Backyard Poultry Forum

Once before I hatched a bantam wyandotte chick that had blackish yellow legs and was almost birchin in down colour. Ended up blue with some lacing. I thought i must have hatched a cross egg . Well it has happened again, 3 chicks similar in leg and down colour and definitely from the blr bantams 1 hatched in a first clutch, birchin down with large ginger patchs, it is now colouing up a well laced bird with deep red ground colour, is looking nice except for the dark legs. The next 2, 1 is similar to the first, and the last is colouring up more a solid blue. All definitely bantam wyandottes. Have hatched other chicks with the more correct eb down, am completely puzzled by the darker chicks and especially the way the first is actually colouring up very well laced. In the pen black laced red roo, black laced red hens and blue laced red hen. None of these had downs like these chicks. Could these chicks still be eb just with a lot of melanisers.

So it sounds like the chicks are segregating for a couple of things. If you're getting dark legs, that's conditioned by an autosomal recessive. So both parents of that chick would be carriers.

I guess you could have Birchen in one of the parents too. ER is dominant to eb, so only one parent with the gene is needed. ER will support lacing too.

Some of the BLR appear to carry wheaten, but I agree that chick down does not sound like wheaten.

Any chance of some pictures?

, the older chick., the solid blue chick, there is another much older chick much the same that hatched under a broodie, i thought was a cross., the last chick showing the down colour, has some red laced feathers coming through. the feet colour they all share black over yellow. .checked the older chick outside its legs have gone yellow with just a faint bit of smoke black on ankles now.

, two of three older pullets, first bred this season, good ground colour but not enough breast lacing., the best pullet so far, dark blue laced red, nice lacing and neck hackles, deep ground colour, was eb down. , she will be very usefull

Hmmm, my suspicion is that you should breed from the ones with the best type and best lacing.

A excellent old breeder in the US once said to me 'go where you are pushed'. What that means is set your goals and select the breeders that match that goal. By all means inform your decisions with the best knowledge about genetics but don't be afraid to go with where your targets push rather than what the conventional wisdom might preach.

So, I think in this case the advice means don't get too caught up with whether they have the right chick down colour. Rather select for the ones closest to the adult plumage you want.

Yes i will be selecting the best type pullets, they are improving over the first hens so on the right track.

Yes i will be selecting the best type pullets,with the most lacing. they are improving over the first hens so on the right track.

Totally agree with this as it make perfect sense in most cases but i'm finding the lack of consistency in the base gene is directly related to the lack of consistency in the offspring and therefore i have started culling to refine to eb down pattern as these are the birds that hold good lacing better. Red takes longer to develop in the growers though when compared to a eb/eWh sibling so it feels a bit counter productive at first but they often end up just as dark if you give them the chance. Many of the eb offspring from my line are also a bit too melanized (heavy lacing and black hackles).

My theory on why things are the way they are in this line is because an approach where good red was put at the top of the priority list was used coupled with an approach similar the quoted text. Since the best red birds are often eb/eWh and some of them will actually hold lacing, many split based birds have been retained over the years and extra melanizers have been selected for in an attempt to get the lacing to hold. It works but not consistently. Of course when you breed eb/eWh to eb/eWh you get 25% eb and 25% eWh as well as 50% splits. The full eWh almost always have no lacing on their fronts so end up culls. The eb's don't develop red as early as others so could potentially be culled if you were hell bent on the best red (not to mention they are often over melanized to take time to clean up). This leaves you in a repetitive cycle of inconsistency. My approach has been to weed out wheaten and refine to eb base then start working toward consistency of red as well as red/black balance. To add a little more to the story, since so many generations of splits have been bred together and the ones with extra melanizers to achieve good lacing are chosen as breeders, when you use these birds and retain the eb's from them, they are often over melanized.

