Black Mottleds a challeging color

 This color variety, seen at its best on Anconas, has progressive more, and larger, white spots with each successive moult. Most Anconas have the correct amount of white in their first adult year and are too white in future years.  Some birds have too few white spots first time round. Expert exhibitors know that if a few carefully selected body feathers are removed as soon as they have grown their first adult  feathers, the replacement feathers should come out with proper white spots.  So a fresh show team must be bred annually . Above is my mottled rooster Oreo who was born with too much white.

 This is my Mottled hen in 2012 who in this photo has good pattern for her first year.

 This is the same hen from above who this year has an over all too white appearance which is considered a disqualification in the breed.

Above is Oreo. Only Anconas can be relied upon to produce a whole batch of uniformly spotted youngsters . Other breeds with this pattern like Belgian d'uccles ,are usually very variable.  Breeders of Black Mottled d'uccles , Japanese or Wyandottes will be lucky if they breed a uniform showable trio. This is why I have decided not breed black Mottleds for exhibition , but black Mottleds are still as good as any color when it comes to other quality's besides exibition. Info is from Exhibition Poultry Keeping by David Scrivener.

The Belgian d'uccle Bantam

 The Belgian d'uccle is a true bantam breed , meaning there is no larger form.They were first bred by Michael Van Gelder sometime between 1890 and 1900 using Belgian d'annvers and Booted bantams in the small village of Uccle near Brussels Belgium. The 'd' in front of the Uccle means from Uccle. In Belgium the d is dropped and they are simply called Uccles.  The d'uccles also have other names such as Barbu d'uccle and Due -Clay . Above is my Mille Fleur rooster Crimson, the Mille Fleur was the first color admitted to the book of Standards in 1914 and is probably the most popular color and is sometime mistaken as the breed name.

 This is my Mille Fleur hen , the breed also lays very well for a bantam. I usually get 3-4 eggs daily from 4 hens, which are a creamy white  color.

This is a Mille Fleur chick.  They are usually gray & orange or black & orange.

 This is the Porcelain variety which was the second color admitted to the Standard in 1965. 51 years after the Mille Fleur , their color is basically a light version of the Mille Fleur with a cream base color, silver blue barring and white dots. This is Platinum, my Porcelain rooster.

 This is my Porcelain hen Snowflake .The Porcelains are my over all favorite because of their friendly personality but the Mille Fleurs are a close second.  There are also 8 other varieties, Mottled, Self Blue, Black, White, Porcelain, Mille Fleur, Golden neck, Blue, Gray, Buff,4 of which were admitted to the standard I 1996.
                                                                                                                                                                          

This is a Porcelain chick you can see older photos of them in my other posts Porcelain chicks growing quickly and chick update, they are cream and silvery blue.

(Below )top White d'uccles, center golden neck and Self Blue d'uccles, bottom Black Mottled d'uccle.      Post by Bugs.

My Midget White Turkeys ~ As Poults

These are two of my Midget White turkey poults. Where is the other one you ask? ....

...Here! I could not help myself, I posed them in a favorite teacup and enjoyed their antics.

These turkeys ( for that is what a poult is, a baby turkey) are now grown and they have produced young poults we are raising. I enjoy my poultry and every day with chickens, ducks, doves, and turkeys is an amazing day. They produce eggs and meat for our table, and the entertainment they offer can compete with television any day. Often, and I do mean OFTEN, I pull up a lawn chair in front of my poultry pens, and with a cuppa coffee or tea, sit back and enjoy the drama and comedy they offer.You should try it, you'll like it!

cheap and easy waters and feeders

 Ive found that using rabbit feed hoppers with lids work  well for my chickens, they stay clean and I can feed them from the outside, they also filter out the dust in food through the wire.

Rabbit water bottles keep water clean and I can do it from outside, also it gives the chickens more room inside the coop.

 This is what my old waters looked like because my roosters would spend most of there time keeping an eye on things from on the water, and they would have to be cleaned daily. The price feeder from above is about $9 and I used my old water bottles from when I had rabbits, so I don't know how much they cost.

New Porcelain chicks

 This week I had some new chicks hatch and I thought I would do a short post on them, above is my breeding flock which has 1 Porcelain rooster and 4 Porcelain hens, and when I ordered 5 from a hatchery I got lucky and ended up with 1 rooster and 4 hens.

 Here is Silver Bell the hen that incubated the eggs, and here's two of the four Porcelain chicks, the other two were probably under the hen.

 Here is the 2 chicks learning to eat and drink.

The chicks personality's are a lot like there parents they love eating shredded pieces of grass from my hand , the other thing is they are very friendly and don't run away when I pet or hold them, which the parents also love eating grass from my hand and are all very friendly.

Incubation

 

 First to start incubating you must have a rooster in order for the eggs to be fertile , then gather some eggs , you can store eggs at 55 degrees for up to ten days in order to set all the eggs at the same time and so all eggs hatch around the same time, if you put eggs under a hen at different times all the eggs might not get incubated long enough to hatch, above is whats called natural incubation this is a brooding black Austrolorp.

 Hatching eggs in an incubator is called artificial incubation, it takes 21 days for a chick to hatch, on the 20th day the chick gets so squished that it breaks a little hole in the egg where it gets its first breath of air then rests for 3 to 8 hours then chips around the shell then pops out exhausted.

 Above is two chicks that hatched early , chicks also need special feed such as chick starter because foods such as lay ration have extra calcium that can seriously damage their kidneys.

 This is a Black Mottled d'uccle that hatched on time.

 This is the early Porcelain chick from above.

 This is the same chick from above at about 2 months old, below is his dad at the same age, chicks get fully feathered at 4-6 weeks cockerels learn to crow at 6-8 weeks and pullets start laying at20-24 weeks.

This is Platinum at 2-3 months old compare to how much he looks like his son,