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Tardy feather growth

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Lee G:
Out of 40 chicks, I have one silver chick that is not like all the rest.  It has wing feathers, but none anywhere else except a few stubs along the spine. Could this be tardy (t) retarded feather growth? But why only the one chick?  ??? The others are from the same parentage and are feathering in fine... Has anyone else ever experienced this? I'm a tad disconcerted as they all share the same sire.... :-\

DeWayne Edgin:
I have a Silver chick just like this! I think i had 3 total but the older ones featherd fine.

Mike Gilbert:
Slow feathering is the result of a sex linked gene.   It shows up the most on male chicks, so this one will probably be a cockerel.   His father is probably split for this trait, so throws the slow feathering to half his progeny.   So you have been lucky not to have seen more of it.   If you don't want to perpetuate this trait you will want to cull this one and any others you get like it.

Lee G:
Thank you Mike. Not surprising because I seem to be having a year of the rooster.  8) (or so I thought...so much for my sexing skills, haha)

I've been researching this and have discovered chickens can be (K) as well as (t) at the same time, which is what I think I may be dealing with now. Or is that even possible? K is sex linked and tardy is an autosomal recessive. I'm a novice at chicken genetics at best, but find it all utterly fascinating. I just wish most stuff didn't go over my head...I often feel like the answer is right under my nose, if only I could understand it.

And I was wrong about this chick being the only one...Tardy expresses to different degrees, from extreme, to moderate, to mild. I can see a few others have mild cases, so are likely t/t. This chick is probably super slow tardy (t^s/t^s) along with K (?) I will definitely be culling the chick once it's grown enough to confirm my suspicions. Birds with tardy will have normal feathers by six weeks, where as birds with K will still be growing in their feathers at that age.

Here's the same chick next to some of his faster feathering siblings.


My other concern is that I've used the same silver cock over some of my best splash hens with the intent of creating a strain of blue and splash Ameraucanas that are based on S/S instead of s+ or S/s+. So far all the offspring from these matings have feathered in fine...and fast. But now I'm worried it may come back to haunt me in the next generation...having a large quantity of chicks to select from will likely be the key. I hope anyway.  :-\

Breeding for improvement while maintaining what you’ve already accomplished is a fine balancing act that is for sure. There really are no short cuts to experience I am learning! That and there is nothing easy here. And there is always something more to learn.  :)

Mike Gilbert:
According to the Sellers website ( http://sellers.kippenjungle.nl/page3.html ) there is not one but three different K genes, all dominant to fast feathering (k).     If you did not see the slow feathering in any of the parent birds, then you are likely indeed dealing with the recessive autosomal (t) gene.   
I'm surprised you went with the silver variety for your project, as there are already a lot of blue and black birds in large fowl and bantams that are sex linked silver based.  It would have been easier to test mate and identify a few of those.   A bigger problem in the blues is lack of true lacing.   The edging we see on most of them is due to the feather structure around the edge of the feather, and not true lacing.   A couple of people have/had projects going to cross in the Blue Andalusian to improve the blue Ameraucana coloring.  The Andalusians almost certainly would be S based. 

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