LF Brown Red chicks

[Mike Gilbert]

Sixteen large fowl brown reds hatched for me last night, a 100% hatch.   Considering there are only four females in the breeding pen, not too shabby.
I can only count 15 in the photo, so one must be hiding underneath the others.   

[Beth Curran]

100% hatch.

Awesome! I don't think I've ever had a 100% hatch. I might have on my very first hatch had I not dropped one while candling...

[Holly Frosch]

Ameraucana chicks are ridiculously cute. Here's our first batch:



Nowhere near your hatch rate, Mike, but we had 71% - not bad for us! (Cold weather, no heat, kids collecting eggs - ha!) Hope we have some goodies in there for Brown Reds (never mind the bluish looking one and his buddy - had a single comb "favorite" go broody in a trash can).



Jonah, our youngest, has a pen of lavenders - one black hen and one lavender hen in there (fellow in the background has his own place now). Only set two eggs out of that pen - that tiny little lavender is laying some really nice big blue eggs.



Oops - got a little OT ... back to the Brown Reds.
Kind of a stand-up little guy:

[Cesar Villegas]

Ameraucana chicks are ridiculously cute. Here's our first batch:



Nowhere near your hatch rate, Mike, but we had 71% - not bad for us! (Cold weather, no heat, kids collecting eggs - ha!) Hope we have some goodies in there for Brown Reds (never mind the bluish looking one and his buddy - had a single comb "favorite" go broody in a trash can).



Jonah, our youngest, has a pen of lavenders - one black hen and one lavender hen in there (fellow in the background has his own place now). Only set two eggs out of that pen - that tiny little lavender is laying some really nice big blue eggs.



Oops - got a little OT ... back to the Brown Reds.
Kind of a stand-up little guy:

Does your hen have a single comb?

[Holly Frosch]

Does your hen have a single comb?

Yes, we've had a couple crop up. :/ She is not in a breeding pen, but is one of my boys' "favorites" and is, thus, a keeper - a very goofy looking hen. She got to roam our shed this winter with an "oops" rooster from some local Ameraucanas we purchased ... 5 years ago. Another "favorite". Lol. (I'm convinced that without intervention the farther away from the standard they are, the closer to immortality.)

We are excited to see how some of the chicks from our more serious efforts turn out - we have one cockerel from last year that looks promising and two pullets that will hopefully complement our over-colored rooster.

So far this year's crop is much more consistent than last year's. It's like they weren't even trying to be Ameraucanas:

(That's little miss single comb on the left - dubbed "Goldface".)

This guy:


Produced her:

Also have another pullet from him that is really dark - just a wee bit o' leakage.

Hoping they will work out a little better with him:


To avoid this:

[Mike Gilbert]

The comb problems began to show up after I crossed in a black Ameraucana hen in the attempt to improve size.    From all appearances she was a near perfect specimen.    Based on results two generations later, she was obviously less than pure for pea comb, and is apparently where the single combs came from.   A few of my birds were less than pure for ER, as the off color birds must be e+ or perhaps eb, both of which are recessive to E and ER.      Those problems may be corrected here, as no single combs or off-color chicks have been hatched here this year out of at least 40.   Egg color also took a hit after the outcross, but progress is being made.   Lesson learned.    No more outcrosses to a different color under my watch.

[The Malcolms]

Another "favorite". Lol. (I'm convinced that without intervention the farther away from the standard they are, the closer to immortality.)

This has certainly proven true at our farm to the Nth degree!  A crippled guinea, a one footed modern game, a blind polish rooster and several other charity cases always get top billing in the favorites category.  The "perfect" specimens fall prey to chicken ailments or predators but never the "defects"!

[Holly Frosch]

This is good to know, Mike. We just had another single comb pop up in this hatch. This follows what you've said - birds from the fellow that threw the single comb do have good size. We're using his son this year, but now see we weren't lucky enough to have gotten away from sc yet. The other fellow threw the e+ (would it be e+ based on chick down?). We have a few decent blacks, but will certainly rethink our plans of using them - so much could be lurking under there.

