More about the game girls

This post was also inspired by a comment from Sophie. Sophie said that she hadn’t realised that the game girls were crossed with wyndottes. In truth I hadn’t realised until I remarked to the farmer/breeder that Ebony’s comb was much bigger than Emerald’s comb had been.

He told me that was the wyndotte in her. I then realised that she is actually the same shape as a wyndotte and the only thing that is the same as Emerald is her colour.

I have decided to do a comparison between Emerald and Toffee with Flame and Ebony and also Topaz to show the similarity.

Emerald had a tiny comb

Emerald had a long neck and bottle shaped shoulders

Toffee also had a long neck

Toffee also had a long tail but was moulting here. There is another photo further down showing her tail.

Toffee’s breast feathers and her upright, single, comb.

Emerald is looking tatty due to her moult. Emerald always had a tatty moult and always lost her tail completely. It will be interesting to see how Ebony moults.

Emerald and Topaz

Having some yogurt

I had thought of the vorweks as smaller but in fact it is more that they have short legs. Honey is in the centre of the photo. Peaches and Barley had a slimmer build but longer legs.

Toffee, Emerald and Topaz with Honey, Peaches and Barley

Toffee had a long, narrow, tail. By this photo we had sadly lost Sparkle.

Ebony

Ebony has a wyndotte shape and wyndotte comb and lobes.

Flame

Flame has more of a game shape but she has more of the gold wyndotte feathers and a smaller wyndotte comb but not the lobes like Ebony. If you compare Toffee’s comb it is thinner and taller.

It is interesting to see how much the farmer’s girls have evolved over the five years since I collected Emerald and Toffee. I don’t know how long he had been breeding silver wyndottes but he had only just started breeding gold wyndottes because he sold me Topaz with a little reluctance as it was his first year breeding them and he hadn’t built up a large stock at that stage. We collected Topaz and Sparkle two months earlier than Emerald and Toffee.

When I talked to the farmer, while collecting Ebony, I told him that we had thought of Topaz as “angry bird”, that she had attitude and would peck me if I got in her way. He said that for some reason the gold laced wnydottes tend to be like that and that he hadn’t been able to breed that out of them.

Sparkle, my silver laced wnydotte, was a gentle character and easy to handle.

There is definitely quite a difference between Emerald and Toffee compared to Ebony and Flame. I have to admit that I miss Emerald’s sleek, game girl, shape and sweet, tiny comb. She was such favourite of mine. I thought she was such a beautiful girl and she had a lovely, sweet, nature.

I love my current flock but I still miss Emerald. She had a very special place in my heart.