Reprinted from the ABA Information Bank
Bantam Culture Course Series
In viewing the problem of poor feathering in growing Bantams, many breeders incline to the view that it is exclusively an inherited fault. If this were wholly true, how soon the trouble could be rectified by selecting breeding stock which gave quick-feathering progeny.
Take a look at the next Silkie which comes your way and to note the ragged look about the ends of the wing feathers. Then look through your cockerels to see which of them has identical ragged wing feathers. Pay particular attention to the top secondary feathers, near the body.
Breeding males with these ragged feathers are the most likely sires of poor feathering progeny. It is a definite sign of freak feathering, a fault which seems to have developed in many of the strains of the large fowl Rhode Island Red.
Any breeder can insist upon breeding males which have well formed wing feathers, broad and firm in the end secondaries. The faulty hen or pullet is easily noted, even without handling the back and body feathers. These are soft and silky, almost like the soft pointed back feathers of a young cockerel and identical to those seen on the silkie female.
It is clear enough that one should select breeding females which possess broad, defined feathers, as if the edges had been cut out with a pair of scissors. Narrow feathered birds are never strong in constitution, another reason for selecting on breadth of feather.
Poor dry feathering is common to the progeny of aged breeding stock, male and female, past their allotted span of reproductive usefulness. They are easy enough to eradicate, for their chicks look like poor specimens.
The third group of poor feathering bantams have inherited the fault, while a fourth batch of chicks are dry and poor in feathering from faulty brooding. Often one will find a breeder blaming his breeding stock, when he should be looking at his unsatisfactory brooding methods.
Early chicks are usually well feathered. Later batches of chicks are poorer and drier in plumage, for the simple reason that the early chicks get the cold and moist air, while the late ones have to contend with a warm and dry atmosphere. Also it is quite plain that weakly chicks which always huddle the lamp and stay too much in the heated chamber have brittle dry feathering.
Good feathering, of course, implies “life” in the plumage, which again reflects the provision, or lack, of conditions under which the chicks can express their inherited good health. In other words, most chicks are subject to too much heat.
They should be encouraged to degenerate their own heat, and, to this end, suggest that they will best do so in cold breeders from the start, without any artificial heat. The next test would be to provide artificially heated unites for the first tow or three weeks, and then transfer them to the cold unites. Possibly the second method will be more popular, as so many breeders will be nervous of exposing the quite young chicks to over-rigorous conditions in the first stages,
( this is all weather contingent)
The key to ideal and natural feathering is for the body to grow in priority to the wings. Proper brooding ensures that. Overheated brooding chambers cause the wings to grow first at the expense of the body, more noticeable in light breeds of bantams, which naturally feather more rapidly than those of the heavy breeds.
The least excess of heat, and the non-observance of the rule of allowing them to generate their own heat, and they have tiny bodies and long overgrown wings. The same thing happens when one attempts to brood light and heavy breed chicks together,
How can you tell if brooding or hereditary weakness is to blame? That is by no means difficult. Accept the usual happening that chicks from vigorous first year cockerels mated with carefully selected pullets are the most rapid in feather growth, speedy development and laying. Should all the chicks from such mating look dry in feathering, with broken tips to the wings, we may suspect brooding as a likely clause. If that is the case, how can all other broods be any better, given identical conditions of brooding?
An overheated brooder is frequently more like an oven that a brooder for chicks. How can young stock be expected to feather well in such an atmosphere? The trouble is often due to changes in the weather, an unexpected rise in the temperature, but an efficient brooder must be constructed so that excessive heat can escape. It is perhaps that so many brooders are ideal for early broods in moist, cool weather, but are not so good for the later chicks in warm and dry conditions? Where the users find this to be the cause, they can make the necessary alternations.
