Isn't he a sweetie! I'm glad he's got such a good home. I never did come up with a name for him- his father is "little Mac" and I just called him the splash Mac boy.
That is a lovely blue, Sybie!!
Believe me, if there was a reliable way to get more girls with temperature, the commercial poultry industry would be doing it. They still have to euthanize at least 50% males. What DOES affect the sex ratio is how good you are at incubation. This year...
Yes. I agree. It is important for all poultry people to realize that it is irresponsible to trap and relocate a predator- whether feral cat, raccoon, or opossum. Once trapped, they cannot usually be trapped again, and you just give a problem predator to someone else. Don't trap them unless...
I have a nice young splash bantam cockerel. Pretty good tufts. I can post pictures if anyone is interested. I also have a FABULOUS white bantam pullet- tufts to die for- she would be the best thing I've bred all year except her legs are too light for show. She is quite tame and would be...
I am trying to develop a line of good white bantams. Unfortunately, all of my best were killed by a feral cat while we were on vacation 2 years ago. These were irreplaceable- being based on Steve Waters' line of bantam whites which no longer exist. Now I am breeding from the few culls I had...
Birds that peck relentlessly at each other will pass on the gene. I have ruthlessly removed all such birds from my breeding pool and now have few problems. With Polish, one cannot afford to tolerate the behavior. If this is not a favorite bird, don't keep her. If a chick does this, cull it...
Show Champion at the Mother Earth Fair APA show Saturday. This is "Stevie", Rob's bantam black. She is blessed with gorgeous tufts and was in perfect condition, for once. Reserve of Show was a Jersey Giant.
I have never heard that chocolate is sex-linked. It certainly is not in my Polish. Cuckoo is, of course, sex-linked in all breeds. Chocolate (dun) is just a modifier of black as is blue, with khaki being the equivalent of splash if the bird carries 2 chocolate genes. Chocolate is sex-linked...
I have a funny oops chick here- too bad some of you who are into experimentation aren't here to take it. Sort of a duckwingish color, frizzled with 2 large bilateral tufts, no tail, but a tiny crest. I have a black Polish/araucana frizzle who free- ranges and clearly I hatched one of her blue...
To my vast annoyance, this year's hatches are coming up with mostly clean-faced whites with a lot of tails, but I'm getting some very pretty AOV chicks (which I despise- no color for me please) with nice tufts that are rumpless, also a few decent blues. I am out of chick boxes but would...
Those were my chicks in the sale. I put in a blue and 2 red/bbr bantams with decent bilateral tufts. They went for $15 and $10- hard to believe but prices were low low low on everything. The economy in this area has affected everybody. I talked to the people with the AOV LF in the open show...
I don't ship araucana hatching eggs. They just don't do well. I ship my Polish all over and they are fine. I never had any luck shipping serama eggs either. I think this year I'll ship a box of chicks if anyone contacts me wanting bantam araucanas and see how they do if shipped express.
The blue is "mossy" meaning that the lacing is blurry and the colors are blotchy and not uniform. That being sad, it's not too bad for an araucana, but would never pass muster as a show blue. I tell you, blues are hard!!
I think you need a good solid black for that pretty blue girl. Breeding blues is the ONE time a black with a purple sheen may work better for you than a correct green sheen. You are breeding LF- correct? Too bad. I will have lots of good black bantams this year.
By the way, if anyone is...
Not impossible at all- just rare. My only point was that it is UNLIKELY that clean-faced birds carry the tufted gene- so be sure to have one tufted parent if you're looking for tufts. I breed tufted to tufted all the time, just because I don't like to have a lot of clean-face birds around that...
A lot of lacing comes in later, so don't despair. A lot of what we call "blue" in araucanas is not true andalusian blue where genetics are predictable. I often get blue from crossing black to white. These blues are not well-laced but, if I breed them into black and keep blues out of those, I...
What you are talking about it fairly rare. Yes, we can see hidden or internal tufts or, more commonly, tufts picked out and the bird thought to be clean-faced, but it is a myth perpetuated by backyard breeders of araucanas trying to sell eggs that clean-faced birds "carry the tufting gene." If...