What causes shafting

[HarryS]

John,
   OK, looked on the ABC chick pictures and Classroom @ The-coop has the first thead with chick pictures.  The pictures I see are black chicks with white/cream underparts from the chin down.  The only problem is the one on the-coop shows a chick called penquin colored as an E and the color of an ER as very similar.  Would you say the chicks that are pure black at day old should be culled immediately.   As far as the ones black with white/cream under parts could possibly be E chicks but not necessarily.  

[John]

but not necessarily

Harry,
I\'m big on culling day-old chicks according to phenotype and anytime you can do it you are way ahead of the game.  The problem is knowing for sure what to cull.  As I said, some strains of E/E black and ER/ER black day-old chicks look so much alike and I can\'t tell the difference.  
Proceed with caution!

FYI...just include a \"/\" between the the Es to indicate the pair of genes...E/E.

[Beth C]

Karen: I didn\'t say that quite right - I didn\'t mean to compare them to your LWs, I know those are something totally different and were a long time in the making. I meant that John\'s explanation of how lavender would affect gold explained the essentially 2-tone affect I was seeing.

John: That was only a guess, because he was using them to produce blue and, if I understand right, the birchen based birds produce a better blue. (I was hoping for blues when I bought them but, as luck would have it, only hatched blacks.) I believe their legs are black, but I\'ll have to confirm that in good light.

[Tailfeathers]

So is this \"shafting\" something different than what the SOP is talking about??

No.  Check out this link for more on the subject.
http://ameraucana.org/abcforum/index.php?a=topic&t=1550

Thanks John!  It\'s nice to know I\'m on the same page with everyone else.

Now I don\'t wish to hijack the current thread and discussion on Lav\'s, so would one of you experts, that was involved with getting the W & BW\'s approved, email me and let me know what the reasoning was behind wanting shafting in the tails of the males?

I can see \"allowing\" for it but actually desiring it?  I\'ve gotten the tails on my males to finally be all blue without any red/orange in them.  Now I\'m gonna have to go check to see if I have any shafting at all.  It\'s just one of those things I hadn\'t paid any attention to as that part of the SOP didn\'t stick out in my head.  

Again, just email me and thanks for letting me stray slightly of course with this post.

God Bless,

[crystalcreek]

Here is the chick.  I\'m holding him down on the bedding by two feet so I can photograph the specific area is why he looks goofy.

It is a cockerel, if that makes any difference.

I\'m not sure, but I\'m guessing a lavender male of this would have \"lemon\" shafts?  Not something I think I want to fight with....   I have four lav females, sisters to this chick, no evidence of shafting.  The females are very nice and I was actually pretty excited about them until today.