Barnevelder breeders lets work together and improve the breed

[Redcap]

It's not sure that a dark egger will through dark egger of the same class.
The best way to find out the heridity of the dark egg trait is to work with two inbred lines and work with modified reciprocal recurrent selection.
The birds which show to give the best crossing results (and show a dominance for the wanted trait), will be used for breeding in the family line.



taken from page 73
http://www.bfafh.de/bibl/lbf-pdf/landbauforschung-sh/lbf_sh322.pdf

 

[tls_ranch]

Good post Poutch


Can you explain what a chamois is, and also a little more about what histerosis is in breeding?
Nice egg color.

Thanks

Andy

Poultch,

Thank you for sharing your advice and knowledge about genetics. I am still reviewing the advice you offered me last year. I have a decent start on hatching chicks already this year. So far I have 38 four week olds and 30+ day-olds. My goal is to hatch, cull, hatch, cull and then hatch again..meanwhile I am still trying to learn what works and what doesn't with improving traits I want in my flock. My goal is to hatch around 200+ this year and keep the top 10%. Maybe hatch 300 if I can. I have started dividing my hens into maternal lines. I will also be building a coop divided up to keep a few extra males in for breeding. My biggest mistake over the years has not been keeping enough males and only relying on one or two males each breeding season. Pick the wrong male to keep and you don't find out if you selected right for 6-8 months later when his offspring matures. So, I hope to rotate males and figure out which produces the results I want. Keeping an " Heir and a Spare" isn't enough, I will need to keep several males to work with if I want to make progress and have enough back-ups.

I finally have one male I think may be worth while to keep more than one season. I will see if I selected well once his offspring mature. Meanwhile I will be hatching as many as I can in the hopes of getting more of what I want all in one bird.

Trisha

 

[poultch]

It's not sure that a dark egger will through dark egger of the same class.
The best way to find out the heridity of the dark egg trait is to work with two inbred lines and work with modified reciprocal recurrent selection.
The birds which show to give the best crossing results (and show a dominance for the wanted trait), will be used for breeding in the family line.



taken from page 73
http://www.bfafh.de/bibl/lbf-pdf/landbauforschung-sh/lbf_sh322.pdf

my evidence is only anecdotal Redcap, but no doubt youre familiar with the seminal paper from Dickerson 1973, Inbreeding and Heterosis in animals.
Four way cross is of inbred lines discussed in there, basically the model that the commercial use now

 

[poultch]

Good post Poutch


Can you explain what a chamois is, and also a little more about what histerosis is in breeding?
Nice egg color.

Thanks

Andy

Thanks Andy,

chamois is where the black is replaced with white in the standard barnie, like this female below:


from:
http://www.kippenencyclopedie.nl/php/index.php?title=Geelwitdubbelgezoomd

Heterosis is just another term for hybrid vigour, were you get an extra boost in traits (fertility, health, vigour, size, weight etc) over and above what the average of both parents have, for those traits
problem is this is just a bonus and this hybrid vigour will drop in subsequent backcrosses to either of the parental breeds

 

[poultch]

Poultch,

Thank you for sharing your advice and knowledge about genetics. I am still reviewing the advice you offered me last year. I have a decent start on hatching chicks already this year. So far I have 38 four week olds and 30+ day-olds. My goal is to hatch, cull, hatch, cull and then hatch again..meanwhile I am still trying to learn what works and what doesn't with improving traits I want in my flock. My goal is to hatch around 200+ this year and keep the top 10%. Maybe hatch 300 if I can. I have started dividing my hens into maternal lines. I will also be building a coop divided up to keep a few extra males in for breeding. My biggest mistake over the years has not been keeping enough males and only relying on one or two males each breeding season. Pick the wrong male to keep and you don't find out if you selected right for 6-8 months later when his offspring matures. So, I hope to rotate males and figure out which produces the results I want. Keeping an " Heir and a Spare" isn't enough, I will need to keep several males to work with if I want to make progress and have enough back-ups.

I finally have one male I think may be worth while to keep more than one season. I will see if I selected well once his offspring mature. Meanwhile I will be hatching as many as I can in the hopes of getting more of what I want all in one bird.

Trisha

thanks Trisha
sounds like youre really gonna plant the foot down this year, tremendous!

I am yet to find that male that am happy enough with to use for another year, so fingers crossed for your fella! but with my search for good egg colour too, he is nearly 2 before that's apparent, and I like your approach, so when I find my fella, then will try to follow your lead and crank out the numbers from him
best of luck with the rest of the breeding season

 

[mountainvieworchards]

Interesting discussion on breeding for egg color.

I took some pictures of my Large Fowl Silver project eggs (collected from 4 layers) compared with my Gold Double Laced Barnevelder eggs. The Silver are lighter and within the silver there is a pretty wide range of shade.

Andy

 

[pysankigirl]

I have always wondered what genes were responsible for Chamois. We don't have them in BV on this side of the pond (that I know of)

 

[Piet]

It’s way more complicated than that Piet, that method is entry level approach, fine and a near enough is good enough if larger flock breeding ie more than a couple hens per pen.
I’ll try and give you 2-3 examples to help you see my point.
(sorry for those that have probably seen these arguments done to death in other dark egg layer threads but this is one of the only threads I read here at BYC)
An area of egg colour that Redcap brushed on was consistency of colour throughout and into the deeper part of the laying season Below are 3 of my Barnevelders that I bred from a couple yrs back, picture was taken at about 6month into first season lay.


