Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

Will be 3 weeks old in two days.
Cochins are slow to feather and mature...but this is ridiculous! Lol

Pictures taken today.

Hmmm, not easy ... I was going to guess "boy" because of it's posture, but the face just doesn't say "boy" to me.

That is a WTH chicken lol. Any chance he's part Langshan? I get the odd chick that's really slow to get body feathers, they catch up eventually but are usually odd in other ways, and I don't let them breed. It's metabolic and tends to be inherited. As to gender, I think it's female, but if there's a malapsorption syndrome going on, it could very well be an underdeveloped male.

I was thinking that Harley the father was slow to feather and I had read at the time that barred birds can have a slow feathering Gene. Is that true? If so can it get passed to a solid colour offspring? This is the earliest pic I have of Harley and he's a month old here. I recall that prior to this he seemed way behind the rest.

Happy wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 14, 2017 3:15 pm

I was thinking that Harley the father was slow to feather and I had read at the time that barred birds can have a slow feathering Gene. Is that true? If so can it get passed to a solid colour offspring? This is the earliest pic I have of Harley and he's a month old here. I recall that prior to this he seemed way behind the rest.

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Loaded questions, and for a good explanation, I'd like to call @WLLady to the podium , our resident geneticist.
My answers will be anecdotal and not science-y :) Genetics make my eyes cross and my brain takes a vacation and goes off to watch Doctor Who lol.
But if you want my answer, the short of it is that yes, barred birds tend to be slow feathering, and it is sometimes sex-linked meaning one gender will be slower than the other...and yes, it can be passed on to solid coloured offspring. BUT, the slow feathering genes in barred birds aren't the ones responsible for a 4 week old chick having wing primaries but down everywhere else, or it would happen to all (or almost all) chicks from parents with those particular genes. Most responsible genes for slow feathering need two copies to show up in a chick, but a chick still covered in down at a month, except for wingtips, if not deliberately and meticulously bred for, is a different kettle of fish. Or, can of worms :/

Thanks @windwalkingwolf
I'm sure you already know there was nothing deliberate or meticulous about this lol

She's special and will no doubt be spoiled rotten :D

This is apropos to nothing, but I remember my favorite "fable" character in children's book growing up,
was this mischief making character hiding things when you weren't looking and mixing up letters in printing shop (yup that old) so when you lost something, you would blame him/it.
The illustration mostly looked very much like your bird :)

Ontario Chick wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 14, 2017 10:29 pm

This is apropos to nothing, but I remember my favorite "fable" character in children's book growing up,
was this mischief making character hiding things when you weren't looking and mixing up letters in printing shop (yup that old) so when you lost something, you would blame him/it.
The illustration mostly looked very much like your bird :)

That sounds achingly familiar.

So feather sexing based on fast vs slow feathering is controlled by the K gene. There are 4 alleles. A very slow feathering allele, a slow allele, a naked allele and a normal allele. But all these birds are feathered by 4 weeks.

Another gene- the Tardy (t) gene is unrelated to the k gene. It has 3 alleles and is not sex linked like k is. Most birds are TT or normal. Ts is termed "retarded" and is slow feathering-even out to a couple of months. tt is tardy and these birds can remain unfeathered with only 3 primaries in the wings up into adulthood.
Birds carrying ts or t are rare-they are usually not bred so do not pop up often. These birds have normal K feathering but the tardy gene is autosomal dominant and also masks k so it "overrules" k so to speak. My bet is that your barred rock is tT and since t is dominant to T he was slow to feather. And is the parent of your current black chick that is also t. It is only a month old....if the feathers do not grow until adulthood or beyond then this bird is tt and both parents carried t, but i doubt that....otherwise you would have noticed the slow feathering mom too. So my bet is your black bird is k+k+ (normal for slow feathering) but carries a single gene t.....

To tell for sure, look at the wing....do you see any feather stubs of any of the primaries or secondaries that are short? If there are, do they get progressively shorter from tip to body? Or are they all about the same length....or are they missing completely until 12 weeks of age. If they are missing completely your chick is tt. If they are shorter progressively your bird is ts/ts (a slightly different allele of t with a less severe phenotype than t or Tt). This is a dominant trait....so you probably do not want to breed it on, as it will eventually become prominant in all your birds. Dad will pass to 50% of kids if he is tT. If he is tt then 100% of kids will get it....breeding it out again will be a nightmare....unless you like unfeathered birds needing heat possibly up to adult age.....um....