Wappoke
Chirping
- Dec 5, 2015
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you are welcome. If you do the project make sure you hatch plenty of the offspring. The first cross- all of the offspring will be basically the same, so 10 F1 chicks should do. You want to hatch enough chicks to make sure you can select a superior male and female to mate and produce the F2 generation.Thank you!!! This was extremely helpful!!
The F2 generation is where you will get different combinations of genes- the individuals in F2 generation will have different genotypes. In the F2 generation. statistically1 in 4 will be mottled. The mottled birds are the keepers. Normally, you would want to keep birds that are mottled. In the F2 generation, there will be three genotypes that concern mottling; mottled, carriers of mottling and wild-type birds (no mottling genes).
The only way I would keep an F2 non-mottled bird for breeding is if it had superior body conformation (looks like an ameraucana), slate shanks and carried the pea comb allele. The blue egg gene is closely linked (3 to 5 centimorgans) to the pea comb allele so most likely if a bird has a pea comb it also carries the blue egg shell gene. Males and females that have single combs should be culled, keep birds that have pea combs or pea comb hybrids( like the F1 combs).
Body conformation will be a concern select birds that look more like an ameraucana.
You probably will have to back cross F2 or F3 to a buff ameraucana to produce birds that have the standard ameraucana body conformation. If you back cross to an ameraucana, this will decrease the ground color intensity and will not produce mottled birds but will produce birds most like the ameraucana. All the back cross offspring will be carriers of the mottled allele- pick the superior back cross offspring and mate them to produce mottled offspring.
You do not have to hatch all the F2 at once, you will hatch chicks until you get what you want from the F2,
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