Looking for yellow leg color in chicks and feeding cornmeal

With Dominiques I was told to turn the chick over and look at the bottom of their feet. If they do not show any yellow at all as day olds, they will not have good yellow leg color as adults.
Has anyone else heard of this or done this to do day old sorting of good leg color?

Also... a tip I just figured out that I thought someone else might like to know is that if you mix in a bit of cornmeal w/ your chick starter right away and feed it for first week or so your chicks never get those pasty bums.
I know it can also be a temp thing, but I always seemed to get a few in that first week like that and although you can pull off the fuzz this trick seemed to work really well, like giving them some fibre I guess!

Not sure if there is a connection here, have heard that corn brings out the yellow, but of course cant bring out yellow that they are not genetically wired to have!!

Oh, oh, oh, I don't have the answer. Bet you thought I was going to say "I know, I know" right, smiling that big smile. You have brought a couple of very interesting thoughts here Irene. I have a whack of buckeyes from Prettyfeathers hatching this weekend and a whack of cochins. both breeds should have yellow legs, particularly the soles of the feet. As I put each chick into the brooder (as day olds) I am going to look at the bottom of each one's foot. If I see any yellow, which I really, really should, not so much cochin, but a high possibility, I will mark their head and then put zap straps on them to mark them so. What a coooooool project. I will certainly post results to this. My buckeyes could use more yellow colour to the legs, some are OK some are not so dark yellow, well, I don't think any of them have the YELLOW legs, hopefully that comes with time. I remember someone told me this one time, well, they didn't actually tell me this, but this is what they said in a post, can't remember who, but I remember I copied it into a word document so I could re-read....

Look at this post, this post has to do with helping to set yellow leg colour in the yellow legged birds. I think it might work, I have yet to try it, but I am going to this year for surely. Heather's comments actually [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] pay attention to her comments in post #17 and #22 . All my chickens get a dose of corn daily, with the hen scratch, right from the time they are about a month old, when they go outside, but there actually isn't that much corn in the scratch as far as I am concerned, maybe get some extra corn to throw in.

I sure do like the idea of putting cornmeal in the chick starter to prevent pasty butt. There always seems to be 2 or 3 that get it, the others don't. I think the cornmeal would indeed act as bulk and keep things moving. I think that is what causes pasty butt anyways, not chilling, I don't believe the chilling thing. Why would one or 2 in a bunch of chicks get chilled and others not, sorry does not make sense, well the way I have things set up anyways. I think some chicks move poop through faster than others, and that egg yolk poopy stuff from absorption of the yolk is pretty gicky and sticky and yucky, no wonder it can sometimes get stuck on those tender little fuzzy butts' butts. Think I will be trying this too on my hatch...good topic Miry, have a most wonderful day, CynthiaM.

What!!! You didn't have any other responses, other than mine, hmmmmm....oh well. This will be the last that I respond in here, because guess what!! I did experiments this weekend with my hatch and it is going to be a new post, but it will take me eons to compose it, so probably won't bring it here until tomorrow or the next day. Yellow soles of feet on newborn fuzzy butts, tales to tell, and not from the crypt, smiling. Have a most wonderful day, CynthiaM.

Don't know about the corn, but I've also noticed that I never see pasty buts when I feed hard boiled eggs either. At least, as long as I can afford to do it.

mirycreek wrote:

Not sure if there is a connection here, have heard that corn brings out the yellow, but of course cant bring out yellow that they are not genetically wired to have!!

Actually many foods will change the color of living tissue through their make up affecting the pigment of the animal. Remove the food and the pigment fades. My mom told me she ate so many carrots as a little girl her skin turned orange!

A food can change color in living tissue without any genetic link.

.

Thanks for that info Tara. I have some young buff Chanteclers showing willow legs right now, good to know it might go away. Not that I cull before butcher age anyway, but good to know I might not be in as much trouble as I thought.