Wyandotte National 2009 - Albury

Appologies to those who love the silver/gold lace, white, black, blue etc but I mostly snapped my favorites since I was sure the BYP contingent would more than adequately cover the rest.

We had an excellent time at the show, enjoying the birds and putting faces to names. It was good to see colours you don't often see as well as some nice birds among the more prevalent colours as well. I was very happy to see Std Partridge there (no, not mine - not with a 2 month old baby anyway LOL) as well as the buff laces. I was very tempted by their being in the auction but in the end we decided to save our pennies and enjoy Albury and catching up with BB, Judy and gang in the evening.

I also got my hot little hands on a copy of the new Wyandotte colour guide and think it's an excellent publication the club should be well proud of, as well as a bunch of other Wyandotte merchandise!

The trophy table - the framed illustrations were especially nice!

Std Partridge PB Roo

Std Partridge hen, 1st in class, Ch Partridge, Ch Penciled

Std Partridge hen, 2nd in class, Res Ch. Partridge, Res Ch. Penciled

Bantam CB Partridge Roo

Std Patridge hen

Std Partridge hen

Buff laced pullet. Res Ch Buff Laced, M & K Vizer

Ch Buff Laced, Buff Lace Rooster, M&K Vizer

3rd place Buff lace cockrel, one of the auction birds

Blue laced gold cockrel - R Woods

Blue laced gold pullet

One of the interesting rare colours


Blue laced REDrooster - gosh he was a striking fellow - the photo does not do the richness of his colours justice! I'm sure his breeder was exceedingly pleased with him!


Blue columbian buff - std size birds (the black of normal columbian markings is diluted to blue)

Blue columbian buff pair - bantam

1st place Red rooster - R. Williams

Liquorice Allsort chick Pt II

For those who remember, one of my little broody girls managed to sneak one of her own eggs into a clutch she was sitting and hatched out a cute little black puffball dubbed the liquorice allsort chick. Her babydaddy was one of my Wyandotte roos and I was curious to see how it'd turn out from such an oddball mix of colours and hoped it was a pullet and would make as good a broody as mum. Well, here is the results, in front of her mum:

I know... I know... for such a cute little chick out of pretty parents, poor Liquorice is not the most pretty chook around! Poor dear has smutty black feathering, whiteish skin and ears and pale eyes and a horn coloured beak and a mishmash looking comb. Her face is a weird looking combination of Wyandotte/Silkie/Pekin that looks perpetually a bit cross and hawkish. She is sweet though and hopefully she makes a very good broody like mum.

Duck-Duck the goose

Meet Duck-Duck. No, I did not name him...

He's an aproximately 9 month old Embden gander who was turned in to a shelter after being hand-raised as a pet. Lucky for him one of the people who works at the shelter has a soft spot for fowls and asked me if I might be interested as she knew I had an Embden girl without a partner.
Duck-Duck does have a bit of a bad habit though - being handraised and imprinted on humans he has no idea he is a goose and being a strapping lad now coming into maturity, Duck-Duck is a bit confused about who he ought to be mating. So far he has been very well behaved here although we're watching him carefully for training as necessary as you can imagine it's not a terribly good thing to have such a large bird with that sort of habit. Hopefully though he will bond nicely with my Embden girl and this will go a long way to solving the problem of misplaced hormones.

Settling in has proved interesting as to the best of my ability to discern, he has never seen another bird since the day he hatched and he has no idea he is one or how to relate to them. In many ways, the poor fellow is really quite divorced from his own culture, although he is showing some curiousity now after a week and a bit in that he will watch them from a meter or two away. He is enjoying the space though and especially the rainy weather of our autumn!

One of this years girls

Magnolia

Aylesbury ducklings - on the left is "Lucky"

For those who remember, a few months ago BYP member Flogs found Matilda (above 9 Jan) for us and so we got our first muscovy. They make great broodies and mums, so the plan is to have a few muzzie girls who will hatch aylesbury eggs and be good mums to the bubs. Matilda was a bit young for that this season but makes a great auntie to the ducklings even so and is about the cheekiest bird around. Well the other day I'd been told about another girl who was very sweet and in need of a home and so Magnolia (aka Maggie) came here yesterday...

Some muzzies can apparently be quite showy when first introduced but she is much like Matilda a calm and easy going girl who takes it all pretty much in stride.

Like Matilda, also ruled by her tummy. (Hunting for scattered wheat, Matilda left and Maggie right.)

The two look a good bit different, albeit both are white and DH confuses the two terribly so far. Among the differences are Maggie's big crest!

Pretty comical eh?

And because I've been a bit slack and not posted these previously... one of Laurent with one of my Wyandotte roosters

A better picture of Lucky (foreground) pleasingly coming along on 11 Jan 09

Younger duckies taking a late afternoon siesta

Last but not least - the picture of pathetic... poor girl is MOULTING... rather seriously!

Aylesbury ducklings

The lovely "Lucky" duckling... hatched at the start of Nov 08, pictured 5 Jan 09 among the same age group and several younger ducklings.

Goofing around together hunting for bugs.

And of course the very cheeky Matilda wondering WHY I am in a pen without HER and taking pictures of DUCKLINGS when she is around! "Wheep wheep wheeepp whok!"

