True Ameraucana x Cream Legbar Cross or Blue Isbar Cross

Hey,

I am a high school teacher and I use rare chicken breeds and egg colors to teach sustainability & genetics. We research different egg colors and breeding for various egg colors. We are going to be hatching some olive eggers and various other breeds soon in the classroom.

Has anyone tried a cross between two blue egg laying breeds (Ameraucana with Cream Legbar) or even a cross between a blue egg layer with a green egg layer. I am just curious if this would produce a brighter blue egg layer or even a brighter turquoise colored egg. Anyone tried this or have opinions/predictions or a hypotheses?

Thanks!

the Blue egg gene found on these breeds are one and the same, meaning they all obtain it from the same source. from native(polenesian) chickens found on Rapa nui and Chilean coasts..

now what affects the expression of this blue egg gene are different..

Most Ameraucana lay shiny/sating looking blue eggs
Most Cream Legbar lay Mate colored blue eggs.

the mate egg is due to the Leghorn blood in them, this trait is dominant over the shiny egg trait, the shiny egg trait is found mostly on asian/pasific(polenesian) breeds, the Mate trait is found mostly on mediterrean breeds

now to green eggs, green eggs are the combination of that blue egg gene with the brown egg shell multi genic trait(many genes at play) if you take a fine sanding paper(fine grain) and sand the green down a bit you will see that they are blue at the base

Thank you for the feedback! Great info!

So, if we crossed a cream legbar w/ ameraucana we would get a matte (dominant trait) sheen on all blue eggs from generation 1 layers? The egg color would be what shade of blue? A sky blue like the cream legbars or.....

I know about the brown being a 2nd coating on top of blue.... but I was just thinking how we could cross breed blue egg layers to lay an even brighter blue or different shade of green different from OEs or Isbars. Most Olive Eggers are a Ameraucana and Maran cross. I wonder if the green egg would look the same from a Cream Legbar and Maran cross. Just curious.

Also, the Isbar is the only pure breed (since OEs are mutts) that lay a light green egg. Does anyone know the similarities/differences of OE eggs and Isbar eggs?

LittleBittyFarm said:

So, if we crossed a cream legbar w/ ameraucana we would get a matte (dominant trait) sheen on all blue eggs from generation 1 layers? The egg color would be what shade of blue? A sky blue like the cream legbars or.....

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thats hard to say, no two cream legbar females lay the same shade of blue, so that depends on the shade you started with

LittleBittyFarm said:

I wonder if the green egg would look the same from a Cream Legbar and Maran cross. Just curious.

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I believe there is a few olive eggers in the Olive egger thread that were created using Cream legbars..

LittleBittyFarm said:

Also, the Isbar is the only pure breed (since OEs are mutts) that lay a light green egg. Does anyone know the similarities/differences of OE eggs and Isbar eggs?

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Olive eggers lay darker green eggs, isbar lay green eggs

nicalandia- thanks for your help. I need to find a pic of that egg from the OE maran/cream legbar cross! I am curious to see if the color has any differences.

So- if you hand selected Cream Legbars and Ameraucanas with brighter blue eggs to cross would that hypothetically strengthen the blue laying gene? I just really want to see one of these crosses. I might just have to do it and get back in a year or so. Haha.

There are a lot of fancy breeds that lay colored eggs but I have found that a lot of the blue/green layers produce a murky, barely colored egg in a lot of the lines. Rarely, you see a true turquoise egg or a "spearmint" green egg. I am trying to figure out if it is possible to produce brighter truly colored eggs using smart genetic matches.

LittleBittyFarm said:

nicalandia- thanks for your help. I need to find a pic of that egg from the OE maran/cream legbar cross! I am curious to see if the color has any differences.

Click to expand...

LittleBittyFarm said:

So- if you hand selected Cream Legbars and Ameraucanas with brighter blue eggs to cross would that hypothetically strengthen the blue laying gene? I just really want to see one of these crosses. I might just have to do it and get back in a year or so. Haha.

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thats correct, introducing brighter blue ameraucana/Araucana layer to Cream legbar will do that, but you wont see this untill the F2 cross pullets, say you cross a Araucana/Ameraucana to a CCL the F1 pullets will mostl likely lay ver similar to the CCL females, but if you cross the F1 males with F1 females will produce some cream legbar looking birds with araucana type of blue shade, but that is if you started with bright blue egger pullets

LittleBittyFarm said:

I am trying to figure out if it is possible to produce brighter truly colored eggs using smart genetic matches.

