Show off your Old English Game Bantams!!

[jophus]

Sure same as barred rocks, etc. However from what I've seen and read the ability to sex at hatch has little to do with barring width and is simply because the males ("80%") are lighter and have a head shot while females have the common chipmunk pattern.

I did have four chipmunk patterned chicks die and since I didn't mark them I don't know if any or all were my Crele females, spangled, or something from my assorted batch.

The double barred gene breaks up, and lightens the down pattern in males. Seems to me that duckwing OEGBs have a tendency toward those traits anyway, and it's amplified by the barring. What percentage of Creles are auto-sexable? I haven't hatched enough to know that yet.

I do know that in Cream Legbars you have to select your breeders carefully to maintain the auto-sexing trait. I get chicks that are a little "iffy" and turn out to be pullets, but I've never missed on sexing them. I also know that hatcheries do very little, if any, selective breeding for form or color.

I suspect with Crele OEGB that if you selectively breed, hatch, and look, at enough of them and you'll be able to get darn near 100%.

This will be a fun project. Keep up with what you hatch (anyone with Creles) and let's see what we find out.

 

[WVduckchick]

I've got seven little spangled OEGB chicks running around Here's one of them:

WV, you must be sick of seeing it by now since I posted it to two other threads you're on

I don't mind at all!

 

[TattooedChicks]

Y'all gotta stop posting such cute/pretty bird pics. Every time I come back to this thread it's making me want to get more already!

(Maybe hatching eggs next year if I get a nice broody girl... If I can wait that long )

 

[WVduckchick]

My little lone SDW just hatched. I have more due in a week, and she'll have company from all the lav orps and bantam cochins that she hatched with today. Pics to come later when she is fluffy!

 

[jophus]

I don't mind at all!

Me either. Post away. That's a beautiful chick.

 

[jophus]

Here's my Creles a bit older, 4-6 weeks Females on left, males right at 6 months of age. Here's Flash as a chick and him full grown in October. Mr Flash at 2 months; far left front Mr Flash in October. Mr . Flash is a bit of an anomaly so I thought I'd post what he looked like in case it helps anyone.

I get birds like this from my Legbars. I call them Silvers. Looks like he got some really strong barred genes.

 

[WVduckchick]

I bet my little SDW loner is a boy!

This little booger is tiny, 17 grams. I've had Seramas hatch bigger!

 

[Wickedchicken6]

Maybe you already said, but from where did your Creles originate?

I'm from Canada. My Creles are from a lovely older lady who has a variety of different small animals and birds. I don't even know her name...lol. I had got Dwarf Netherland/Hotot baby bunnies from her a couple of weeks before getting the Creles. I don't know where she got her birds from.

To be completely honest...I didn't even know what I was getting into other than looking them up on the internet. I had my Duckwing pair so I had an idea how big they'd get but I really just lucked out. I've never seen Creles advertised anywhere else since, because I'd like to get hatching eggs. My knowledge at that point was of meat chickens...so you can imagine my surprise when I got these teeny, weeny, itty bitty little birds in a toaster box from her...

I had bought a small amount of EE/Silkie cross chicks later that evening on the way home and the two bunches were raised together. Those are the other chicks in the pictures.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

I'm from Canada. My Creles are from a lovely older lady who has a variety of different small animals and birds. I don't even know her name...lol. I had got Dwarf Netherland/Hotot baby bunnies from her a couple of weeks before getting the Creles. I don't know where she got her birds from.

To be completely honest...I didn't even know what I was getting into other than looking them up on the internet. I had my Duckwing pair so I had an idea how big they'd get but I really just lucked out. I've never seen Creles advertised anywhere else since, because I'd like to get hatching eggs. My knowledge at that point was of meat chickens...so you can imagine my surprise when I got these teeny, weeny, itty bitty little birds in a toaster box from her...

I had bought a small amount of EE/Silkie cross chicks later that evening on the way home and the two bunches were raised together. Those are the other chicks in the pictures.

I never knew chickens could be so small until I got my Sebright and OEGBs. I know their eggs are tiny but I really enjoy them more than the bigger chickens, which is strange because usually I am a "bigger is better" kind of person

The double barred gene breaks up, and lightens the down pattern in males. Seems to me that duckwing OEGBs have a tendency toward those traits anyway, and it's amplified by the barring. What percentage of Creles are auto-sexable? I haven't hatched enough to know that yet.

I do know that in Cream Legbars you have to select your breeders carefully to maintain the auto-sexing trait. I get chicks that are a little "iffy" and turn out to be pullets, but I've never missed on sexing them. I also know that hatcheries do very little, if any, selective breeding for form or color.

