Ameraucana Breeders Club
The Official Forum of the Ameraucana Breeders Club => Breeding => Topic started by: crystalcreek on December 06, 2011, 01:22:07 PM
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Can some of the genetics gurus on here please discuss the genetics behind slow feather gene (K) and tardy feather (t) and whether there are benefits or drawbacks with either. I also want to know if they can both be present on the same bird. My application has to do with the lavenders I\'m working on. If there are serious drawbacks, how is it eliminated. Here are two pictures of a male/female same age where I believe something is pretty evident (look at the tails) to get the discussion started. The cock is the same male all grown up, to show that the final plumage is normal.
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As an aside, this cockerel did not exhibit the same rate of slow tail feather growth. Is it a coincidence that he is also relatively free of any \"ticking\"--the little horizontal bars in the feathers? Ticking seems to be a male trait, based on what I\'ve grown out here.
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And finally, this is a son of the male in the post at the very top. A slow tail (but not as slow as I remember on his sire), but no ticking either, hence all my confusion.
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I am unaware of any reason why Ameraucanas should be anything other than fast feathering. But at least with the first cock and his son you got some decent width and substance to the tail feathers. Those of the second cock look pretty narrow. That may or may not be related to the lav gene, as I have owned black bantams with no lavender blood in them that had the same problem.
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You can sex chicks by the growth rate of the tail feathers.The pullets tail will grow faster if I remember correctly.That may not be what you have.Was this the only cockerel with this condition?Just thought I would put this out as a possibilty.
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You can sex chicks by the growth rate of the tail feathers.The pullets tail will grow faster if I remember correctly.That may not be what you have.Was this the only cockerel with this condition?Just thought I would put this out as a possibilty.
It was not the only one. From talking with others working on the variety, I believe it is pretty common. I know several breeds were used to introduce the color in bantams, and subsequent to that, to improve size, so is it possible those were the source, and it is, indeed, slow feather? Or tardy feather? That\'s why I want a description of the gene so I can figure this out, even when Ameraucana typically don\'t exhibit either.
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From what I have browsed in the Genetics of the Fowl book, tardy feathering does not differ in the male and female birds, so they would both be showing very slow feather growth.
So, in my opinion, what we have is the slow feathering gene.
http://chla.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=chla&cc=chla&idno=2837819&q1=Genetics+of+the+Fowl&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=146
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Sellers website lists a total of four possible alleles at the K locus. The first, k+ is wild type and rapid feathering. Then there are three others that cause varying degrees of slow feathering. The link is listed below. All are sex linked, which explains why males feather slower than females; the males inherit two of the K series genes while the female only inherits one. Also, k+ is recessive to all the other three, and that explains why you can have a rooster that throws both fast feathering and slow feathering progeny. Such a male is split for k+ and one of the three K slower feathering genes.
Thanks for the link to the Hutt reference. Though I own the book, I have never read it from cover to cover - too boring to spend that much time on it. He does seem to document a good case for an autosomal (not sex linked) recessive gene (t) that acts similarly to the dominant K series.
http://sellers.kippenjungle.nl/page3.html
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Is it something that \"needs\" to be eliminated? If it is, how does one go about doing that since it would be a sex-linked trait and possibly present as a recessive? I keep going back to fast feathering blacks but perhaps I am not on the right track. I hate to start all over again, at this point, because the birds are getting better, in my opinion, however slow the rate of improvement may be (pun, intended)..... Will the daughters of the slow male above crossed on Smith blacks be \"carriers\"? Please pardon all my questions, I\'m just really trying to understand this.
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The answers to your questions depend on whether you are dealing with K or t. Apparently K is dominant and sex linked while t is neither. So the best course of action is to find out which it is. So get a female from a known fast feathering line and cross it with your slow feathering rooster. If half or all the pullet offspring from that mating are slow feathering, you know you have K. If they are all fast feathering you have t.