The 2 on the left were full sisters, the one on the right from another ‘family group/maternal line’ The one on the very left started off laying superbly dark eggs, with a magnificent bloom, but it deteriorated much faster than the other 2, and by the end of month 7-satrt of month 8, her egg colour was decidedly poorer than the other 2 which were virtually unchanged from the colour above.

Another point that I have seen and Trisha has mentioned with her indian game cross and is evidenced in some of the historical accounts is probably what I would put down to overdominance. When a cross of 2 strains or breeds produce improved over and above both parental strains or breeds. Overdominance is one of the casues to heterosis, and we know that heterotic effects aren’t heritable. The pic below was taken 3.5 years ago at about month 3-4 of lay just as the colour ive found to start to taper off.


The outer left are from 2 blue females, second from right is a standard hen, and the row on the far right is that of a 3rd generation Chamois. Her mother did not lay eggs that colour, and neither did her sire throw females when mated to my other standard hens yield that intense colour. Now her dtrs and grandtrs have not achieved that colour either, but they are nonetheless good, but they have stabilised to my flock average (because I continuously backcross every generation in all my projects back to my standard lines) And incidently her egg colour dropped away at a greater rate also.

Thirdly the standard hen that layed the eggs on second from right I targeted to give me my following seasons breeding males, as she herself was from a maternal line that consistently laid nice coloured eggs (her mother and grdmother). I reared and used 2 of her best typed sons, and last year both of these sons dtrs had their first laying season. One threw dtrs on average that were well below the colour of their mothers and the other, he was about middle (but didn’t make it worse like his full brother). These 2 ckls were sired by an ‘outcross’ rooster from a friend of mine which we work loosely together on our Barnies, but he employs the method you have outlined, only keeping males and females from the best coloured eggs So the difference in the genetic potential of these 2 full brothers was only identified by a crude progeny test system, well beyond the scope of ‘your neighbour’ Piet.

However, that point you make about ‘your neighbour’ is still in my opinion, a relevant one, but I look at it from a different angle. A lay person to nuances of the Barnevleder, will want this great breed (in my experience) for primarly the egg colour and the ‘pretty lacing’ they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a exceptionally laced bird or a poor one, or too larger comb, sway back, hairy face, masculine head etc etc. But they will notice if she doesn’t lay a good coloured egg, or that the colour fades quickly to that of their Wyandottes or Rocks. Then this breed is relegated in their eyes as Rachel earlier put it perfectly, ‘to just a pretty pet’
And for me at least these ‘consumers’ of Barnevelders are just as important as the breeders, if not moreso, without them wanting to have them Id have no one to sell my surplus culls as backyard layers to, therefore I couldn’t exert any selection pressure in my breeding programme and couldn’t as the title of this thread says; ‘work to improve the breed’.
So I don’t trivialise the egg colour of the barnies at all Piet, or as you have put it ‘not get excited about’. Because I know that is the reason why the barnevelder surged in popularity over a 100 years ago and that root driver still remains today.

I wish you all the best with the improvement on egg color. You have your own interpretation as to what a Barnevelder was back then and what it should be today, but I applaud you anyway for supporting the Barnevelder all the way down in New Zealand. I mentioned before that the production of those eggs were JUST as important. The darkest eggs in late season can be from your poorest layers. Fading eggs happen from your very best layers, the paintbooth cannot keep up. When the hen takes a break in the winter and then starts again, bang here is the nice brown egg again.
Here is an article that you may have seen before, but read it again.
This is right from the horses mouth, and no British, changed, from far away or "blown up" literature to confuse with!
We do not know how dark those "very dark eggs" were. The Dutch local fowl laid white eggs and that is all we were used to seeing back then, so anything brown was very rare.
They weighed eggs, but did not grade eggs for shades of darkness. However, they did observe what poor and excellent laying capabilities did to egg color over time.
http://www.aviculture-europe.nl/nummers/13E01A03.pdf

 

[Redcap]

Quote:
Finally they reallized that three way or four way crosses dosen't bring better results than F1. See Tab. 3.2.7 and 3.2.8. They think, that it is due to the inbreeding regression in the Hi-Lines of today, so Heterosis goes down. See Tab 3.2.12

 

[Eissens]

That's a very nice article, Piet! And what you said is true for the Welsummer also: Fading eggs happen from your very best layers, the paintbooth cannot keep up. When the hen takes a break in the winter and then starts again, the nice brown egg will be back again.
Unlike most other breeds, the Barnevelder (and also the Welsumer) has a double challenge for a breeder : it is admired both for its eggs and for its looks. For almost all other breeds the egg is only a means of reproduction, and they must rely on their physical appearance to make themselves popular.
There are some Dutch Barnevelder breeders (Mr.Simmelink, Mr.Tensen), which do not only focus on the Standard, but also on the production of the brown eggshell.
And I have seen the results! They show beautiful exhibitionbirds which lay a very nice dark brown egg (not like a Marans, because that's not the right shellcolour for the Barnevelder)

Brown eggshell color is a complex trait and it is been told that 13 genes have been proposed to account for the range in eggshell color.
There are sex-linked egg colour genes, but also autosomal egg colour genes.
In my understanding the locations (locus) of the brown eggshell genes are not known and it is not known how many brown modifying genes there are or where they are in relationship to the genes of known locations.