Liquorice Allsort chick

Along with the group of OEGb and Wyandotte chicks that have hatched out over the past few days, this little critter popped up from under Penny today. At first I was a bit puzzled - this colour down shouldn't come out from my OEG bantams and it definitely pure Wyandotte. Plus it has smutty legs and no single comb. Ahh... sneaky little broodies have gotten one of their eggs into a nestbox - so this little puffball is most likely from a Silkie x Pekin x Jap mum and a Wyandotte Partridge dad.

Meanwhile the older OEGb and Wyandotte chickens are doing well, the first batch of ducklings is almost all feathered out and the younger batch are growing like weeds and eatting like pigs. LOL I'll get photos on the weekend if it's not pouring rain!

My little ducklings are not so little now, growing like weeds in fact!

This gut is "Lucky" the tiny little duckling from the start of the month. Look at that fat crop, to big to easily walk - what a porker! (And yes, still sporting a swish blue mohawk to ID from the others)

One of the other three little duckies with Lucky. They're only about a day apart.

The whole lot together, lucky at the back.

One of the partridge girls. Not the best photo but very pleased with her.

One of last years handsome boys... this one is probably the nicest of the older lot who leans towards the CB. (Note the solid black breast, black in hackle, slightly more bright hackle etc.)

And leaning more toward PB. Quite goldy in the breast, darker overall in the hackle, where the other fellow is black this fellow is just a shade of darker hackle colour.

Matilda says...

"...FLOWERS?!?"

"Why are you taking pictures of FLOWERS???"

"When you COULD be taking pictures of ME!"

Lucky the lone duckling is still doing well, joined the other day by 3 Aylesbury buddies her age.

Tonight was the night for candling the clutches I've got set currently. Tiger's lot are a mix of Wyandotte eggs and OEGb eggs. A few of the 'dotte eggs fertile, a few clear, shell quality on 2 was not pleasing especially considering they do have free access to calc/shellgrit.

Penny's were mostly Wyandotte eggs - her own and her daughters. Same thing with them, a number look promising, 3 were clear, excellent shell quality. Penny is also sitting on a duck egg - Aylesbury, which is looking like it's chugging along quite well. Less than halfway through incubation but nice blood vessel formation and activity visible on candling.

The new wyandotte hen was very, very disappointing. Shell quality was dreadful, half of them clear, one showed bacterial ring on the inside so it'd probably developed about 10-12 days before dying. She's currently sitting on four, so I'll pop some more under her shortly.

The older pair of Chinese geese have laid a single egg for a second clutch. Mind you it's the only one in several days so if she doesn't lay more I'll put it under one of the hens and hopefully get her laying again better. And two more of my 'dotte girls have gone broody on me - geeze, where were they a month ago when I was putting eggs in the fridge for lack of broodies!!! Argh! So may look at buying in settings for them.

Interesting...

World Poultry says
Commercial birds miss half the genetic diversity native to the species
Scientists have discovered that, on average, super-productive modern chickens have lost more than half the genes present in ancestral populations.
Commercial birds miss half the genetic diversity native to the species

The consequence of this is that the birds are more vulnerable to diseases such as avian influenza.

Purdue University's Bill Muir and colleagues used the recently sequenced chicken genome to measure genetic diversity across these lines, and compared it with 19th century breeds and wild chickens. They found that chickens had lost a lot of genetic diversity before modern breeders got started. Some have even lost 90%.

"Just what is missing is hard to determine," Muir said. "But recent concerns over avian flu point to the need to ensure that even rare traits, such as those associated with disease resistance, are not totally missing in commercial flocks."

He said it's also important to preserve non-commercial breeds and wild birds for the purpose of safeguarding genetic diversity and that interbreeding additional species with commercial lines might help protect the industry.

Small genetic differences exist

In the19th century, breeders turned the common European chicken into breeds such as the White Leghorn - white birds with identical combs that laid a single white egg daily, reports New Scientist.

"The basic level of inbreeding was already 10% when modern poultry companies came into being," said Muir. This means 10% of the genes of any 2 birds from the 4 classic breeds that were adopted by modern producers are already identical.

Commercial breeding has pushed this commonality to 15% over the whole industry. That makes any two chickens more closely related than aunts and nieces in a typical human population, who on average share 12.5% of their genes.

Most of the remaining genetic differences are between different companies' breeding lines, which never cross. Within lines, though, much more has been lost.

Lines of chickens bred for eating share at least 30% of their genes. Some lines of laying hens share a staggering 90% of genes – meaning they have also lost 90% of their potential diversity.

Breed DNA back

Scientists want to breed DNA for traits such as disease resistance or "animal well-being" back into commercial birds without introducing undesirable traits. However, in-breeding is a concern with chickens, as the industry is dominated by a few big corporations that produce billions of birds from a handful of private breeding lines.

Source: New Scientist.

* These findings have been published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the middle of the week we had a little surprise the only egg from a clutch that had candled clear/non-developing I thought MIGHT be fertile and developing well ended up hatching. Cute little beggar and getting well spoilt being an only-chick. Over the weekend we had the Australian Shepherd Club of Victoria's specialty show, trials and versatility awards. When I got back I pretty much collapsed but found we'd gotten a second little surprise arrival late last night. Apparently telling the birds I'm focusing back on the dogs was the way to motivate them to hatch things out! Who knew! LOL