Best comb for hot/cold weather

[TundraFang]

I'm coming up with ideas for a breeding project in the spring and I was wondering what the best comb type is for hot and cold weather. I've heard rosecombs are best for cold weather because they can't get frostbite. Is that true? Would a single comb be best for warm weather?

 

[Pollito Pelon]

Naked neck for warm and pea comb for winter

 

[NatJ]

pea comb for winter

I agree that pea comb is the best comb type for cold weather.

When a chicken is pure for pea comb, it has small wattles to go with the small comb. (When a chicken has the only one copy of the pea comb gene, the comb and wattles are not small. The comb gets an odd shape but does not get smaller, and the wattles are normal sized.)

Rose comb is better than single comb in cold weather, but leaves the wattles as big as ever. (I think comb tips get frostbitten more than wattles do, but in really cold weather the wattles can have problems too. Wattles can also have problems if the chickens dip them in their water when drinking.)

 

[nicalandia]

For Winter is the Cushion Comb...

 

[Folly's place]

The cushion comb is the smallest in chickendom, as our

Chanteclers. Single combs are good in hot weather, and will tend to get frostbite in cold.

 

[phasianidae]

This guy handles the cold pretty well.

 

[TundraFang]

This guy handles the cold pretty well.

View attachment 2902090
View attachment 2902092

He's so pretty!

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

My Houdans with V-combs and small wattles weathered our unusually cold (a week of temps in the teens) southeastern winter with flying colors. We had a learning curve with figuring out waterers that would stay ice-free long enough for them to drink without getting their crests wet, but even with some wet crests... didn't lose any points.

Leghorns did OK but I did lose some points. Legbars, surprisingly, suffered the worse. I can't figure why the difference. I dubbed several frostbitten Legbar combs, though, and realized they're much thicker at the base than the Leghorns. (Dubbing them was NOT fun.) I don't know if that is relevant or not.

We have severe hot and humid summers here as well, and I haven't noticed that big combs gave the leghorns and legbars any advantage over the Houdans. They all kept laying right through, no heat-related losses, no indicators of being stressed. I've heard a big comb would help with sort of evaporative cooling or something, but with adequate husbandry it seems like a non-issue.

 

[nicalandia]

Legbars, surprisingly, suffered the worse. I can't figure why the difference.

The crest and the Single comb just compounds the issue

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

The crest and the Single comb just compounds the issue

Eh, maybe? But my legbars are pretty small-crested hatchery things and the crest on the males (who I had trouble with) have very swooped back and sparse crests as I prefer. No chance they were getting dipped in water while drinking like the Houdans, but maybe just the presence of them at all somehow trapped humidity in the comb region more.