One of the very few "Cuckoo" pullets, she's from the F1 Cuckoo male X Black RC female. She was sort of brassy back colored when she hatched, and now she's this...strange somewhat barred color. Not a keeper, but interesting.
Most of the oldest batch, these are 7 weeks old now.
One of the "Crele" cockerels. I think they are all going to be too dark and poorly marked, though I'm not sure if these aren't what's considered an "intermediate" color and they may need to be bred Crele X Crele to get it right, I just don't know. It's hard to know at this point whether any of the new colors will work out or not.
A couple of the Cuckoo cockerels, most of which are REALLY poorly marked, either too dark or too washed out. This will be a challenge...
An afternoon siesta. These guys are about 6 weeks old (they are grouped more by size rather than age, some varieties are larger than others).
The pullet in the front is one of the Silver Duckwing X Black offspring. I had expected birchen colored chicks, so I'm quite surprised to see she's actually Silver Duckwing (close, anyway). There are two of them. One hatched out of an egg I'd marked as brassy back but I must have mismarked it.
They are so curious at this age. It's not a particularly pretty age, they are sort of gangly and awkward, but it's a great age to work with them.
One of the Crele pullets. The pullets seem to have more potential than the cockerels. This one isn't as well marked as one of the older ones but this was the only one I could get a pic of today.
Another view of a Silver Duckwing, they are really cute birds!
GREEN LEGS?!?!?! This is the new thing-that-will-drive-me-insane. Maybe even more so than the inverted spikes. I don't know where on earth the genes for green legs came from, but I'm getting a hoard of green-legged Brassies and Blue Brassies, and it seems to get worse every year. I thought green legs needed a yellow-legged bird in the ancestry, and there isn't anything like that in this strain. So... I don't know. I seem to recall years ago that a lot of them went through this phase of having slightly greenish legs, but matured to the proper slate color. I think just using those birds in the breeding pens has increased the incidence of green legs. I guess I'm going to really have to crack down on culling this out.
At first glance the Silver Duckwings and the Blue Brassy pullets look almost identical. The pink legs really set the Silvers apart though!
This is what Patrick does for most of the day. "GULP!"
Today is Shylah's 3rd birthday. My how time flies!
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