as she matures.  

[grisaboy]

I think she has a dose of melanizers.
Like the recessive black gene in Brassy Back Old English.
Recessive black causes black lacing in female wheatons.

Curtis

[Tailfeathers]

Thanks guys for the replies.  Mike, suppose I do give more time - which I plan to just to see what kind of egg she lays - but what about my questions above?  Have you experienced this?  She most likely will pass this condition on, won\'t she?  Is there any correlation between this black ticking and it showing up in the hackles of males or such?  

Anyone else got any feedback?  Paul, are you watching this thread?

God Bless,

[Mike Gilbert]

I don\'t remember having one colored like that.   I\'m not sure where the recessive black would have come from, as I\'m quite sure she came out of a line that had been bred for years without similar results, is that correct?   Or has some rooster been jumping the fence?    As far as I know, all the large fowl wheatens and blue wheatens were originally bred up by Wayne Meredith of Wisconsin using his easter eggers and some of my bantams many years ago.    Has anyone else developed a completely different line?

[Jean]

I don\'t think there are any new lines Mike.  Royce\'s birds all came from the same breeder.

I was about to suggest that a \"Wellie\" jumped the fence on this one.  I personally would sell or cull her and not waste anymore time on her.

[grisaboy]

I guess if she lays an olive egg that would tell on the \'Wellie\'.
I agree with Jean.  I think you should get rid of her and move on.  Even if she is just a sport, you wouldn\'t want to use her as a breeder as it is likely she will pass on the ticking.  Maybe not in her daughters, but in her granddaughters.  Then you would have a doozy of a time getting rid of it.  If you know who her parents are, you may want watch them as they may throw more of these.  

Curtis

[Paul]

  We have bred the ancestors of this bird for over 10 years-without ever having one like it!  If a chick that we sold turned out like her-no one let us know.  I would let her leave on the next available trip, and just hatch some more to replace her.  She is definitely a freak.

  We only kept 8 wheaten/blue wheaten chicks this year, due to having so many orders and a shortage of chicks.  Only three turned out to be pullets and all three are top quality show birds.  They will probably beat our blacks (due to condition) at our first show of the season, this week-end at Decatur, TX.  We are showing six head-three black pullets, two wheaten pullets and one blue wheaten pullet.

  If all goes well the three black pullets will be at the national meet also.

Paul

[John]

Ooh...I thought she was a bantam.

[Tailfeathers]

Ugh!  Where is the growling face icon?!!  I just finished a long reply & hit the \"View Entire Topic\" to make sure I had covered everything and lost my whole reply.  So let\'s try this again...

Ok, first thanks to everyone for their replies.  Sorry for the delay in coming back to a thread I started.  I\'ve just been inundated with way too many things.

First, there is NO chance she is the result of a Wellie (or anything else) jumping the fence.  As I said above, she is the result of my #11 Wheaten rooster and my #13 Wheaten hen.

I have four unrelated roosters (2-W & 2-BW) that I put over four lines of hens except one of them is related to a rooster (i.e. #15 BW-rooster & #15 BW-hen) so I wound up with 15 separate breeding lines/pens.  However, my #12 W-rooster developed white in his earlobes so I chose not to breed him which reduced the number of lines down to 11.  

I have four separate pens that I use where each rooster is placed with hen(s) and the hen does not come out until I am done collecting eggs for that breeding pen.  Each set of parents in given a specific number as that breeding pen.  A pencil is then used to mark each egg as it is collected with the corresponding pen number.  Therefore I have a record for each year of who the parents are for each numbered chick.

I was leaving the roosters in with the hens in the breeding pen but that started to take too big a toll on the hens so I pull the rooster after I\'ve seen them mate a hen at least two times or after 3 or 4 days and then put them back in the rooster pen.  After a week, I put the rooster back in the pen and repeat the process.

My Welsummer roosters never came out of the rooster pen until after I had completely collected all the eggs for my 11 Ameraucana breeding pens.  Then I put one of my Wellie roosters in with three hens in one of the four pens.  

I did throw a couple of Wellie hens in with each of my BW-roosters (#14 and #15) to make some EEs but those eggs were brown and were numbered 14E and 15E, respectively.

Eggs are separated in the hatching tray by pen number.  Each chick is toe-punched as it comes out of the incubator.  Therefore, as you can see, the above chick in question is the result of my #11 Wheaten rooster and my #13 Wheaten hen and thus a Wheaten pullet.  

Mike, my original chicks came from Paul and as you know Paul got his birds initially from Wayne & then later from Barbara.

Paul, thanks for replying.  I\'m glad to see you found this post.  Obviously from the thousands of chicks you\'ve hatched and grown up over the years, I definitely got a freak.  That is REALLY reassuring as I can cull her and not have to worry about this popping up later down the road with subsequent generations.  Right?

I have asked all those who bought eggs and chicks from me to stay in touch and let me know how they turn out.  I\'m hoping to hear about how many Wheatens, Blue Wheatens, Splash Wheatens, males, females, and such but more importantly, whether any of their birds show any serious faults or DQ’s.  Finally, once they start getting eggs, I would like to know how the color of their pullets eggs compare to the ones I sent them.  If they will send me size & productivity reports, that will be a plus.

