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