Ayam Cemani and Malayoid crosses

[Alex_Zurago]

I have been interested for a long time in the particularly large game-fowl like Malay and Indio Gigante breeds. Ayam Cemani's were one of the first breeds to really get me into chickens. If I were to take an Indio Gigante Rooster and cross it with Ayam Cemani hens, would it look like a fibromelanistic version of the rooster? How much of the Indio-Gigante's height and the long legs of the Malayoid appearance would the F1's lose? Would breeding the siblings or the offspring back to the parents mitigate that? let me know your thoughts.

 

[casportpony]

@The Moonshiner, can you help?

 

[Alex_Zurago]

@The Moonshiner, can you help?

Who is that?

 

[Alex_Zurago]

@The Moonshiner, can you help?

Who is that?

 

[MysteryChicken]

I have 7, 7 week old Purebred Malay chicks. I don't have any crosses to share.

 

[ANightPerson]

I have been interested for a long time in the particularly large game-fowl like Malay and Indio Gigante breeds. Ayam Cemani's were one of the first breeds to really get me into chickens. If I were to take an Indio Gigante Rooster and cross it with Ayam Cemani hens, would it look like a fibromelanistic version of the rooster? How much of the Indio-Gigante's height and the long legs of the Malayoid appearance would the F1's lose? Would breeding the siblings or the offspring back to the parents mitigate that? let me know your thoughts.

The crosses would be something in-between both their parents. I wish I could give you a more helpful answer, but fibro is hard to track and stature is controlled by many, many different genes. Some could come out all black, but there would likely be a lot of partly-fibro birds to varying degrees. Body type is hard to say, they'll get a bit from each parent and could end up anywhere in between the two.

If you want full-fibro Malayoid birds, that would take at least a couple generations and a lot of selection to achieve. Your best bet would be to breed a lot of crosses, keep the best ones, and breed them back to each other and select for the traits you want. Re-attaining full fibro from crosses while also selecting for Malayoid traits would be difficult, but you'd probably end up with some cool chickens along the way.

Fibro is the result of the duplication of a gene segment which codes for melanin, causing them to have much more than usual. A full fibro bird would have the duplication on both chromosomes, giving them four total copies of it. There are other alleles that exist for that locus too, so when you're working with fibro cross genetics, they can have anywhere from none to four, which causes varying degrees of color and fibromelanosis. Sometimes they can still come out all black even if they only have the duplication on one chromosome, and sometimes even if they have it on both they can have spots of color, so it's hard to say what you'll get. Your best bet when trying to breed fibro birds is just to keep breeding your darkest ones together and keeping only their darkest offspring.

If you have the birds, then the best way to know what you'll get is just to cross them. Hatch a batch out and see what you get.