All these things will help me compare their results to mine from the same pens (as I toe punch the chicks I send them in the same manner) and will help in my future breeding.  

Curtis, you mentioned the recessive black gene causes black lacing in Wheatens.  At first I didn\'t think this appeared to be lacing but rather more of a ticking but I can see where it could possibly be a form of lacing getting started.  I don\'t know but at any rate, I sure don\'t want it in my Wheatens or Blue Wheatens.  So she won\'t be bred.

The above parentage cross is my #2 Pen.  According to my records, I have two other #2 chicks - both pullets.  There is no sign of this trait in either of them.  Plus I have 11 chicks with my #11 as their father and 5 chicks with #13 as their mother.  (I did not get any chicks from my #14 pen - where she would\'ve been mated to my #15 BW-rooster - because she went into molt before I could get her bred and I sold the #15 due to an over-sized peacomb).  In those 16 chicks, there is no sign of this trait either.

So, all in all, thanks to you guys, I am pretty well convinced this was \"just one of those things\" and shouldn\'t see it again as long as I don\'t breed her.  Right?

I\'ll let y\'all know though if I see it pop up again in future chicks (I still have some #3\'s that have my #13 as their mother) that aren\'t feathered in yet and I\'m not getting a lot of response from those who have birds from me so I will be going out and asking how they\'re doing.  

Thanks again and God Bless,

[Guest]

She appears to be spangled or has false spangling. I have never seen spangling on wheaten. Wheaten does not produce black like other E locus alleles. In wheaten birds it does not show very well until they get older. Melanotic is a very potent melanizer and it hardly shows when heterozygous in wheaten females.

To produce spangling a bird needs melanotic, dark brown and the pattern gene. Some times you can get false spangling when a bird carries one pattern gene and one melanotic gene.
The birds could carry dark brown and you would not know it. Same thing for melanotic and pattern.

Because the wheaten tends to hide genes that add black pigment, the adult  birds did not show the effects of the genes. When the pullet received the correct combination from both parent birds you got the spangling or the false spangling.


Tim

[Birch Run Farm]

May I ask a few questions?  I see the pullet seems to be wet or does she have silkie feathering?  Also, why are her wings drooping?   What about her eye color?  She looks like she has blue ringed eyes?  Does eye color change as a bird ages?

Just curious.  

A general question about wheatens:  How is it some of them have dark ticking or lacing in their hackle feathers and others don\'t?

[Paul]

My thoughts were correct.  One of our wheaten pullets won BB and Champion AOSB at the Red River Bantam Club Show.  The best colored one a blue wheaten was third against two wheatens.  Yes they were all judged together-even though they were entered correctly.  Our best black pullet was RB, but beat out of the Res. AOSB by a brown-red Old English Game.  Our six Ameraucanas were the only ones shown.  The AOSB class was the largest large fowl class with 11 head.  Our show was about half what it was last year.

[Tailfeathers]

Tim, I wish I knew what you just said but I have no idea.  If you would be so kind as to put that in layman\'s vernacular, I\'d be much appreciative.

Ann, as I recall she wasn\'t wet but she\'s been in a pen where the ground was wet and they weren\'t in very good condition.  That\'s why the feathers look so ratty.  I also don\'t recall why her wings were droopy but they aren\'t normally that way.  

No, she doesn\'t have silky feathers.  She does have blue eyes but those will change as she gets older.  Sort of like kittens.  

Why some have the black in their hackles?  That\'s something I\'m still looking for answers to as well.

Paul, congratulations!  That\'s great to hear.  

I\'ve lost about a half-dozen birds in the last few days due to hypothermia.  It\'s a long story but hopefully I\'ve got a handle on things until I can devote some more time to some projects this weekend.  I sure hope I don\'t lose anymore because I\'ve noticed a couple of BWs in particular that have nice looking tails.  A trait I was hoping to improve on.  Maybe one of these days I can have some birds like you, Mike, and others.

God Bless,

[Tailfeathers]

I wanted to bump this back up to the top because I plan to post some pics tomorrow of more pullets with similar markings.  I had another one turn out just like the one pictured but it wound up being a runt and dying before I could get a pic of it.

Also, I\'d like to say here that I finally got a chance to read the recent ABC Newsletter.  It\'s a great read.  I like being able to put faces with names.  There is an excellent article  about test breeding your rooster for color.  Great advice.  There was another good article that I can\'t remember the name of right now but all in all just a great Newsletter.  Bravo Zulu and Kudo\'s to ABC and those who contributed.

As soon as I can, I want to post some pics of a problem - at least I think it\'s a problem - that I have showing up in some of my W & BW pullets and hens.  It\'s the black ticking again.

Now I\'m seeing some very slight black ticking coming in on the hackle tips of my hens and I\'ve got a lot of \"burnt wood brown\" coloring on the top of the heads of several of my pullets along with some of it in their hackles.  I\'ve also got a couple of pullets that are darker colored than the others.  I\'d like to get some input on that as well.  

Feel free to pipe in now if you\'d like.   I\'ll try to get pics posted soon.

God Bless,