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Genetic discussion of slow Feather (K) and tardy feather (t)

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Beth C:
Ugh - as if the lavenders weren\'t depressing enough, I just went to bathe one of my best buff pullets for the show. She freaked out - and dropped dead...

crystalcreek:
Beth I\'m really sorry to hear about that buff pullet.  I hope you were able to get some eggs before this happened.

crystalcreek:
I wanted to share the results of my first look at these chicks.  There are 40.

From my slow lav cock (the pen B male from 2011) crossed on a lav pullet I have 9 lav chicks with no tails.  Whether there are any stubs in the tails, I will have to look again later, but I think we definately have K going on with those.

From my slow lav cock (same guy) crossed on a split pullet I have 2 lav and 5 splits, all with no tails.  I will look for stubs in the tails at a later date.  More K, I believe.

From my lav cockerel in pen B (picture follows)
crossed on two splits (daughters of Smith black hens that were bred to the slow lav cock), I got 12 lav chicks and 4 of those are fast feather, with 1\" of tail growth today at around day 10-12 (this batch of chicks took 3 days to hatch).  I also got 12 splits and one of those is a fast feather with 1\" of tail growth.  Now, I did not start looking at this until midway through the chicks, and I will go back and look more closely later, but on the chicks with no tail from this group, I did see about 1/8\" of tail feather stubs poking through.  I am hoping these are fast feather males.  I compared to those sired by the slow cock and they have no stubble, only down is present on the tail.

So I say with some reservation that I think I have a lav cockerel to work with in order to eliminate K in my flock.

As an aside, I did notice that some have obviously wider feathers in the wing primaries than others, so culling for narrow feathers can probably done at this age, also.

Beth C:
Awesome!! Sounds like you\'ve got a great start. K shouldn\'t be that hard to eliminate, since k+ is recessive, and you\'ve got a beautiful cockerel to work with. If I were getting birds that looked like that the rate of feather wouldn\'t seem as daunting, but mine have other issues. In hindsight, I should have produced only splits last year, and I might have a leg up on the brassiness (as well as more fast-feathering birds). I need to get at least one split cockerel w/clean hackles. This guy out here isn\'t too far off the mark, the leakage is hardly noticeable. If I\'d hatched more, I might have gotten one I could use. I can\'t wait for this pullet to lay so I can see what she produces with the black cock (who was Jr. Ch. AOSB yesterday, btw).

Unfortunately I didn\'t get any eggs from the buff pullet. But she wasn\'t THE best, although she was one of the better looking ones. And I\'ve always been a believer in culling for temperament - she was a complete spaz, and would have produced more of the same I guess...

Beth C:
Another question, not sure if this is connected to the slow feathering or not (I suspect it is) but how hardy were your chicks? I lost a lot of lavenders. It was a hard year period, it got hot early and coccidia was a constant battle from April on, but the lavenders fared the worst by far. I lost more of them than the other 4 varieties combined.

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