Nestbox News:
I got a surprising litter from Chevelle this week. Sire is the borrowed black, Smith's BL4. I expected black selfs with a slight chance for dilute. She had 6 (1 was peanut), her biggest litter yet. 3 blacks and 3 not-black (the peanut was one of these). I can't call it yet. Kind of odd color on all of them. The blacks aren't deeply black, and the not-blacks really look like chocolate. I don't see that coming from the himi. A better guess is siamese sable but they're pretty dark for coming out of a himi. So I'm waiting for more clues. I'm documenting the color development with the camera and will post that later.
There was a recent forum discussion about self chin, and thanks to a knowledgeable member, I now understand what the heck that is. I fear this litter may be that. BL4 has mostly otters in his pedigree, but there is a silver marten back there. As a rule, a self out of himi x self is about as close to "pure" self as you can get. Meaning it doesn't carry shaded unless the self parent does. If it does, you're likely to get shaded. In the past, I used "clean" blacks with the himis with good results. This silver marten ancestor could throw a glitch in that. From the self chin discussion, I learned that it's not a "pure" self, and it's affected by the "chd/chl" gene from silver marten or shaded. It can cause off-color fur or eyes. Turns out all self blacks are not created equal, and not necessarily the all-purpose color I thought them to be.
So what do I do with this litter? I'm not working with shadeds and really don't want them. If the blacks are self chins, I shouldn't keep them either. Chocolate doesn't fit in the program anymore and they could also be self chins, so I kind of hope they are sables. At least I know what to do with shadeds. Darn. All I wanted was to bring BL's type to the himis. I suppose I can keep the best of the litter for that purpose, and breed back to himi. Only keeping himis from that next generation will remove the chd/chl gene.
In the other litters. Dreamcatcher's broken baby (x BL4) is so special! I love it, and it gets a lot of attention. Still haven't sexed for sure yet, but I'm leaning towards buck which is what I want. It's a drag that my eyes are getting old and I have a hard time focusing on a small kit's parts. Here's a couple photos I took last week.
In the one on the right, I'm holding the ears against the crown fur. This is a pretty good gauge for ear length at this age. If the ears are the same length as the fur, they will be good. I also wanted to show off the width on its round little head! Hindquarters are promising to be full and straight. Time will tell if there's improvement in shoulders and body length. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about this one. I was going to sell Dreamcatcher after this, but I think I'll repeat this one more time.
Dreamspinner's black and broken black are just opening their eyes. The broken is going to have a messy pattern. Very feathered on the head. That's too bad, but I hope type will make up for it.
Bird News:
All the chickens got their wings clipped the other day. I'm going to be turning some out to free-range and don't want them going over the fence. There's 3 roos who have been out for a while, and I'm thinking about kicking most of the roos out. I'm leaning towards just keeping the Cochins, the Rhode Island Red, and maybe a d'Uccle for breeding roos. I might have to import some Cochin hens. There's only the 1 buff hen. I'll include the Brahma hen in that group.
Spiffy will probably be one of the ones that gets kicked out. He's getting too cocky. The little dink won't fly up to my arm anymore, and he comes at me sometimes. I think I don't want to breed the Old English, although I'll keep the blue hen for her color.
I also managed to catch 3 of the guinea keets to clip theirs. The little trout fishing net I got this week really helped with that! Still have to catch the other 2. There's at least 2, maybe 3 hens. That's good, and one of the blues is a hen for sure.
Gorgeous pink sky this morning! It made the pinks of the crape myrtles and altheas intense, and a slight haze made it look ethereal. Uh oh. Red in the morning. Guess I better check the weather to see what's coming at us.
tnt
