dretd, it wasn't my wedding, it was my cousin's in Creede. Everything was lovely, except my cousin in law's mother had moved her horses out because of the wild fires earlier in the year, and there was some flooding on the way to the airport. Or so I am told, I held down the fort at home, but my mother went to represent this branch of the family and enjoyed herself tremendously, and was actually presented with a basket of blue eggs, being told I bet you haven't seen these before, to which my mother replied,... actually, I have, (I burn my mothers ears off about the CBL several times a week, lol)
One thing I have liked about most livestock registries as opposed to dog registries, is the potential for upgrading to increase genetic diversity. The AKC fought for 40 years to not include LUA dalmatians which were created by ONE cross to a pointer, and then back crossing to pure dalmatians to alleviate a genetic problem that had 100% homogeneous saturation in the breed.
But I can take a scrub cow, AI her to a pure bull, breed her heifer to a pure bull, breed HER heifer to a pure bull, and if the result points out like a pure, than it can be registered as a pure..
I am not comparing the breeding of chickens as within a mammal registry, though. I am just looking at genetics, and genetics are genetics, be it mammals, reptiles, birds or fish. Or for that matter plants.
Most of the forums I am a member of are international, I have long made it a habit to check location when reading forums, so I am quite sure that the olive egg I saw mentioned was in the US, though it may be more that I looked at the color of the egg and determined it to be olive via my own perception thereof, and not that the poster of the egg said hey, look at my olive colored egg. But because we know how olive is produced and the production of green eggs in the CLB is evidence of the genetics that produce brown eggs, so olive possible without careful selection of breeders.
I do not feel there is a wall that is going to be hit. What you're saying is something I am very familiar with. When you "scatter breed" dogs (outcross them within the same breed), you have a highly variable expression of the different traits the different lines are known for. If you have a line of yorkies known for ear set, and another known for coat quality, you're not going to get the perfect combination of ear and coat by breeding them together. But by working the lines, you'll get that combination, usually via line breeding.
The same thing is happening here, and that is what the judge is referring to. As I have said, it's something that I am very familiar with.
However, the genes are NOT gone. They are there, and if breeding towards the SOP with birds that have the correct genetic potential, you're going to get there eventually. The feather pattern is there, the color is there, the comb is there, the egg color is there. It's just about putting them together in the right combination after having the different genetics jumbled up together.
I do not believe that you have only what you have and you cannot better what you have. That is the point of breeding to the standard, this is why show people speak of "improving" the breed. And I understand that things like this can take a multi years long view, because it's not going to happen in the first generation, the second, or even third sometimes. Sometimes it may take 4, 5 or 6 generations to improve upon a thing, or correct a problem (undershot mouths in the mini rottie, for example). But were it not possible to get from point A to point Q (not a typo, there is not going to be a point Z, the absolute perfect example of the standard) in a breed, then all we would have would be a bunch of mongrel birds, expressing various genetic combinations.
No, we do not have genetic tests for birds like we do for dogs. I can't sent a sample to VetGen and determine if I have barred, cuckoo, or whatever you in recessive. I can't test to see if a bird is carrying cream or recessive white or both. I can test breed, and improve what I have. It may take a while, BUT, it WILL come back.
Again, the genes are NOT gone, they are NOT missing. They are there, and breeders are like archaeologists bringing those genes back to light when they have been lost through heterogenization (if that is not a word, it is now, lol)
Though the GFF birds come from different sources, BECAUSE they have been bred to the same phenotype (which CAN, though not always mean the same genotype), and BECAUSE they all carry the genetics of the original CLBs in some form or another, they carry the same or similar genes. The combination might be a bit muddled and jumbled, but they're there, and it's up to the breeders to bring them out.
Because we do not have genetic tests we can use, observation and selection are the tools we have... After all, do not the CLB breeders in the UK buy birds from each other? Do they also not outcross their lines, and then select back? Is that not what we are going to have to do here, especially with the limits we have? In fact, could not the lack of enormous genetic diversity (three, soon to be four lines), actually help to increase homogenization? In fact, could the smaller number of birds available to us here makes the likelihood of unknown recessives being brought to light much sooner due to the increased chance of homogenization within certain alleles.
And yes, it may be hubris for me to say "we" when it's not a we, it's more a you guys, since I don't have these birds yet, but I have a passion for them that includes me in with you all (even if it is all in my mind) though you're the ones doing the work, lol.
1muttsfan: I used co dominant, because I was muzzy headed when writing, but I knew something wasn't right with the dominant/recessive description with blue/brown/white, which is why I started calling it brown modifier, it just made better sense to me. I knew on some level I was wrong about saying co-dominant, but at 3:30 am, I was NOT operating at full speed, lol.
I still have some really interesting thoughts about brown, but since I am not concentrating on brown layers at this time, they're kind of on the back burner about the variable expression of the gene, are there multiple brown modifier genes and so on.
More research to do at a later date, YAY
!! (That was actually real enthusiasm, I LIKE that kind of thing, lolol).
