Breeding projects

This is a thread for breeding projects. Post your goal in the breeding project, what you started with, and any odd colors/mutations that have come up.

I will start.

Crele phoenix bantams.
We started with a crele OEGB roo that had some white in his earlobes on light brown phoenix bantam hens. We got one chick from that that was a female. We bred her to a light brown phoenix rooster and got crele males and light brown females. We will be breeding the best crele male back to light brown hens and should get all crele but they will be sexlinked like welbars, the males will be lighter with a spot and the females will be darker.
The odd colors we have gotten from them are golden duckwing females, golden duckwing crele males, really dark 'mahogany' crele males, and one good crele male with bright yellow legs. He must be a throwback from a while back, the OEGB had white legs and the phoenix have slate legs with pink bottoms.

Dun laced wyandotte bantams.
We started with solid dun hens and a silver laced rooster. The silver laced had horrible type, they had whip like tails, white in the earlobes, and long backs. The duns had great type because they came from dun birds on some of the best blacks. We got dun females with white flecks in the primaries and very poorly laced males. We took all the dun females from that mating and bred them back to a silver laced male to get better pattern. We got nicely laced birds, about 50% silver laced and 50% dun laced. We will be breeding the dun laced male to silver laced females and to the dun laced to get some khaki laced (splash laced) and breed those to silver laced to get all dun laced.
The odd colors we have gotten are solid blacks with dark faces, black legs, and some red on the neck. We also got solid duns with black legs and dark faces and some off color in the backs.

It will be interesting to see other peoples breeding projects.

My breeding project is the mille fleur cochins. I am starting out with one mille fleur cockerel and seven mottled hens. My goal is to improve type. My cockerel has vulture hocks and d'ucle feet, plus a couple of slightly more highly arched tail feathers. My goal is to breed out these flaws while always aiming for the crisp, pointed tipped spots on the feathers. (Yeah, good luck with that, I know) The good news (or the bad news) is, their little cochin eggs are just the right size if you fry them sunny side up to cover an english muffin! They look tres gourmet! Bon Appetite! It will be hard to not eat all my mille/mottle eggs before I can get them to hatch!

Question: does the dun in your Wyandottes equal the same as fawn and sport in OEGB? I had a sport OEGB that I bred to my BBR male, so now I have two fawn girls that I intend to breed to a BBR half-brother. I know the gene works the same as blue, but was just curious if it's the same gene in your Wyandottes, just different terminology for the breeds.

Blue Laced Red Wyandottes
My goal is to breed back into them the proper body type, as well as improve the color, combs, and fertility. I currently have several splash and two blue girls in with a blue rooster. I intend on separating out the blue girls and putting them in with a nice splash roo in the future to breed darker splashes. My current splashes are very white, which I think is too close to buff and doesn't look as nice as the "pigeon" blue coloring that is more desirable, and so far, that seems to be working. I'm also working out the birds that lack the mahogany gene (gold laced) to produce darker red offspring. I'm nearly there. None of the offspring this year have been gold. At present I need a nice SL roo on all of them to get the desired body type and am actively looking for one. Any female offspring will be BLR and can be bred back into the group.

Pet project
I have a nice fully laced birchen mixed breed bantam roo that I've bred to a black mixed bantam hen. I'm doing this to experiment with determining who has what genes hidden, and hopefully breed some of the daughters back to the roo to get more nice birds. I also have a few other silver birchen females I plan to use.

I haven't started breeding yet but I am going to try to get a white Sumatra.
My plan is:
Cross a blue (?) Sumatra with one of my white Leghorns. Then I will probably cross the offspring with either the mom or the other white Leghorn. The next crossing would be to a Sumatra to try to get the dark face and multiple spurs into the offspring.

Please correct me if there is anything I should do different with this.

At this point I am working on starting my flock of blue/black/splash bantam cochins. Eventually when I get my stock up and a better setup I will work on color and comformation.

Blisschick, the dun in wyandottes is just like chocolate and I believe the same as fawn. It works the same as the blue gene.

Chicken_boy_Kurt, there are already white sumatras. Breeding to a leghorn would be a terrible mess, the combs would be large, white earlobes, wrong leg color, the type is way different. You would be better off trying a white phoenix, the type is almost similar to a certain extent.
I think they are accepted by the ABA. Spectrum Ranch breeds them in largefowl. http://www.spectrumranch.net/catalog/displayimage.php?album=95&pos=6 the bird pictured looks like a bad yokohama but it would be a start.

I haven't started breeding anything yet. I'd looooooove to try to get some flaming red orps like MissPrissy though. That'd be awesome

Oh I should have said I wanted standard whites.

I have several projects, one is longcrowing longtails, I am using Tomaru, Denizli, Sumatra, and Phoenix for that. Another project I am working on is green-faced longtails. That is in the beginning stages and has a ways to go, but I have a plan and I will get there.
The third project is involving the Grey and Ceylon junglefowl hybrids I have, I am attempting to get the lanceolate breast feathering in some longtails. Eventually all that will come together into one great breed that will rule the world! Not really but they will be cool birds.



chicken boy Kurt...
I would recommend white yokohama rather than Leghorns. For several reasons.
1) body type is already closer
2) you dont want to have to deal with getting rid of white earlobes.
3) Yokohamas already have long tail genetics.

I would say if you breed recessive white yokohamas to black sumatras, all of your F1 generation would be blue and red and look nothing like what you want, but you can simply pick the best three or four birds, and breed them TOGETHER (sibling matings) as all of your F1 generation will have 1 copy of recessive white.

Your F1 offspring will have all of the required longtail genetics, plus one copy of recessive white, and one copy of "gypsy face" and some will have multiple spurs.

About 1/4 of your F2 generation will be white. Of those, choose the best feathered, and darkest faced birds possible, keeping in mind that you need the best spurs you can get too.
So then take the best white F2s and breed back to black sumatras and repeat the whole process again.

By F4 you should have very nice White Sumatras, if you have good Black Sumatras to start off with.

Good project. You can do it!