Slow feather? NO feather?

[Beth C]

I\'ve gotten a couple chicks like this, but this is the worst. This chick was almost 2 months old, 1/3 the size of it\'s hatch mates, with virtually no feathers. It was holding it\'s own, so I left it alone just to see what happened, but today it looked like it was failing, so I went ahead and put it down. I had a black like this last year, and I\'ve had several lavenders this year. I\'ve noticed both varieties are much slower to feather than my w/bw or buffs, but these are nearly naked except for wing primaries. I\'ve literally looked at them with a magnifying glass, no sign of mites or lice (not enough there for nits to even attach to). Any ideas what\'s going on?

[John]

I\'ve noticed a LF lavender here that is slow feathering, but not half as bad as your bird.  This has been a problem that I\'ve seen most often show up in LF silvers.  Just don\'t breed from them is my advice.
I talked to a guy, Saturday at the Spring Fowl Fest, that delivers chicks for the biggest commercial hatchery in Michigan.  He said all their chicks are feather sexed, so all their breeding flocks have a slow feathering gene.  
Be careful of crossing with hatchery stock (aka the chicks at TSC).
Speaking of TSC...I guy stopped in a week ago with 7 Americaunas that came from there back in March.  5 of his pullets are cockerels.  So the feather sexing doesn\'t work that well, even on Easter Eggers.  

[Mike Gilbert]

That bird would have been eliminated here after about three weeks.  I don\'t like to waste feed and space on birds that are sure to be wasters.  I\'ve had similar birds hatch here, though not that extreme, but would never keep them.

[Beth C]

That bird would have been eliminated here after about three weeks.

That\'s what I was looking for. All of my lavenders and about half of my blacks are very slow to feather, so wasn\'t sure how long I should give one before culling it. This one was obviously past that point, just hadn\'t gotten around to it. Then yesterday I saw it was going, and wanted to go ahead and get it into the freezer (I save my culls for a wildlife rehab).

John: Too funny! No hatchery stock here, except for a couple production red layers. I did throw a couple of their eggs in the incubator early in the year when I only had a handful of breeder eggs. The result was 2 huge cockerels that at 3 months are big enough to butcher (they are seriously twice the size of the same age Ameraucanas). Might try that again.

[Hurley]

I had one out of my batch of LF Lavs look like that (out of 8 chicks).  It has since been culled, but was wondering if anyone else had see this.  The black splits in the group all feathered in fast.  Most of the lavenders feathered in slower and then the one just seemed to never really feather in well.