Black crested White Polish

[I Like Turkeys]

There’s been threads about this variety before but none lasted long. I am starting my own to prioritize information about the birds, as well as that I am getting BcW chicks from Ideal Poultry in about two weeks. I’ve researched this variety a lot, and there isn’t much information on them unfortunately.
According to the APA standard, the entire body should be white. The crest should be black without any white coming through, and black is allowed to cover the upper 1/3 or 1/2 of the neck depending on whether a bird is female or male.

This, above, is a photo of the BcW that greenfire farms imported. They do not breed this variety any more.
The BcW in the US right now are recreations, as the actual variety died off sometime in the 1900s. The current gene pool for these birds is very small, and their health suffers for it.
I believe the desired genotype for birds of this color should be one of the following:
E^R/E^R, Co/Co, Db/Db, cha/cha, S/S or S-
or
e^b/e^b, Co/Co, Db/Db, cha/cha, S/S or S-
This isn’t to say that all birds are this genotype; most probably aren’t. I’ve heard of birds from Ideal coming in silver-laced, solid white birds popping up in birds descended from their lines, and general poor color quality. I most commonly see breast leakage or birds who are almost spangled or laced.

I’ve gotten some photos from the facebook group to show these differences.
Below, in my opinion, is a good quality hen. I’m not sure, but her wing carriage may be too high.

This juvenile almost looks to be laced, not good:

this male looks decent, but has breast leakage, white crest ends, and a few black tail speckles:

I’ve not seen many BcW with crest size similar to other more popular polish varieties. I am getting 20 birds from Ideal, then hatching eggs from a breeder closer to summer.

Since I am obsessed, I combed through all of Ideal’s social pages to find photos of their BcW. I found one, it’s 2 or 3 years old though. I believe it highlights the crest size issues. I need to study body SOP to know how bad theirs is though.

If anybody on backyardchickens owns this variety i’d be ecstatic to see photos, and hear of your experiences with them. I’ve heard they’re a difficult color to work with, but I am excited to get mine. I’ll update here about raising them when I actually get some.

 

[I Like Turkeys]

Woo!chicks came in healthy and alive! One issue.. I only got 19 BcW polish, Ideal gave me what looks to be a self blue cochin instead of a polish.

Relating to the topic of the birds I made this thread about, I heard that chick down can determine how nicely-patterned a bird is. Darker chicks tend to be worse patterned, and lighter down coloring seems to be better.
I have mostly a bunch of super dark chicks, so I’m expecting poor patterning, but 4(not including the oops! chick) had noticeably lighter down. I still intend on waiting until about 6 months old to separate keepers from cull birds. Here are some photos.

Lighter chick:

Group shots:

Dark chick beside light chick:

 

[JacinLarkwell]

There’s been threads about this variety before but none lasted long. I am starting my own to prioritize information about the birds, as well as that I am getting BcW chicks from Ideal Poultry in about two weeks. I’ve researched this variety a lot, and there isn’t much information on them unfortunately.
According to the APA standard, the entire body should be white. The crest should be black without any white coming through, and black is allowed to cover the upper 1/3 or 1/2 of the neck depending on whether a bird is female or male.
View attachment 3394861
This, above, is a photo of the BcW that greenfire farms imported. They do not breed this variety any more.
The BcW in the US right now are recreations, as the actual variety died off sometime in the 1900s. The current gene pool for these birds is very small, and their health suffers for it.
I believe the desired genotype for birds of this color should be one of the following:
E^R/E^R, Co/Co, Db/Db, cha/cha, S/S or S-
or
e^b/e^b, Co/Co, Db/Db, cha/cha, S/S or S-
This isn’t to say that all birds are this genotype; most probably aren’t. I’ve heard of birds from Ideal coming in silver-laced, solid white birds popping up in birds descended from their lines, and general poor color quality. I most commonly see breast leakage or birds who are almost spangled or laced.

I’ve gotten some photos from the facebook group to show these differences.
Below, in my opinion, is a good quality hen. I’m not sure, but her wing carriage may be too high.
View attachment 3394875
This juvenile almost looks to be laced, not good:
View attachment 3394873
this male looks decent, but has breast leakage, white crest ends, and a few black tail speckles:View attachment 3394870
I’ve not seen many BcW with crest size similar to other more popular polish varieties. I am getting 20 birds from Ideal, then hatching eggs from a breeder closer to summer.

