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Does anyone have any insight on this subject?

Sigi, I saw a post of your a couple of years old saying you were going to autopsy some DIS to look at the leg length? Did you ever do it?

Dead in sleep?

Who ? Sigi ?

No, she is covering the barnevelder battle these days (tuinvee.nl)

Death in shell?

Fascinating

You don't use this expression?

Dead-in-Shell - This is the most common problem among incubation complications. Death in the shell results when a chick starts to breathe but dies before it can escape from the egg. The chick doesn't have to pip the shell to start breathing, it will begin to breathe air in the air sac. Death in the shell can be caused by several things such as wrong temperature, wrong humidity, wrong turning, and of course infectious disease.

Many slightly different meanings but I think most people use it to describe a chick that was alive at day 18 but fails to hatch (or pip).

Death in shell can also be caused by several genetic factors,not only environmental causes.
(including many semi-lethals, if I remember correctly also naked necks, ear tuft, and so on)

Check also these:

http://www.pjbs.org/ijps/fin1588.pdf
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/126/4_Suppl/1303S.full.pdf

I agree as also the vault on male Silkie chicks, until last year in my breedings !

Creeper gene.
Depends, as there was great variation in all the research results noted in PB&G with creeper studies. Some homozygotes died in early development stages, others closer to hatch.

I never witnessed a homozygous creeper DIS in my Japs (ie chick with obvious extreme limb deformity). Maybe these died very early on with mine?

I intended death just before hatching (chick completely formed). This happened for 2 years with about 50% of the fertilized eggs. When I opened the eggs I always saw a vault and I was convinced it were hens. Until this year I saw my first 3 male chicks with a vault and I readed a little article (if I remember well it was of Sigi) describing the being lethal of a vault on male Silkies.

I think also that there is something genetic going on with the seramas. I had 5 birds from eggs in the mail, so this is very small numbers to draw conclusions from. There were three hens, and the hatch rate from their eggs was a little over 50 percent, most dead just before hatch. I did try to get eggs in the mail for several years for an outcross, but when this didn't happen, I bred a hen to a rapa nuis and another to a quetro. These were the smallest large fowls I had. The interesting thing was that the hatch rate went up to 90 percent or so, from the same hens. I spent several years mating sons to mothers or aunts and daughters to fathers or uncles, and am now at the 15/16th stage or BC3. The hatch rate is still good, but occassionally I get a bird whose eggs hatch poorly. Most individuals still have the 90 percent or so hatch rate. To me, this says something genetic held down the hatch rate in the original stocks. I got eggs in the mail this spring, so it will be interesting the see what the hatch rate is when I go to use that chick.(there is only 1). The original hens are from 2005, so showing their age some, but still healthy and strong. It would be nice if the chick I got from the mailed eggs is male, as I would love to try a male with these hens and see what he carries. Since he's 6 days old, it's a day dream right now, grin.

It is a very interesting subject. I do wonder if it isn't to do with what I call 'the unseemly haste' to bring down the size. I feel any species where we try to make changes involving basic structure in very few generations is likely to encounter problems.

When we have the situation where the tiniest birds are bred to show but it is common knowledge that we can't breed from birds that size I have to question what we are doing.