Wybar Thread!!!

[Makomd]

We figured it was time to post some updates to the 4 month olds that are growing out. These guys are the results of backcrossing to nice SLW hens. The males are still in their gangly teenage stage, but the lacing has greatly improved. As we move forward with this project, we are likely going to slow the project down a bit and use these birds in the majority of the next breeding season. Sorry about some of the pictures, it was well below 0 with the wind chill and the glare coming from the snow interrupted some of the shots.

 

[nicalandia]

Thanks for the Update Buddy, getting very good type on them.. that the best thing for now, then mating the best with the best..

 

[Makomd]

Thanks for the Update Buddy, getting very good type on them.. that the best thing for now, then mating the best with the best..

Thanks Marvin as always we appreciate your feedback and assistance. We are seeing much better type after the back cross with greatly improved lacing. Hopefully this year we can concentrate on a few birds and not have to hatch out so many to get just a few.

 

[Makomd]

Hatched out our first group of eggs for the year. This is from our project eggs that I do not particularly like their type while waiting on the better type birds to lay. Fortunately they are laying now so only two clutches of these will be hatched out.



Not too hard to tell the males apart from the females.

 

[cjwaldon]

You are making nice progress! What do the breeders look like? What don't you like about them?

Glad someone is still working on these.

 

[Makomd]

The parent stock of these chicks are just small and more hatchery stock type compared to the back crossed stock but which are larger and more round. A few these may be used based on type to add some genetic diversity. So far every year we have added new genetics to this project in hopes to keep it well genetically. Hopefully later tonight i can load some pictures to show the differences in the parent stock.

 

[Makomd]

Here are the hens used in the back cross
.

Here are some of the selected offspring of the back crossing. These birds are at most 8-9 months old so they still have some maturing to do and are already bigger and more round than the 1 year olds that the above chicks were hatched from.



I wish I had a better picture of this male he is much rounder than he appears in this picture as we was trying to stay out of the picture. His lacing is far cleaner than previous males and his shape and width is quite impressive.

The following are the parents of the chicks that just hatched. Not necessarily poor birds in general, but looking at these hens and the cockerels do not by any means say wow that looks like a wyandotte.



The silver hens that are the parent stock of the chicks are being breed by the back cross silver cockerel with expectation that the best that carry over the Wyandotte type will be kept and the Gold hens that were produced from the back cross are being bred to the best double barred rooster that was from last years non back cross.I am still battling some polygenic red from the initial gold crossings in the silvers still have some single combs as well that will need to be bred against 3 out of the 20+ chicks had single comb, so this boy was R/r with the recessive single comb gene and a hen was likely R/r as well. So there is still some work to be done, but just glad to see the auto sexing has worked out and with more double barred males it should be much easier to test breed out the R/r combs in both hens and cockerels as well on the polygenic red int he silvers. I need to take my time as well and get some better pictures, lol.

 

[Makomd]

We are also growing out some Blue (Violet) Laced Silvers that are barred that I need to grab some pictures on, we hatched 2 clutches this spring and have are fingers crossed on not having too difficult a time with the red showing up in them but expect some issues still as their mothers had some red highlights showing in their feathers before molt.

 

[birdbrain79]

Good luck with the wybar projects. I'm only interested in the f1 cross using SLW over BR. Can someone post pics of the f1 chicks?

 

[Makomd]

If you use a male Gold or silver laced over barred rock hens you will have sex links at hatch. If you go with barred rock male over wyandottes hen you should get all barred birds. Some may some "sort" of lacing some more than others, but regardless will be incomplete lacing at best more like ticking on the tips of the feathers than lacing.