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I\'d say if you got a male with no brassiness or barring you\'re headed in the right direction. Every male I hatched was brassy, every male split I hatched had leakage, although one very little, and the females weren\'t much better. I kept 2 pullets & there\'s a 3rd I\'m debating using. I only hatched 2 fast-feathering birds and, unfortunately, lost one of them. The remaining pullet has a single comb but I\'m rolling the dice anyway.
I don\'t know what other people are getting, but I\'m wondering if I\'m dealing with Kn. I got quite a few that looked like this:
http://ameraucana.org/abcforum/index.php?a=topic&t=1560
ALL of mine were very slow to feather, but the worst ones appeared to be male.
I destroyed the majority of them, but kept a couple to observe, and they did eventually feather in fully. But they were literally naked for the first few months. And didn\'t look much better with feathers than they did without.
To be honest, I\'m getting pretty discouraged with the lavenders. My only contribution to the variety this past season was killing about 100 really ugly ones before they could reproduce...
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The K genes are used a lot in the commercial poultry industry. This allows them to feather sex day old chicks. The male parent line would be pure for fast feather (kk) and the female parent line is pure for slow feather (KK). Because this is a sex linked gene, all of the female chicks will be fast feathered (k-) and all of the males will be slow feathered because the slow feather is dominant (Kk). This can be seen on the wings of the day old chicks because the females will already have longer primary feathers starting to grow and the males will have little stubby primary feathers. Probably 98% of your commercial layers and broilers in this country use this method to sex day old chicks. The difference is not really apparent in the plumage of the adult birds. Especially in the white commercial birds. It would be apparent in barred birds as slow feathering produces the nice even bars in barred rocks while fast feathering gives the less even barring in cuckoo colored birds.
Curtis
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There are special considerations that have to be taken into account with the lavender variety. There are several plumage flaws associated with this variety. One flaw associated with the lavender color is poor tail formation. By this I mean that the tail feathers are thin and twisted and never quite develop into the proper full tail of the breed. I have not seen this too much in the lavender Ameraucanas but it is fairly common in Self Blue Old English Game Bantams. If you cross these lavender birds with poor tails to blacks, the resulting black splits do not have the bad tails. When the splits are bred back together the resulting lavenders often will have the bad tails. It does not seem to be expressed in the female lavenders either. This means that even if you cull your males ruthlessly for bad tails, the trait can reappear from your females or your black splits.
Another feather flaw associated with lavender males is a patch that appears on the wingbar. This patch will look like the feathers have started to molt and new feathers are coming in but the new feathers never quite fully develop. This trait is like the twisted tails (and may be related) and is not expressed in females or splits.
We do not want to have these flaws showing up in our lavender Ameraucanas because they are very hard to eliminate. Lavender breeders should take special precautions and select hard for good feather quality.
Curtis
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I personally have only dealt with it in males, working with the stock I have here. I have not personally seen the trait manifest itself in a female of any color--split or lavender, but I may not have hatched enough chicks for that genetic occurrence to pop up, either. I do know that the two female splits I raised out of Paul Smith pure blacks that were sired by the slow lavender cock have grown their feathers normally. I did not raise a male from the cross, but another member has one, and from the picture I saw, his tail looks perfect. I have crossed those two girls on the lav cockerel with what I think is a normal tail (it didn\'t grow slowly, but the feathers are thinner) and I have week old chicks from that cross that I\'ll take a closer look at after the holidays. I am seeing some tails already in the brooder, so I think that\'s a good sign. But then again, maybe those are all the females. Perhaps I should be banding those birds now and keep only those? I guess I was not expecting females to be carriers since it was a sex-linked trait.
It sounds to me like there\'s a couple of different things going on with these lavs. I know it\'s hard to talk about our trash birds, but we have to in order to figure this out and eliminate it! Beth, thank you for posting those pics of the naked birds! I have not hatched one like that, but maybe you have a double copy of something and perhaps my birds have been homozygous only and my stock does have the potential to produce one that looks exactly like that. This is precisely why I want a better understanding of the genetics behind the flaw.