We've had some goodies come out, too - don't get me wrong. Also, there have been some great genetics lessons in there for the kids. Luke was able to show some of his own hatches at fair last year. In addition to a couple of decent brown reds, he showed one of the e+ pullets. It's kind of nice that they have a "mixed breed" class for those projects that don't quite pan out. He was able to talk to the judges about why his bird wasn't an Ameraucana, its parentage, etc. (Judging the class has to be a bear, though!)

Hope all of this isn't moot - the depopulation of 5.3 million birds in northern Iowa has us a little concerned.

[Mike Gilbert]

Holly, for any chicks to appear with the off coloring, both parents would have to be hetero for either e+ or eg.   ER is dominant to those two, so hetero chicks would look much like pure brown red chicks.   So to "purify" the line, it would be good to test mate each of your breeders with mates that known to be impure for ER.   That would mean separating the females, or if you can tell by the egg color/shape/size, mark the eggs and hatch them in a separate container/bag/whatever.   You can tell right away at hatch which are the definite culls by their chick down coloring.  Even the ones with brown around their head are rejects.  Chicks should be all black, usually with whitish fuzz on their undersides and sometimes their chests. 

[Holly Frosch]

Mike: Aha! Thank you! This makes sense - still have to think on it a bit. How is it that we would luck out with rrpp e^be^b all in one hen? Lol. On the bright side, at least we've held back all these goofy hens that are homozygous for these recessives - and egg color is a definite giveaway for keeping things separated. This will work for testing prospects on the male side. For the hens we'll have to go the hetero route. Looks like a bit of nonstandard breeding ahead in order to breed toward the standard.

This has certainly proven true at our farm to the Nth degree!  A crippled guinea, a one footed modern game, a blind polish rooster and several other charity cases always get top billing in the favorites category.  The "perfect" specimens fall prey to chicken ailments or predators but never the "defects"!

Ha! So sad, so true ...

[Mike Gilbert]

How is it that we would luck out with rrpp e^be^b all in one hen?

It's Murphy's Law:   If anything can go wrong, it will.

[Holly Frosch]

Mike: Sorry to take over your thread! I have another question, though. Is it that the chicks appearing with brown on their heads are heterozygotes? (I understand dominance, but am thinking that perhaps whatever modifiers involved in ER are unable to act on e^b - or what-have-you). The over-colored cockerel above was brown-headed as a chick, but was crow-winged - so I think this would rule out homozygosity. Looking a little more closely, I've found a hen with similar "mossiness" on her primaries who has proven to be one of our culprits:



Or is this a separate issue? And what is this called? (I would like to do more searches at The Coop, but don't seem to have enough of my terminology down.  ) Does over-melanization mask this problem in some individuals? Seems if you modify e⁺ or e^b enough on a pullet, a novice (i.e. me ... lol) would have a really tough time telling the difference. Luckily, we've already selected against individuals with 'weird' chick down. Hope this moves us in the right direction.

[Mike Gilbert]

Bad coloring comes from impure genetics.   Just keep breeding from the correctly colored ones and your flock will improve. 

[John W Blehm]

Is it that the chicks appearing with brown on their heads are heterozygotes?

This top photo is of a couple chicks that are from a buff (e^Wh) over black (E) cross.  Note the red/brown in the faces.  I believe my blacks are pure for E, but that the buffs still have e^b or some other gene floating around in the flock.  Even so, I've hatched enough of these crosses with the same phenotype to believe they are E/e^Wh.
The 2nd photo shows a couple chicks from my buffs with markings they shouldn't have.  I believe they indicate e^b or something similar.  Wheaten (e^Wh) is dominant to brown (e^b), so since I never breed from birds hatched with these markings I assume when both parents are carrying one copy of e^b (or whatever) I end up with these chicks.   

[Holly Frosch]

Thanks, Mike and John. Very helpful. We'll select the best and hope things drift in the right direction. I'm going to put in an order for some warmer weather while I'm at it.