Awful......

[petal]

sick, if you ask me, however, what if a dye was availble that recognised male/ female genes in none auto sexing breeds - that might be useful?

[zazen999]

Dearie Me. Is this what we have come to? Candy coloured chicks?

Very very sad.

[Hilary B]

when i imported tropical fish into this country a few years back, it was fashionable to have "neon glass fish". these were a natural "see through" fish, where you could literally see through the fish. (search Chanda Ranga spp in google to see a picture) then, some bright spark realised he could inject coloured dyes into the muscle tissue on the back and belly, which would cause the fish to take on the colout of the dye for upto 6 months

They sold like hot cakes, until one day we read a report that "optimistically" stated that by using the new revolutionary dye, you could get the mortality from the injections down to a more managable 30-40%

we found this totally unacceptable, and our chain of shops were pivotal in getting the import of such fish banned.

had we known that the fish died because of the dye we would not have purchased them, we were assured at the time that the "dyes were natural" and "harmless".....sounds a bit like the guys in the article?

what i cant understand, these chicks retain their fluffy look for only a few weeks, so whe go to the expense of the injections etc to colour them, when teh effect is very short lived. If someone wanted to create an orange / red pekin bantam, i would suggest that one could easily be created by taking a white pekin, and for a few weeks before and during the moult, work in some red factor food (as used with canaries) as this will colour the new feathers coming though from the moult. It is harmless as it has been used for literally decades in the canary world. The colouriser is a naturaly occurring red pigment included within the food. There would be no need to inject the birds and risk killing them,

The dye is (it says) injected into the eggs (risky I would have thought, but if hatching is reduced, will it be as big an issue n health grounds?) and presumably only affects the colour of the 'baby down', so that they revert when they grow feathers. I don't know whether chooks would respond to 'colouring' food. I know flamingoes depend on the colourants in their natural food to retain their colour (and have to have a substitute if fed on other stuff in captivity), and I had heard of it in canaries, but do ALL bird species respond that way?
I do agree that whatever the safety or otherwise, it i a totally bad thing to encourage the notion of chicks being toys in this way. Pity some of those writing in don't seem to grasp that bit.

[Hilary B]

Second thoughts.. WHAT was the date of that article???????? (going back to check)

It says article is 2nd, but I wonder.......
It would be easy enough to colour chicks by 'painting' with food dye for the picture, and I am less than fully convinced about it.....

[RichmondHens]

Methinks 'tis an April Fool folks ............................

The article first appeared in The Sun on 1st April. Google "dyed chicks".

While it is possible to dye newly hatched chicks with food colouring etc, which is how those pictures were probably obtained, I think it is impossible to inject an egg and hatch a coloured chick. I cannot see how the mechanics of that would work.

[organic]

The first thing I thought was "It's an April Fool" but then saw the date.

I detest it when news companies just regurgitate news stories without basic fact checking at the best of times... but to take a story from another paper on April 1st and NOT fact check it first is just daft.

I don't care enough to do the homework and find out if it's a real story that The Sun ran on April 1st just for giggles or if it is all a joke - but has anyone looked to see if it was reported elsewhere (or even seen coloured chicks for sale online) before then?

[Sanjo]

Not an april fool joke. I researched "Rainbow Chicken" images to make our daughter (she keeps chickens and ducks) a cheer you up card as she is seriously ill, as is her 13 year old son (our grandson).
I fully expected to just find examples of hand drawn graphics that I could "pinch" rather than photos and was astounded to see these chicks. (The reason for the rainbow theme is that ill as she is, she says you can't have a rainbow without the rain). I also looked up rainbow flower images and they do actually sell roses that are multicoloured.
I have just looked again and on a travel website dated 2004 there are cages of these coloured chicks for sale, in Bali I think it was.
So no - it isn't /wasn't a joke. Certainly not funny for the chicks anyway.

[Hilary B]

Not an april fool joke. I researched "Rainbow Chicken" images to make our daughter (she keeps chickens and ducks) a cheer you up card as she is seriously ill, as is her 13 year old son (our grandson).
I fully expected to just find examples of hand drawn graphics that I could "pinch" rather than photos and was astounded to see these chicks. (The reason for the rainbow theme is that ill as she is, she says you can't have a rainbow without the rain). I also looked up rainbow flower images and they do actually sell roses that are multicoloured.
I have just looked again and on a travel website dated 2004 there are cages of these coloured chicks for sale, in Bali I think it was.
So no - it isn't /wasn't a joke. Certainly not funny for the chicks anyway.

The potential "April Fool" is in the claim that the chicks hatched coloured after injecting dye into eggs. THAT I don't believe. I have a feeling I've seen pictures of 'rainbow' chicks before, but they were just 'painted' with harmless food dye.