For WWW...What am I?

[Happy]

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 :)

OC did it have a name? Because this one is still just called @$$hole so I really need to change that lol
It is a typical snobby Cochin and doesn't want anything to do with me other than feeding.

[Happy]

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....

I'm not even going to pretend that I can follow that but I get the idea lol
It's not a good thing and it could be a really bad thing. So the chick isnt a month it's just shy of 3 weeks. I will post a pic in a month and try to get a spread wing shot. I'm going to look back at some other pics. I don't recall his other chicks being this slow but maybe! Thanks for the answers!

[windwalkingwolf]

Not necessarily a bad thing, for instance, production Leghorn breeders often use one "baldy'
parent so that the chicks can be feather sexed at hatch. Until I brought in some new roosters, I could feather sex my EE chicks at 2-3 days old with near perfect accuracy. It didn't really matter since I don't cull for gender or sell sexed chicks, but it is useful to someone who does.
Only thing to keep an eye on is whether your chick is normal weight and size, and that the few feathers it does have are normal looking. If they start to stick out, or look twisted or curled, he's in trouble.

[Happy]

Will this have an effect on molting? Or does that depend on if it's k or t? I'm envisioning a naked rooster in December. Or do they appear fairly normal once feathered as adults. So far this chicks few feathers look extremely healthy. VERY glossy feathers for a chick. They are loose but Cochin feathers always are.
I also found a pic of my black hen Liza at a month old. It's pretty blurry so hard to tell but I don't think she was as fully feathered as her blue sisters. So maybe this chick did inherit from mom AND dad. It hatched from Liza's egg for sure.

[WLLady]

They should be okay in a moult. The t is related to the actual feather follicle development. Once they have feathers they will regrow at moult. The exception is a bird homozygous ts/ts. They tend to naked...even as adults. Fact that he has 3 or so wing feathers at about a month makes me think he is not ts/ts...but instead t/t....or T/t

[Happy]

@WLLady
Does this give any clues?

[WLLady]

How old is he in this photo? If he is a month i would bet t/T. Unless he has been under really warm heat lamps. If his siblings are feathered he is likely t/T

[Happy]

3 weeks old exactly. And broody raised only chick so no heat. Been outside with Mom since day 2!

[WLLady]

Yeah t/T possibly.

[Happy]

Thanks @WLLady !