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White feathers on Day old Lavs

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mustangsaguaro:
I have some lavender chicks that are about 5 days old now. I am noticing on some of them where the wing feathers are starting to come in that some of them have white wing feathers coming in. And others have strictly lavender coming in. My question is will those white feathers disappear or not?

I had some black lav splits that I hatched last year same thing. White feathers came in. I figured that those white feathers would go away and they did not.

So my question is should I cull those chicks w/ the white feathers or wait? I am going to be putting more eggs in my incubator in about 2 weeks.  I have a limited amount of birds I am able to hatch so should I hold onto the white feathered ones for a while and wait to see what the next batch of chicks bring?

Thanks

Cloverleaf Farm:
So the white primaries on the black / lav splits NEVER went away?  Did you cull those birds or breed from them? Is that where these lavs came from?

mustangsaguaro:
You are correct the white primaries and it\'s maybe 1/4 of 1 or 2 feathers never went away.

These lavs w/ the white coming in could have come from my other lavs or the black splits. I don\'t know. Right now my only Ameraucana\'s I have are the Lav and Lav splits and everyone free ranges. And I don\'t know who lays what eggs unless I am out in the coop and get there egg right after they laid. I have 2 Lav split hens and 5 pure Lavs w/ 2 Lav roos. I guess the only way to know this is to lock up the black splits and take and mark there eggs and incubate those eggs and see if when those chicks start to feather if any come in white. If they do I will know who the culprit is.  I didn\'t cull the blacks because that is all I had to start w/ them and my 5 Lav girls.

crystalcreek:
I had this issue with a split hen.  She produced chicks with more white tiny first wing primaries than you would normally see.  For example, instead of the outermost one or two wing feathers being white, said chick might have four or even five white ones the first time feathers came in.  After growing some out, I learned that the melanizing genes were insufficient to completely cover all that white at final plumage, and a wingtip or two would have a white section at the tip.  I culled the hen and her offspring.

crystalcreek:
For this reason, I personally think it is better to immediately cull those chicks with more than two white wing primaries as soon as you see the trait popping up....saves you lots of feed....and those hens can still be great layers for somebody else...

...and the roosters make great dogfood at about 4-5 months, if you\'re so inclined.....

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