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Leakage

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Mary Scuderi:
I have BBS. My chickens are 4 months old now and a couple of my roosters just started showing leakage on their hackles.  One is black and the other is blue and both have a deep gold color on tips of hackles that just popped up. How common is this from supposed purebreds? I am so disappointed. I may not have a decent rooster to breed. I do still have one blue roo but he was not my best until now.

Birdcrazy:
Mary, I had much the same problem several years ago with young cockerels as high as 10-15% showing this issue for about 2-3 years. During this time I did not use any of the cockerels for breeders but I did continue to use some of the original cocks for breeders that did not have leakage. I kept records on which chicks in successive years continued to produce leakers. If the offspring showed leakage, the old cocks were soup. I finally narrowed it down to some chicks hatched from eggs that I bought on the internet. Since then I have bought chicks 3-4 times from reputable ABC members. During this time I did not do any culling on hens and pullets if their conformation was good as long as there was no leakage. Of course leakage on pullets was not as prominent as in the cockerels. I know yes that some of the pullets probably carried this trait as did some of the older cocks that were used previously and had offspring that showed occasional leakage. Since doing this, I have not had any chicks with leakage for the past 3 years. I have found out that keeping good records and banding chicks helps not only in this instance but other areas such as combs, egg color, spur issues etc. I hope this helps, it did in my case. Good luck on your hatches.

Mary Scuderi:
Thank you for your response. I did send an email to the breeder to let him know of the situation since he is a member as well.

Don:
Mary,  I am sorry that you have had the leakage issue with the Blues and Blacks.  As Gordon mentioned, I don't think it is as isolated as some might suggest.  The leakage can be the result of the birds not having quite enough melanizers to cover up the base colors, in your case Gold base color.  The females carry this issue but don't normally present the problem, only their male offspring.  Its not really an issue of them being pure bred or not.  But it can be complicated by crossing different lines of AMs.  Some carry different genes to complete the color either Blue or Black.  The breeder might be able to give you some background on the make up of the origins of your stock. As Gordon mentioned keeping good records is the best start.  That way you will know which parents are suspect when mated together and you can change these matings for next year as well.  Good luck on the youngsters as they grow out.  And please Feel free to ask additional questions if we can help. 

Mary Scuderi:
So they are now considered EE's right?

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