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So, back to the question. Let\'s assume it is K, as Jean has said. How do we eliminate it?
Can males who exhibit the trait be used if they are crossed on normal females? I have gotten some lovely females from this cross, but if they are all carriers, we\'re back at square one, which leads me to the next question--
Can females who are daughters of slow males carry the gene hidden? Does it pass to only their male offspring, female offspring, or both?
I don\'t understand sex chromosomes in chickens, and therefore sex-linked traits are confusing to me. I really want to, I just can\'t seem to wrap my brain around it.
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I culled every lav bird with a slow to feather tail this year. I worried I wouldn\'t have a cockerel left. In the end the only males I had left were 5 from a split hen.
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So, back to the question. Let\'s assume it is K, as Jean has said. How do we eliminate it?
By breeding only from fast feathering birds and known splits. Over time, eliminate the splits
Can males who exhibit the trait be used if they are crossed on normal females? I have gotten some lovely females from this cross, but if they are all carriers, we\'re back at square one, which leads me to the next question--If they feather fast why are you back to square one? Since K is a dominant gene, and they feathered fast, they did not inherit K. Can females who are daughters of slow males carry the gene hidden? No, but if they do carry K they will still feather faster than KK males Does it pass to only their male offspring, female offspring, or both?Potentially both. But if the male is K/k, he will send fast feathering to about half his offspring and slow feathering to the other half
I don\'t understand sex chromosomes in chickens, and therefore sex-linked traits are confusing to me. I really want to, I just can\'t seem to wrap my brain around it.Keep trying. Maybe go to the Sellers website and click on the photo to get to some of the basic information?
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Lets go back to basics for a minute. Genes are inherited in pairs, one from each parent, EXCEPT for sex linked genes. For those, males get two - one from each parent - and females get one - from their father only. So your slow feathering male could be Kk or he could be KK. K is dominant, that is why he was slow feathering even though it is possible he has only one K gene (the other would be k). The capital letter designates which is dominant. Lower case means recessive. IF your rooster is Kk, he will throw K to about half his offspring, and k to the other half, so his pullet offspring would be either K- or k-. They don\'t get either one from their mother. The genotype of his male offspring will depend 50% on whether their mother(s) are K- or k-. They could be KK, kk, or Kk. Does that help at all?
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But that\'s not consistent with the females I\'ve hatched. I haven\'t seen 50% female offspring with slow feather. I think I\'ve hatched enough that I would have seen one here and there with slow feather, even if I wasn\'t getting 50%. Whether he\'s KK or Kk, he should be producing females with slow tails, right? Surely I haven\'t been that lucky not to hatch one.
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So, to visualize, if you know you have a slow feathering male, would the inheritance work out like this?
(http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/107799_slowfeather.png)
I called the hen contribution \"hemizygous\" since she would only have one copy of any gene if it\'s sex-linked. I don\'t know what the official term would be, but I figured hemi- would work okay as a prefix since it means half.
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Hemizygous is exactly correct. I try to avoid such terms with folks who are confused enough already. Crystal, how many pullets have you hatched from your slow feathering rooster?
Like I said earlier, even if they are slow feathering they will feather faster than their male siblings.
OR, maybe we are dealing with t instead of K. Whole different set of possibililties.
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I looked at the Sellers site, and this sounds just like what I\'m getting:
\"Kn:
Very slow feathering or \'delayed\' feathering gene. The order of dominance among the genes allelic to this locus is Kn>Ks>K>k+. The slow feathering gene is believed to be associated with a bald patch on the back of the adolescent bird. The feathers do come in given enough time. Since this is likely due to a dose effect of the slow feathering gene, the homozygous males should be the most likely to exhibit the trait. In my personal flocks, I have both males and females exhibiting this. Many novice poultry keepers wrongly attribute the bald back phenotype with a picking problem.\"
The \"dose effect\" part confuses me - is Kn a separate gene or the effect of multiple copies of the K gene? Or a combination of K & t? Or can you have K & t in the same bird?
