How about a Delaware/Buff orp. crossing? Or different colors of orps?

Just curious. I want to have a flock of delawares and buff orpingtons (and maybe a black orpington or two) as soon as we have somewhere to keep them. I was just wondering what would happen if you crossed a Delaware and a buff orpington. Anyone tried it? Also, what would a black/buff orpington mix be like?

Hello ccmarie,
I can't say hat I'm singularly familiar with delawares. Correct me if I'm wrong, bu arent the columbian with barring?

Right, regarding black cross buff, personally I wouldn't as I cannot see that there would be much to gain. Apart from Sunday dinner LOL
But if you cross your blacks with delawares you will pick a barring gene along he way & could start on a barred/cuckoo project. Of course it takes a few generations. Black male on delaware hen ought to give sex linked offspring, he males being barred/cuckoo, the females ought to be black downed. the reciprocal cross ought to give all bird carrying one barring gene. This a rather simplistic description because one cannot forget that under the basicaly barred (or black) birds there are other genes hidden. The columbian gene could show up somewhat even in he first cross & undoubtedly will in later crosses if you were to continue with the project. Also the offspring will be heterozygous extended black & will be carrying, most probably, either a wheaten or dark brown allele at the e-locus.
I think Delaware cross buff would be an interesting one . I can't say for certain, so if you ever do this cross I'd be interested to hear about the results. What I do think is that it's quite possible that both your delawares & your buffs will be wheaten at the e-locus, no trouble there. Both ought to be homozygous for columbian. At least some of the offspring, depending whether the sire is delaware or buff, will inherit barring. Sex linkage with silver will also show from delaware hens. The inetersting points--- are the effect of sex linked silver on the autosomal pheomelanin enhancing genes & the effect of the other eumelanin restrictors present in buffs. My guess would be that some black may well show in at least tail & flights & if putting delaware male on buffs i shouldn't be at all surprised to see some gold showing in the females though they wouldn't be carrying sex linked gold.
That probably sounds a bit complicated .....basically I think Delaware cross either buff or black would make good first cross for an interesting project.
Good luck & best wishes
Krys

Quote:
Delaware male X buff orpington female=

Females will look like delaware.

males will look like delaware also but may show some light straw color in the pyle region- most likely on the back and shoulders.

Black male X buff female-

basicly a black chicken- male and females could leak colors (anterior region,head, neck breast back) ranging from white to buff.

Tim

***Delaware male X buff orpington female=
Females will look like delaware.
males will look like delaware also but may show some light straw color in the pyle region- most likely on the back and shoulders.***

Is this taking into consideration that that sex linked silver only affects it's wild type allele & does not actually affect other types of pheomelanin producing genes?

The silver allele is expressed in combination with any E locus allele. Some alleles work better with silver than others. The delaware male is eb/eb, S/S Co/Co, B/B. Wheaten females do not express silver very well but males do just fine. Take a look at a salmon faverolles they are silver wheaten.

Tim

I think the point I was making is that buff orps have other phaeomelanin producing genes as well as s+. So while a delaware male on buff orp female would give females which are S/- there would be other autosomal phaeomelanin producing genes. The buffs have a lot of gold enhancers (& a few incompletely dominant black restrictors).
I suppose I am rather sceptical about a broad across the board statement regarding the results of that cross because, while I've never crossed a delaware with anything I have crossed a lot of Buff Orps with a lot of birds during my work. Of course if you have done this cross & are talking from experience I stand corrected.
The silver faverolle males shows because it is in the place of it's wild type allele but not other phaeomelanin pigment. It is excatly the same with the silver duckwing in the wild type bird, the breast on the females is exactly the same type of pigment as the wheaten female. However I am not suggesting that the wheaten phaeomelanin pigment would affect a buff orp cross in particular but other autosomal gold enhancers. In my experience a cross of an S//S male on a buff orp females, while the female offspring are S//-, they still show some gold in adult plumage.
Best wishes
Krys

Krys,

What do you think the adult offspring of the cross will look like?

Tim

Man you guys are taking me back to my genetics class in college. This is fun... Continue, PLEASE!

Hello Tim,

I'm not trying to argue as such, I justan to get it straight in my mind. I cannot see the outcome being anywhere near as cut & dried as you portray. I'm here to learn as much as anyone; presumably that's why were all here? If there's something I'm missing I want to learn about it. If I'm not understanding something I want to know what it is I'm not understanding, how it works & why it works. If you can give refernces to papaers so much he better becuse the I can obtain & learn from source.