Since I am obsessed, I combed through all of Ideal’s social pages to find photos of their BcW. I found one, it’s 2 or 3 years old though. I believe it highlights the crest size issues. I need to study body SOP to know how bad theirs is though.
View attachment 3394878
If anybody on backyardchickens owns this variety i’d be ecstatic to see photos, and hear of your experiences with them. I’ve heard they’re a difficult color to work with, but I am excited to get mine. I’ll update here about raising them when I actually get some.

I can post older photos of my trio I had a few years ago if you'd like that came from Ideal. One interesting thing about them was that one of my pullets was a completely different color as a chick than the other two.

 

[I Like Turkeys]

I *think* I have another pullet laying now.

Sonic; she’s been getting closer to maturity for a few weeks now, and regularly squatting. I had her separated for like two weeks but merged all of the polish back together a few days ago just for ease of feeding. Yesterday I forgot to collect eggs, and I assume my first laying pullet- Wendy- laid one, but she also could’ve easily laid that egg today. I really don’t know. Today, there were two eggs in their merged coop, in different corners of the coop. It could be that she laid both eggs, and Sonic isn’t really laying, but Wendy only lays one egg every two days, sometimes even up to three days, and I’d expect her to reuse the same nest.

It is what it is. I separated Sonic again. I’ll know in a day or two whether she’s actually laying.

Pictures just for the sake of pictures. Sonic is the pullet below, then there’s the boy.

 

[ElPaso]

If you're suggesting I measure the width of their back stripes, I can do that . Sounds fun.

In all seriousness, I understand. The concept that different genes have slightly varying effects is not new. I mostly struggle with down color. I haven't seen much information on how Co, Db, Ml, or other genes may affect down color, so I honestly can not confidently gauge e-locus on these birds without knowing the effect any other genes they may have would impose.

I'll keep track of down color and adult color though. Best I can do for now.

I'm not saying anyone knows. I'm saying if it is knowable then let's know it. I think Co, Db and Ml surely effect down color. I'm not convinced any of these effect striping except shade or darkness. May even reverse them. Who knows.

 

[I Like Turkeys]

An update! All 3 pullets are laying now. About to go on a hatching stall though, until I can separate them to mark eggs properly. Currently working on a coop where I plan to cage train birds, it’ll make a good spot to keep them separate, and I’ll be able to switch them out to their rooster every few days to ensure fertility.

One of my spare cockerels died in a near-24 hour rainstorm 2 nights ago. I’m unsure what happened, he was healthy the night of the storm, but the next day was dead under his roost. There are a lot of variables as to what could’ve happened, but it didn’t look like what I’ve come to expect of predator attacks, so for now I remain unsure on what happened to the poor boy.

3 older chicks who've hatched are all doing well. I can grab photos of them tomorrow Or next week. Crests are beginning to come in on the eldest 2.

I had 5 eggs hatch yesterday. Main reason I’m dropping in is because of this guy. Wow! it’s very cute, honestly.
(Dwight x Wendy chick, 1/10 of their offspring dead and alive to show this color)

I am confident of its heritage.

This hatch had a lot of big vaults, surprisingly. The vault size is really kinda taking me by shock. I am not joking when I say the parents had very tiny to zero vaults as chicks. This chick has the largest vault I’ve ever seen on a chick I’ve hatched. I’ll be watching for signs of loss of vigor, since the first large-vaulted chick died at 5 days old, but right now these guys all seem very healthy, hungry, and investigative. It’s a bit freaky seeing how big the vaults have gotten in a single generation, even though I know the trait is required for the breed.

Dwight x Wendy 2: another dark gray chick with white striping. 2nd I’ve hatched, after the first chick who died, so I’m especially curious to see how it grows.

Dwight x Sonic chicks:

 

[I Like Turkeys]

Year is about to end, I currently have 8 chicks growing at the moment. Hopefully things get better next year. Fertility seems fine, and There aren’t many eggs who die off in the early stages of incubation, but most of the ”losses” are fully formed chicks that just don’t hatch.

Current chicks are all doing well. I have two small little chicks who hatched yesterday and the day before, so hopefully there are no issues with those two(none present yet, but the first week is always when I’m most cautious about a chick dying). Everyone else above 2 weeks old is doing well.

9 weeks old, unsure of sex. No inkling of either being male yet, but I’m holding off a few more weeks before I make my final guess.