All of my lavenders hatched looking normal. Most started to get wing feathers on schedule. The females took longer than any of the same age birds of other varieties to get body feathers, and took forever to grow tails. Some had bald patches that weren\'t noticeable until you parted the feathers, since the feathers they did have were long enough to cover them. The males had primaries, tail stubs, and feathers on the tops of their heads, breasts & thighs. Their necks, backs, & abdomens were completely bald. The few I grew out did eventually feather in, but it took roughly 5 months. I got 2 fast-feathering birds, both pullets, both with single combs (don\'t know if that means anything).
In hindsight, the original birds were also slow to feather, although none were as severe as their offspring. But I do remember them looking \"rumpless\" until they were nearly grown.
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The dose effect just refers to two K genes versus one, or vice versa. The three different K genes with different subscripts simply refer to three different mutations/manifestations of K.
They are all inherited at the same place on the same chromosome, so they are alternate genes for the same locus (location) on a chromosome.
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So if these are mutations of the K gene, can a bird carrying K produce a Ks or Kn offspring, or would the parent bird have to carry the mutated form of the gene? I\'m curious, since the slow feather is so much more pronounced in the chicks than it was in the parent birds. I guess if the parents were each Kk, they would produce KK chicks that would be slower to feather than they were. But those should be about 25% of the offspring, instead of nearly all of them, right?
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Mutations happen. Your experience would indicate the arrangement of the molecules making up the K gene could be somewhat unstable, causing mutations more likely to occur than what would be considered normal. I don\'t really know.
Another possibility is that you are dealing with both the K and the t series of genes, and you got real unlucky with the birds you chose to breed. That would be another example of dosage effect. I don\'t think anyone can say for sure.
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Beth I think the best course of action is to immediately stop using these males that don\'t grow a tail until after 6 months. If you have females that are normal (k-), these can be crossed on a normal black cock and you have eliminated it in one generation. If you didn\'t watch them carefully when they were chicks, you probably won\'t know at this point because they are fully feathered. I\'m guessing since their offspring are naked, the females must be K-. If you think your females are K-, I can help you start over with female older chicks this coming spring. Then you can cross those on a normal black cock/cockerel and you\'ll be good to go by fall. It might seem as if we are taking two steps backward, but I think this is the way to go. I looked in my brooder last night and I saw about five chicks, both lav and split, that have about 3/4 to 1\" of tail growth at 9 days. These should all be fast feather females. It\'s only five out of 41, but hey, it is five. One of those is bound to be a keeper, right? I\'ll share my lav females with you to get this thing back on track. Don\'t you have some splits from me from the Smith birds? If those don\'t carry it, you can hang onto them to use later.
So I guess we\'re in the market for phenomenal black males around here.
I\'m going to watch carefully the offspring of my young cockerel that had an apparent normal tail and see what they do. If he\'s kk, I\'m truly in luck. We\'ll see.
Clare, what do those 5 you raised look like? Do you still have some?
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you got real unlucky with the birds you chose to breed
I\'m starting to feel that way no matter what the genetics. But that\'s what happens when you roll the dice on hatching eggs instead of coughing up the money to ship birds the breeder has had a chance to evaluate. Slowly making my way around the learning curve... ;)
Cindy: That\'s pretty much what I\'ve been thinking - time to pull the plug. The original males bit the dust when I saw what they were producing. The only male still here from this season is a split. He feathered normally but is starting to show some leakage in his hackles, so he\'s out. I think I\'m going to do one hatch with my black cock over the fast-feathering pullet and see what I get. Depending on what happens, I may take you up on your offer (which is very nice of you, btw). I have them under lights, so hopefully she will start laying soon.
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The only male still here from this season is a split. He feathered normally but is starting to show some leakage in his hackles, so he\'s out.