As I said in my first post on the subject I didn't relly want to commit myself to exact details, such as your males will look like this & your females will look like that. I don't think it's anywhere near as simple as that bearing in mind the genes involved in Buff orps. I am basing this in my experience of buff orps in UK though I must say many buff orps here in US are rather a lot lighter than the average British Buff Orp.

To start with I think that, from a delaware male on a buff orp hen at least some of the female offspring will show some phaeomelanin from the autosomal gold enhancing genes. Due to the presence or barring I'd expect that all pigment would be barred. With the males; as S & s+ are incompletely dominant there would probably be variable expression of the s+ making the males somewhat yellow, maybe some gold &, of course, this would be barred. And that is even starting to take into consideration the effect of any incompletely dominant restrictors. My books & papers are in USA & I am in Britain at present so I have nothing but memory for reference.
Oh just remembered, another gene to consider, at least in Europe, some breeders have dominant white in their buff Orps to make the peppering in the flights & tail, look less visible.

Krys,

I have worked with buff orpington and from the results I obtained, I do not think the buff birds I had were dominant white. I also came to the conclusion that my buff orpingtons were wild type. That does not mean that other buff birds do not contain dominant white or are another E locus. In Carefoots study of buff rock bantams, he found that the birds he used were Db, Co and heterozygous for dominant white. I have only seen the abstract on this study.

Brumbough and Hollander determined that the buff minorca was ey/ ebc or ey/ey, s+/_ or s+/ s+, Mh/Mh, Co/Co, Di/Di, Cb/Cb. They crossed the buff minorca with a red jungle fowl so all of the offspring were heterozygous wild type/recessive wheaten or wild type/ buttercup. He did not do crosses with eb brown(partridge) birds.

I have not seen any studies dealing with the delaware. But have hypothesized that delaware are eb/eb, S/S Co/Co, B/B or B/_ based upon Smyth's observations and comments. None of the Smyth's studies dealt with silver in their crosses all of the birds were sex linked gold.

In crosses I have performed using rhode island red female and on barred rock males, then back crossing the F1 males to rhode island red females: columbian restricted, recessive wheaten and silver females and males segregated in the back cross offspring and a few other color patterns. The amount of red pigment in the female birds ranged from almost none (heterozygous Mh/mh+)to over 1/2 of bird being red (Mh/Mh). Hutt and other researchers refer to this red as autosomal red.


Delawares may contain undocumented genes that inhibit the expression of autosomal red, if delaware did not have these genes then they would have red in their plumage. Another example is the difference between silver duckwing OEGB and gold duckwing OEGB. That gold in the wings of the male is autosomal but you can not tell the difference between a female gold duckwing and a female silver duckwing. Either that or they do not have autosomal red in them. I believe that the lack of autosomal red has something to do with the eb allele. My autosomal red, silver, and columbian restricted birds carried mahogany, heterozygous or homozygous, but were homozygous recessive wheaten and did not carry eb. I hypothesized that the delaware and buff orpington cross would produce offspring that were eb/ey or eb/e+.

I said that the females would be like the delaware. It would have been better to have made the statement that the females would be barred, silver and columbian restricted. But that may not mean anything to the forum members that are not well versed concerning chicken genetics.

It is possible that the female offspring will contain very light buff in their dorsal plumage. My thinking was the eb gene plus the undocumented gene(s) would effect the expression of the autosomal red. But then again I may be wrong.

I have limited space and can only perform experimental crossing on a limited bases. This fall I will be doing a cross of the female silver, autosomal red, columbian restricted birds with their sibling males to see what happens with the autosomal red.

Tim




Smyth. J.R., Jr., Somes. R.G.,Jr., 1965. A new gene determining the Columbian feather pattern in the fowl. J. Hered. 56: 151-156

Smyth. J.R., Jr., 1976. Genetic Control of Melanin Pigmentation in the Fowl. National Poultry Breeders Roundtable. p69-86.

Brumbaugh JA, Hollander WF, 1966. Genetics of buff and related color patterns in the fowl. Poultry Science. 45:451-457

W. C. Carefoot., 1995 Evidence that the eumelanin restrictor genes (Co) and (Db) are present in the genome of the Buff Rock bantam
British Poultry Science, Volume 36, Issue 2 May , pages 205 - 207