06/11/2026
I've posted this information repeatedly but there are many keepers of chickens, Brahma chickens that simply cannot SEE their birds have wing feather issues...so please l00k at the chicken's wing carriage...on a Brahma, you should NOT be able to see the primary wing feathers when the bird is standing sideway with wing a dings tucked. If you are wondering, pick the bird up and spread the wing feathers out and l00k.
For whatever reason, blue dilution appears to have not just diluted black pigment to blue or splash...it also can weaken the structure of the feathers. Blue dilution and lavender may not just dilute eumelanin, they can weaken feather structure.
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Originally posted June 10 2024:
So the Blue Partridge and Partridge standard Brahmas are nearing one year of age. As with the males in this line, now the females are expressing feather anomalies in their wings. So very pleased I have waited for these birds to mature so these faults may be detected.
It is a given that the females will take longer to express feather faults than the males. So here are some females with the exact same issues as the cockerels had back in March.
PHOTOS
Image 1 - Female on the left has wing feather faults, female on the right does not.
Image 2 - Female with wing feather faults.
Image 3 - Female with wing feather faults.
Image 4 - Female without wing feather faults.
Image 5 - Female without wing feather faults.
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Review from what I posted here on March 4, 2023:
Here are some visual examples of the major reasons as to why you never breed more birds from cockerels or pullets (young chickens). You wait for them to mature and become adults before you decide to make more. Use the wrong bird and suddenly having a few faulty ones means you have a whole flock of issues to contend with. I do not know these lines and they are teaching me as they become adults. I have not had twisted feathers in landfowl before now.
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Genetic advice behind this fault...
Dr. Clive Carefoot says,
"Twisted flights are a serious problem in some breeds and yet how often does one hear, "It's not too bad, I've won with worse?" This statement underlines the seriousness of the problem."
He goes on to mention the defect is often in cockerels and often only in one wing. He discusses all sorts of twisted wing feathers and their placements but he finalizes with "Whatever the cause of these malformations, it should be the aim of every breeder to eliminate them."
This is basically, simply a recessive found in cockerels which is what both of these birds are. Dr. Carefoot talks about people and these wing anomalies and how they keep saying, "We've won with worse," and that's how it gets instilled into a line. I am sure we can come up with a number of excuses like, "Oh the bird is moulting" (No, he is not!) or "You've fed him wrong" (No, both these cockerels are the same ages and eating the exact same diets)...or whatever.
All I know is this bird will not sire any offspring period. Whatever the reasons for his wing feathers to look this awful and be this incorrectly coloured, it ends with him making a rather tasty meal...chicken dinner.
Sigrid simply directs one to not breed from the chickens that express this deformity as each successive generation has more and more extreme expression of the wing feather faults. She says it is recessive, autosomal, & needs modifiers to be expressed in the extreme. Her guidance is simple, "only maximum expression is possible when you continue to breed these destructive genes." So don't get in a rush to breed birds from baby birds. Chickens need to grow, become adults and you need to watch, learn, observe, inspect and make good choices in the birds you choose to make more from.
APA SOP...
"TWISTED FEATHER: A feather in which the shaft and web are twisted, (fig. 35); a disqualification, if found in wing or primaries or secondaries, main tail or sickle feathers, ... except in Sebastopol Geese and Frizzles."
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And information I posted here on Split Wing from Feb 9, 2024:
Split wing
Creative Poultry Breeding
By W. Clive Carefoot, M.Sc., Ph.D., President of the Poultry Club of Great Britain (1985-86)
Pg. 110:
"The frequent production of split winged birds is almost certainly through inbreeding without careful regard to this point. The temptation to put a bird into the pen which, at risk of being repetitive, "It's not too bad, I've won with worse", is sometimes too great for the fancier, with the result that split wing is entrenched in the strain before the breeder has realized. The trait is definitely recessive and was shown by the author to be so amongst unrelated Silkie-cross birds bred only for broodies."
Sigrid has an article on split wing:
https://www.chickencolours.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Open-Wing-and-split-wing.pdf
SOP Disqualification: "Split wing."
What is nice...split wing does not harm the bird past perhaps, they don't get the "lift" with a wing like this.