Yeah, don\'t use him.
I think I\'m going to do one hatch with my black cock over the fast-feathering pullet and see what I get.
If you have a black fast feather cock and a lavender fast feather hen, you\'ve got everything you need! The male cannot pass it on and neither can the female, so make some splits and either put the splits together or a split son back over his momma.
Your genetic diversity will be lacking starting with just two birds, but you can add fresh blood in your F2 or F3. You should obtain a black chick order in the meantime or hatching eggs and be working on that at the same time.
If you get slow feather again, either your birds are not truly fast feather, or perhaps you are dealing with a double whammy involving t, and if that is the case, maybe it\'s time to get all new birds.
You should be able to obtain two lav pullets without breaking the bank, to cross back to your black cock. Just make sure you get them from a trustworthy source if you get birds that are already feathered. If you get hatching eggs, you know when you grow them out at day 12 what you got.
If you are able to mark and keep the offspring from each of two pullets separated, I think you could safely mate the splits together, doubling up only on the black cock genes (he is a good one, right?) and 25% of your offspring will be lav with fast feather in your F2. You can ditch all the blacks at that point, since you won\'t know which are blacks and which are splits.
Jean was already doing that (split to split) cross in 2010. I was lucky enough to get some hatching eggs from that cross and I currently have two split daughters and one lav son of one of those original hens.
I have 5 lav females at my place that are laying or starting to lay (well, one is broody). I believe they are all fast feather. I think my course of action is going to be finding a nice black male to put over these lav hens and make some splits (again).
It looks like my Pen B lavender cock, sadly, is on his way out--he does produce some gorgeous female offspring, so it\'ll be a little while, as I don\'t want to back myself into a corner with too few birds to work with. I do have the young cockerel who is his son to replace him with, I know his mother is fast feather, so at the worst he is Kk, and I can still produce females using him.
And I will see what the other cockerel with a faster tail does for me over the Smith splits.
I\'ll keep everyone posted.
Honestly, John, Paul, Jean and others who ship chicks, I don\'t know how you can afford to do it for the very reasonable prices that you do. You are to be commended.
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My dogs are going to get real tired of eating Ameraucana :D
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My dogs are going to get real tired of eating Ameraucana
I butcher a few, but it kills my back. The ones I cull as chicks go to the wildlife rehab to feed the raptors (yeah, I know, just what I want to encourage local birds of prey to eat :p). The bigger ones go to the sale. They have a minimum bid and everything sells, so I\'m assuming there must be a buyer(s) for a processor. I took a load of cockerels last month & got $108, less fees. At an average of $4/bird it\'s no where near what I\'d put into feed, but at least it\'s something.
I\'m honestly on the fence with the lavenders. I\'ve gotten out of blacks, except for these 2 cocks, and there are so many challenges with the buffs, and a lot of things to work on in the wheatens, too, that I\'m thinking my dance card might be full...
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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...
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Beth I\'m really sorry to hear about that buff pullet. I hope you were able to get some eggs before this happened.
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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.
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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...
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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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Mine have been very hardy, but my climate is mostly hot and humid (more hot than humid this last year--epic drought & heat wave). I lost adult birds, including my great Smith black hens and the mother of my cockerel who was a Ribbeck split. I didn\'t lose any lavs at all. I think the lavs probably fare better here because their feathers aren\'t black and it affords them some heat relief.
My lavs pretty much lay all year, too. When I had hatchery RIR, they shut down completely during the hot summer.
Do a search, I remember reading something about K being associated with depressed immunity--I believe it was on this forum, but not sure.
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Clare, what do those 5 you raised look like? Do you still have some?
I\'ll try to get some pics and send you on the \"other\" forum. Still haven\'t got the trick of posting them here.
I\'m down to three now and will soon go to 1-2. They have improved type/size, but still color issues. I\'m holding on to my Lavs til I see what my Split to Split produces this year.
