Wednesday, December 3, 2008

White Leghorn........Pheonix????

Hey everyone, I have an interesting blog today. I have a two, almost three year old SC White Leghorn Bantam Cock. I have used him the past two years in my breeding pens, and was planning on using him this year also. Well, he molted started molting around the end of September. I didn't start noticing anything unusual until about Thanksgiving. I started to notice that his tail feathers were beginning to drag the ground. I though maybe they were just wet or dirty making them heave and drag the ground. But when I started looking over the bird he was quite clean. I also examined the shafts of the main sickle feathers and notice that they were still blood feathers! Meaning they are still growing. This is very unusual, and I don't know when they will stop. He is going on three months since his molt. I find this very interesting since he has never had this same feature in the past years molts. I have some pictures here of the bird, and I tried to show the length. I will also try and get some pictures of the shafts to show how they are still growing.



Here is a picture of the same bird at one year old.

You can see his full son in the background at 10 months old. He dosen't have very long sickle feathers either.


So If anyone has any clues as to why this is happening let me know. I am very curios to see how long they will actually grow!


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