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its very ver possible

http://www.chickencolours.com/pagina17.html

My students found this site that shows a pink egg that is not a brown over white shell. What do you think? Is this really a 3rd base color (white, blue, pink?....)

I have also seen on a forum I cannot find now another picture of a guy's EE laying a pink egg that was pink all the way through. People argued the pink pigment permeated the actually white inner shell color. Don't know what to think...

If it is a pink shell all the way through you could put a brown over the pink to produce a different color... like a rosey colored maran egg....maybe?....

LittleBittyFarm said:

http://www.chickencolours.com/pagina17.html

My students found this site that shows a pink egg that is not a brown over white shell. What do you think? Is this really a 3rd base color (white, blue, pink?....)

Click to expand...

there is ONLY one base color. and that is white.

Blue eggs are due because of two gentoypes= the blue egg shell gene O/O and the white poligenic trait. which includes the recessive wildtype counter part of the blue egg shell gene o+/o+

what I'm trying to say is this, lets look at the Red Jungle Fowl.. he is o+/o+ but since he lays white eggs which is a ponligenic trait this means he has lots of other genes contributing to the white appearance of the eggs, some of these genes are recessive and some are dominant and some of them are sex linked..

but since most if not all of this genes are unknown to us(extremely dificult and time consuming to take on this project) I will be asigning them fake names(for educational motives)

Red jungle fowl white eggs genome will be.

o+/o+(recessive wildtpe counterpart of the dominant O gene)
w1+/w1+(white egg shell gene 1 recessive wildtype)
W2+/W2+(white egg shell gene 2 dominant wildtype)
w3+/w3+(white egg shell gene 3. recessive wildtype)
W4+/W4+(white egg shell gene dominant wildtype)



the Araucana blue egg shell genome will be

O/O (dominant counterpart of the wildtype recessive 0+)

w1+/w1+(white egg shell gene 1 recessive wildtype)
W2+/W2+(white egg shell gene 2 dominant wildtype)
w3+/w3+(white egg shell gene 3. recessive wildtype)
W4+/W4+(white egg shell gene dominant wildtype)



breeds with Tinted eggs shell genome should look something like this(but its more complicated than that)

o+/o+ w1+/w1+(recessive wildtpe counterpart of the dominant O gene)
w2/w2(recessive brown egg shell gene counter part of the dominant wiltype We+)
w3+/w3+(white egg shell gene 3. recessive wildtype)
W4+/W4+(white egg shell gene dominant wildtype)

so tinted egg shell layer carry a few brown egg shell trait(polygenic) and some white egg shell trait(polygenic)


for breeds with the Darkest brown egg shell like Marans, their genotype should look like this(its way more complicated than this, but this is for educational duties)

o+/o+ w1+/w1+(recessive wildtpe counterpart of the dominant O gene)
w2/w2(recessive brown egg shell gene counter part of the dominant wiltype We+)
W3/W3(Dominant brown egg shell gene counterpart of the recessive wildtype white egg shell gene w3+ )
w4/w4(recessive brown egg shell gene counter part of the wiltype dominant white egg shell gene W4+)


as you can see the darkest of egg layer have the most gens of the brown egg shell multi Polygenic brown egg shell trait..

so as to Pink eggs being a new base? I highly doubt it, it could be an expression of another brown egg shell genes of the multiple ones

Ok- This is starting to make sense. I am starting to understand the genetic background for egg color. I will probably be reading this several more times. I still have not found an explanation for some pink egg shells being pink all the way through without white inside (visually). Thanks. I hope others will start chiming in on this. I know there have been claims of entirely plum colored throughout the egg shells from the Croad Langshan. I wish we could get that breed more available.

Your genetic mapping above does explain the one white base color.

Visually.... Blue eggs are blue all the way through....no white base.

if you are having issues understanding this let me know ok..

think about it this way ok, when you see a white egg, you are seeing its phenotype(outer looks) as a whole, but its Genotype(genetic make up) is made of many many(ponlygenic) genes and one of them is ofcourse the o+/o+ genes.


next time you see a tinted colore egg, just wonder how many and what hidden brown egg genes are pressent on it,
http://www.google.com/search?q=tint...TpygHD34HQAQ&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1440&bih=704


when I look at a light tinted egg(like the silkie) I wonder if its a single gene and if I could isolate it and name it, the take other tinted egg breeds and do the same, cross breed them to the isolated line and see how it behaves, if its the same gene/s, maybe one day somebody would isolate each and every brown egg genes on the Marans, but its like looking at the stars and wondering if any of those stars is still there or if what I'm seeing is the light that was emitted eons ago, one cant be sure untill you do the testing