As mentioned, the red takes longer to develop on eb and any weakness in the red is very obvious. This, i believe, is a blessing in disguise. Since the weakness is exposed then only the best genetics for red ground colour get fostered. In time i believe this will lead to much better consistency (and eventually quality) in the red ground colour.

I am not telling you how it is, merely expressing my findings and theories in an effort to help. I am confident enough that i have culled more chicks than i'd like to admit over this season as it was getting to a point where i was producing far too many wheaten carrying chicks and it was becoming too costly to grow them all out only to find the lacing washed out as they approached their adult moult. I can't afford to be spending too much on feed for birds that have no place in the market and therefore need to be culled so this seemed like the smartest approach to me. A few others have taken this approach too.

Getting back to birchen though, i hatched one chick recently much like you described. Birchen looking down pattern with dusky legs. I've kept it out of curiosity and it's still young but not looking too bad. I'll have to dig up a pic and remember how to resize them (it's been a while ).

PS Would be keen for an egg swap in spring if you're interested. Have just started mucking around with bantams too.

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There's silk in my name but dottes are my game. Amateur breeder of standard blue laced red wyandottes.

Shane.

Sorry about the blur in the pics. I had to take them through the mesh. Hatched new years day so 6-7 weeks.

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There's silk in my name but dottes are my game. Amateur breeder of standard blue laced red wyandottes.

Shane.

Nice to hear from you again Shane, are these bantams, , interesting that you too got a similar birchin colour chick, these ones of mine 2 are blue and 2 are blr.i to am growing them out to see what happens. I definitely will be interested in a egg swap come spring. Whilst in Noosa on hols picked up 7 blr standard eggs along with 5 lorp eggs as fillers. 4 blr eggs are developing well and the 5 lorp eggs. If all goes well will have blr standard as well. Funny how i am hoping for a roo hope to get a decent blr standard roo. . So we will both if going well will have blr standard and bantam. This is the path i want to go so will be having a big cull soon and get rid of my crosses. Just keep a couple of barnies and marans crosses for layers.. have way too many now and need to cull hard. By the way i have some nice silkies now all bred from the original hatch from your eggs. will be sticking to blue and splash..

Standards mate. I haven't gotten far with the bantams at this stage. Glad you've found your passion with the blr and also that the silkies have gone well for you. I am free of silkies now. Trying to hatch a good cock bird works out great. I've been trying for the last two seasons and hatched mostly pullets. Will be trying again next season. Happy if this cycle continues but i know what it's like to have too many.

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There's silk in my name but dottes are my game. Amateur breeder of standard blue laced red wyandottes.

Shane.

Hi Dottes, great to see you back. Please keep contributing. Heaps of Wyandotte colour genetics also applies directly to Barnies. Re read the old thread last night (couldn't believe how much made more sense this time around). I'm getting some better blues (largely by default ATM) but need to tidy up the lacing

Yes sue the genetics are exactly the same for the barnies. My barnies were all eb based. Which probably explains why when my eb based black laced red bantam wyandotte roo went over one of these barnies the pullets have great lacing , was surprised that they are clean double laced. Still have one at the moment, absolutely beautiful. I know i am getting the eb/ewh bantam wyandottes from one hen and these don't have great breast lacing. For next season hope to hatch more from the blr hen that eb based.have the good pullet in above photo too, excellent lacing, eb based, good ground colour, i hope she throws some great pullets. Also need to hatch a good blue laced red cockerel, Next season the same as shane will be culling the eb/ewh and keeping the best eb, cleaning up the base to get consistency is important .

Between the 2 breeds, I am unravelling a lot of granny knots in my head. My Barnies are very mixed for bases. I wish I had the facilities for single mating. Pen mating makes it sooo hard to single out the right combinations Selecting for type as well as lacing is 2 foward and 1 back. i have to keep the numbers up for fox insurance.
We have embarked on a slow process. At least the Standards recognise blue in Wyandottes but makes no reference to single or double lacing?
Wish I had photos of the birds I started with.