The Official Forum of the Ameraucana Breeders Club > Breeding
Weird Markings
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,
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