This one is about 7 weeks old.

This curious looking chick will be 4 weeks old on the 29th. It started out mostly black, so I’m curious to see how it’ll look as an adult.

Then I have two who are 2 weeks old, very light colored, and 2 that just very recently hatched. My two who just recently hatched are completely non-vaulted, 1 black looking one and 1 lightish one. Things have been incredibly hectic lately, and I don’t know the mothers of any chick 1 month old or younger, but hopefully within the next month or so I’ll get back on track with keeping record of that.

 

[I Like Turkeys]

2 grow outs I’m liking somewhat.

Cockerel, 3 months old. First bird to have more of a semi-laced breast issue rather than semi-spangled breast issue. He’s got a really yellow tint to him as well, and I can’t tell if it’s grime or not, since he seemed to just grow into it, and the others lack that yellow tint. He’ll probably stay to breed, unless he develops an un fixable issue like wry tail.

Pullet, 4 months old. The girl I shared a photo of March 3rd. she’s the first pullet I’ve hatched as well! I like her, she has no severe issues.

Breast pattern, for comparison to the cockerel.

I’ll be back tomorrow or the day after with more photos. The BCW-silver laced(or white) cross chicks are sort of interesting in my eyes. I’ve hatched 3- ones super dark, 1 fairly light but with lots of grayish leakage, and the 3rd has been feathering out nearly solid white. It’s been intriguing; something I honestly wasn’t expecting.

 

[I Like Turkeys]

I am interested to hear more about your cross breeding?

I’ll be sharing more photos of them as they grow up.

As for what I’ve been doing- it mostly sums down to breeding my black crested white rooster to a white and silver laced hen, and getting chicks that look like black crested whites. I don’t know why, though, as I thought this color wouldn’t reappear in the first generation.



I have two other polish hens besides the black crested whites. A bearded silver laced, and a bearded white. The white(who I sometimes call a paint because of how splotchy she is) one was sold to me as having just popped out of a silver laced pen, but I think she’s a buff laced cross of some sort, as she’s obviously got dominant white and not recessive.

They aren’t perfect hens, but they’re much nicer than the black crested whites. I wanted them to increase body and crest size, as well as tail length, as I dislike the bodies of my black crested whites. Originally I intended to have them separate, and track which chicks came from them, but that didn’t happen, so their eggs and the eggs from my black crested white hens have been intermingled for a while.

I hatched out the first of the crossed chicks in January- a non bearded paint cockerel and self black pullet from the white hen. Breeding her didn’t drastically improve the crests, but her chicks tend to have longer tails and her sons mature quicker, which I like.

The non-bearded part is important, seeing as when the chicks hatch out identical to black crested whites in color, the only way I’ve known them to be crosses was whether they had a beard. Now I’m thinking I got a third chick from her.

This cockerel, who I shared a photo of previously, is another bird I’ve recently begun to think came from the white hen. He’s been growing more tinted feathers recently, having actual golden ones popping up in his crest today, so I think he’s actually S/s+. My only bird who might carry the gold gene would be the white hen. His tail is longer than all the other black crested whites, and he’s got the same comb shape the white hen has.

He looks a lot like a black crested white. I don’t know why, if he actually came from her. I’ll be keeping him for test breeding unless he develops any issues. If he produces gold pullets, I can at least confirm to myself he’s S/s+, and likely a cross from the white hen.

More recently, I hatched out more chicks and got the first bearded ones, 2 of which looked like my black crested white chicks in down color. I don’t have any new photos of them, but one is slowly getting more patterned. I don’t know which hen they came from, but since none of my black crested whites are bearded, it has to be either the white hen or the silver.

 

[I Like Turkeys]

I’ve lost a total of 9 chicks in 5 days, including the mixed-up cochin. Of my 11 remaining polish, I feel they seem healthy. They’ve been bulking up, though one is runtier than the others, and I still have at least two I feel could be good for starting a breeding program.
So far, it seems correct that the lighter chicks have better coloration. They only have wing feathers at the moment, but I have two light chicks and their wings are considerably better colored than the others.
I‘ve attached some photos below.

The above photos are of darker chicks. The below is of a lighter chick. This one has a bit of black smudging, but it is still better than the rest of the chicks.

I may order some more from ideal soon, to boost population and the amount of good starting birds to work with. Who knows though.