Bantam Phoenix - how to breed back to slate legs.

[Crow Mountain Chickens]

I have some barred bantam phoenix that I have been working with for a couple of years now. They are from boggy bottoms bloodlines and I was told that they achieved the color by breeding a silver duckwing phoenix with flytie birds.

Even on their site the roosters have yellow legs rather than the slate that is SOP for Phoenix. My question is how should I go about breeding back to slate legs without sacrificing the feathering and dark barring that I have been working on. Any advice?

 

[BlackHackle]

I have some barred bantam phoenix that I have been working with for a couple of years now. They are from boggy bottoms bloodlines and I was told that they achieved the color by breeding a silver duckwing phoenix with flytie birds.

Even on their site the roosters have yellow legs rather than the slate that is SOP for Phoenix. My question is how should I go about breeding back to slate legs without sacrificing the feathering and dark barring that I have been working on. Any advice?
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That's a real toughy, you probably can't do it without crossing

 

[FrankPrize]

I have some barred bantam phoenix that I have been working with for a couple of years now. They are from boggy bottoms bloodlines and I was told that they achieved the color by breeding a silver duckwing phoenix with flytie birds.

Even on their site the roosters have yellow legs rather than the slate that is SOP for Phoenix. My question is how should I go about breeding back to slate legs without sacrificing the feathering and dark barring that I have been working on. Any advice?
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I am by no means a poultry geneticist— I only really have experience with black and duckwing birds but I think that you should consider crossing a Silver Duckwing Pheonix hen to the Barred cock. I think 100% of the chicks will be Barred Silvers. Cull the chicks that lack the slate legs and horn beak and work your way up from there. Cross-breeding wouldn’t be a good idea. Work only with phoenixes; adding new phoenix blood will maintain and fortify tail length, growth, and quality in the following generation.

 

[nicalandia]

My question is how should I go about breeding back to slate legs without sacrificing the feathering and dark barring that I have been working on. Any advice?

That is going to be really hard to accomplish, you see the Barring gene is linked to the sex linked dermal inhibitor Id responsible for clear yellow/White shanks, females get only one copy of Id so they have darker shanks than double barred males, barring is also a dermal inhibitor on it's own right, this same issue has plagued the Ameraucana breeders, but some success have been found, perhaps not on the dermal pigment but breeding for darker epidermis.

The linkage between sex linked Barring B and sex linked dermal Inhibitor Id is about 13 centimorgan(cM), so to obtain crossover recombinants(Birds that are id+ and B) will require large amount of hatches, I would say at least 200 hatches, but outcross to id+(dark shanks) will be required.

 

[Bross63]

Breed silver duckwing Phoenix with slate legs to your barred birds to get the white skin gene if yours have yellow legs. The barring gene will make the legs white instead of slate/blue, but white is correct while yellow is not

 

[Cyprus]

Cross a slate legged silver duckwing Phoenix bantam cock with barred phoenix bantam dam and you get slate legged pullets and lightshank cockerels.
Cross slate legged female back to yellow leg male and get roughly 12% slate leg males and females.
After that point, the offspring breed true for slate leg.
As stated above, barring will inhibit that some anyway. So
But I mean you can at least put the gene in them that way.

 

[Cyprus]

OP should breed a barred female over silver duckwing male. That is because the MALE needs to have the slate legs or it's not going to work.

 

[Bross63]

OP should breed a barred female over silver duckwing male. That is because the MALE needs to have the slate legs or it's not going to work.

That is incorrect. If you breed either a male or female that is homozygous for white skin (white/slate legs) to a bird that is homozygous for yellow skin (yellow/willow legs) you get 100% offspring that express white skin because white skin is dominant over yellow skin. Breeding those together will produce only 25% yellow skin, so cull those. Also breed bared F1 back to slate legged Phoenix to set/consolidate white skin gene and move forward from there.