I suspect with Crele OEGB that if you selectively breed, hatch, and look, at enough of them and you'll be able to get darn near 100%.

This will be a fun project. Keep up with what you hatch (anyone with Creles) and let's see what we find out.

I wonder why it does not have that effect on other barred/cuckoo breeds. With barred plymouth rocks you can make an educated guess based on the spot on the head and the degree of leg wash, but that's about it. I assume something else is at play here. Now I am perusing a thread talking about autosexing genetics with Cream Legbars, Rhodebars, Cuckoo Marans, Golden Cuckoo Marans, etc and it seems it is something about the wild type gene, not just the barring, that creates the effect...Actually I just found a helpful statement about that "this is because of the inability of homozygous sex linked barring to dilute the Extended black chick down as much as other e alleles, I believe this could be fixed by changing the e locus from E to ER and the need it addional melanizers need it to turn a crow wing to a self black phenotype, its doable" https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/409884/creating-autosexing-ee/20 though that's a bit confusing because another person talked about needing the wild type (e+) gene, and now this person is talking about using the birchen gene. Sheesh.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

With Cackle hatchery (where mine is from) they claim their autosexing characteristics are accurate for 80% of the Crele chicks they produce. That may be a slight underestimation just to play it safe with the customers. They are one of the few hatcheries that does actually take breed characteristics into consideration with their breeding, to a certain degree (since they do still use mass breeding flocks rather than one on one or trio pairings for most of their breeds/varieties). They do sell show quality OEGBs as well, though, and some customers have sent in pics of the birds they have bought from them with ribbons.

Ideal, on the other hand, is hit or miss. I call them the "dollar store" of hatcheries, ie they have a lot of stuff at a cheap price but the quality is inline with the price. They have 61 varieties of OEGBs so if you just want a fun grab bag assortment they are good to go to. My silver duckwing pullet I got from them is very "acceptable" looking, while my red pyle cockerel is a bit homely. I did have a second red pyle cockerel that looked better (crisper colors and white as opposed to this one that is almost cream with lacing on the breast) because this guy's personality can't be beat and he won't be used for breeding anyway.

 

[Wickedchicken6]

The double barred gene breaks up, and lightens the down pattern in males. Seems to me that duckwing OEGBs have a tendency toward those traits anyway, and it's amplified by the barring. What percentage of Creles are auto-sexable? I haven't hatched enough to know that yet.

I do know that in Cream Legbars you have to select your breeders carefully to maintain the auto-sexing trait. I get chicks that are a little "iffy" and turn out to be pullets, but I've never missed on sexing them. I also know that hatcheries do very little, if any, selective breeding for form or color.

I suspect with Crele OEGB that if you selectively breed, hatch, and look, at enough of them and you'll be able to get darn near 100%.

This will be a fun project. Keep up with what you hatch (anyone with Creles) and let's see what we find out.

It's did a count on my OEGBs yesterday and it looks like I've got about 30; half male, half female. I can only speak for my birds, but looking back through all the pics of the hatches I've had, both the Silver Duckwing and Creles have been 100% sexable except for one and she's a cross. She looks just like a SDW but she has a white head and she's larger. She's the only one I thought was a male and she ended up being a female. All the chicks are chipmunk; the females are brown and have the eye liner and the males are lighter and have the more silver type heads.

The first hatches of oegb were from my duckwing pair until the Creles started laying. Last year everyone was together so some of the chicks are 1/2 SDW1/2 Crele. The half/half produces a silver duckwing with barring...lol. . All of the females produced look like a SDW female. Louise, the original Crele female is the only female that has the Crele look.

Below are the chicks that are all oegb chicks; both sdw and sdw/crele crosses...all were easily sexable at hatch. I had 5 broody females that hatched the 20 or so chicks within a couple of days. The chicks were supposed to be for sale...but I never got the ad up...lol.

3 females and 1 male in May
2 males and 1 female in May
4 of the above chicks in the fall.

#1 and #3 from the left have the barring, #3 has more than #1. #4 may be a cross with Mr. Henny Penny with the color on the wing and being slightly larger.

The pullet that I mistook for a male.

3 of fall oegb females. The grey chick with the arrow I kept because she was so pretty and different that the rest. At this point all the roosters were loose so I don't know who the dad is...but even with being half something else she was easy to pick as a female. Hard to see in the pic but she has the true chipmunk lines of a female. I'll have to get a pic of her, she looks like an oegb but she has dark skin on the face and legs and she's black and gray. She's one of the prettiest little birds I have and she has the oegb temperament.

Sorry for the long post...but pictures tell more than I can in words...lol.