Clare
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Update:
I hatched another batch at Christmas. Out of 21 chicks, I isolated three that had any significant tail growth at day 12. One of those was a split with excess white on the wing primaries and another had improper down color; so only one keeper--out of 21 chicks.
The older batch from 12/1 is looking very promising. I have one female in that group that is nice and big, with great feather coverage at 5 weeks. I don\'t think looking for tail growth at day 12 is going to be the tell all I thought it would be. One of the chicks that I marked as a fast feather female now has less feather growth than some that I kept which I thought were male. I marked her (him?) and I\'ll keep watching.
Another batch goes in the incubator January 10.
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Crystal,
Your percentage for a project sounds about right. Since they are only line bred for a few seasons and there are many various genes from many families so consistancy will not rule. I feel good to get 1 out of 10 as keepers from my flocks of various breeds. The only one consistant is my white Orps since they were from a fellow that did not add much over the last 20 years and the female I used was from the same previous breeders line. My only culls from them are because I crossed colors and I get black legs on some of the white Orps.
Your blacks will improve them eventually.
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Harry I know. You gave me the best advice in the world when you said to get some blacks at the same time I obtained the lavs. If I had set up my original pens with lav females and made my splits with a pure black male instead of the other way around, I would be farther along because K is sex-linked.
As it stands, half of my Smith splits potentially are carriers, so I knew I would have to hatch A LOT.
Understanding it is half the battle.
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Update on mine: I decided to use all three lavender pullets and both black cocks to get a little more genetic diversity. No eggs from #56 (fast-feathering pullet) have been fertile. #55 & #66 weren\'t ultra slow-feathering, but didn\'t feather as fast as #56. So far, I\'ve been able to hatch 6 chicks from #55. Unfortunately, I jumped the gun collecting eggs and apparently didn\'t have them separated long enough, since 5 of the 6 were obviously not from the black cock - oops. (Note to self: not laying doesn\'t necessarily = not bred.) So the bad news is I can\'t use them, but the good news is half of them feathered at the same rate as my other varieties, so she\'s capable of producing normal feathering chicks. Lets hope the same is true for the black cocks...
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I just moved some 15 day old lav and splits in both LF and bantam.Happy to report no slow feathered birds.It is something that I have not looked for until I read about it here.
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Awesome! Maybe YOU can tell me what a fast feather male chick at 15 days old should look like as far as feather growth! I haven\'t found the answer yet!
And would a fast feather male show more or less feather growth around that age than a slow feather female. If I could just arm myself with this little bit of information, it would really help.
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I was going by what I have read on here that they should have 1/2 inch tail at 12 days.I did notice that I could not sex them by tail feathers yet.Some of the other colors can be sexed now.I suspected that I did not have K in the flock as I have produced cuckoo from them.
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and apparently didn\'t have them separated long enough, since 5 of the 6 were obviously not from the black cock - oops.
Beth,
If the last cock with the hens in that coop was the last cock to bred those hens, then all the eggs should be fertilized by him. I would guess either he didn\'t go his job or isn\'t fertile.
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After the first 5, I\'ve been getting black chicks, so maybe it just took them a while to settle into the breeding pen.
Meanwhile, wanna play who\'s the daddy? Possible candidates are a blue wheaten, a wheaten, and a buff.
They\'re about as cute as the are worthless:
(http://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff477/MMFarm/Misc%20Forum%20pics/100_7748_00.jpg)
(http://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff477/MMFarm/Misc%20Forum%20pics/100_7795.jpg)
(http://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff477/MMFarm/Misc%20Forum%20pics/100_7798.jpg)
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I believe this thread was originally talking about the K gene in the Lavenders. Since I have been getting several inquiries I believe this thread definately needs to be bumped up.
Cindy, thank you again for your offer. I have been hatching some lavender chicks lately and looks like I am going to rebound. I do not leave them free range anymore since it is so difficult to replace years of effort to improve them and the preditors seem to like the rarest birds which means they taste the best.