Barred + Mottled + Lavender Thread

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

This is a brainstorming thread because, on paper, I'm stumped!

I'm wanting to recreate the 55 Flowery autosexing pattern using my Houdans and Legbars, but the ultimate goal is to have it be lavender as well. My instinct is that I should attempt to incorporate that from the start, but I'm not exactly sure how best to do this.

What I'm working with: I have three mottled Houdan hens I've culled from my Houdan breeding program for excess white, and I plan to cross them to my lavender cream ("Opal") Legbar cockerel. I also have cream Legbar hens and cocks available if they would be useful, and I do have an extra Houdan cock if needed.

I've struggled to find any notes on how Silverudd created the 55 Flowery hen specifically. I know the pattern is barring + mottling on a wild type/duckwing pattern, but beyond that I have no idea of how exactly he went about establishing the white male/colored female trait. Is that naturally going to happen with birds that carry both mottling and barring? I do see that my cream legbar males are very light compared to the females, are 55 Flowery Hens carrying additional dilutions that would wash out the males similarly?

The main problem I'm having "on paper" is that I don't know where to go after the first cross. The offspring will be all barred, I'm guessing, and split for both mottling and lavender, but when I put it into the Chicken Calculator it's telling me I'm going to have to hatch 500+ chicks to get 1 or 2 that have all of these traits. Does that even sound right?! Do I need to plan on keeping a bigger flock of the f1 birds and just hatch a million of these ugly little buggers? Ordinarily, for lavender or mottling I'd breed f1 back to lavender or mottled birds, I've never bred splits together.

If I had lavender legbar hens I'd set up a second pen with the Houdan cock over legbars, but I think it would not be helpful since I'd lose the lavender. I do have Isabella leghorn hens I could use... or I could probably acquire lavender Ameraucanas as they seem pretty common around here.

Anyway, if we ignore all the other possible traits (there's a lot, I find that exciting,) how would YOU go about the barring + mottling + lavender combo and is there anything else I need to know about the autosexing features to establish the 55 Flowery dimorphic traits?

 

[The Moonshiner]

The 55s are mottled and barred on duckwing. Ive saw both silver and gold based.
There is nothing extra going on to lighten the males to almost white. Their appearance is because of the mottling and double dose of barring. Females only having one barring genes allows them to maintain more color.
The mottling gene usually goes more white with age so that will lighten up both sexes after they are past a year or two.
I didn't do the figuring but yes projects bringing in 3 or more colors/patterns into one bird does dramatically increase the numbers needing hatched to make the final product.

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

So probably if I hatch enough out to have a good group of lavender f2 birds, i should be able to mix and match them to work towards all the traits in the same f3 birds?

Now, IF i decide i definitely want to retain the blue egg gene, what do you think about a second crested mottled lavender line from houdan and ameraucana parent stock to mix in? This line would lack barring and duckwing, but both would be pretty easy to get back when i cross this line back in to the legbar based line.

The Houdans, by the way, are fairly prolific layers of smaller white eggs, but shut down quickly in the fall.

 

[NatJ]

Sorry I'm a bit late to notice this thread.

three mottled Houdan hens... and I plan to cross them to my lavender cream ("Opal") Legbar cockerel.

I agree, that is the logical first step.

The main problem I'm having "on paper" is that I don't know where to go after the first cross. The offspring will be all barred, I'm guessing, and split for both mottling and lavender,

Yes.

but when I put it into the Chicken Calculator it's telling me I'm going to have to hatch 500+ chicks to get 1 or 2 that have all of these traits. Does that even sound right?!

No, that does not sound right to me.

For mottling: 1 in 4 birds should be mottled.
For lavender: 1 in 4 birds should be lavender.
For mottled AND lavender, it should be 1/4 of 1/4, which is 1 in 16.

Are you familiar with how barring (sex linked) behaves?

Half of your F2 pullets will be barred, so 1 in 32 will be barred, lavender, and mottled.

All of your F2 cockerels will be barred, but half will have 2 copies of the barring gene and half will only have 1 copy of barring. If you pick ones with 2 copies of barring, you've got 1 in 32 cockerels that are pure for barring, lavender, and mottled.

Do I need to plan on keeping a bigger flock of the f1 birds and just hatch a million of these ugly little buggers? Ordinarily, for lavender or mottling I'd breed f1 back to lavender or mottled birds, I've never bred splits together.

You certainly could hatch a bunch of F2 chicks. That would work just fine--and you might be able to cull some of them at an early age, if you don't want to raise them all for a long time. For example, it would be easy to cull the not-lavender ones (3/4 of the total), then raise those longer to find which are mottled (1/4 of them, which is 1/16 of the original number of chicks).

I tried to come up with a method of backcrossing that might be better, but I think just hatching lots of F2s and culling at a young age will actually be the fastest way to get lavender and mottling in the same bird.

When you have an F2 bird that is lavender and mottled, you can go faster by crossing it to the F1s to get more:
F1 x F1 = 1 in 16 lavender mottled
F1 x lavender mottled = 1 in 4 lavender mottled

I would focus on the lavender and mottling first, and then deal with barring. Probably 3/4 of your lavender mottled birds will have at least one copy of the barring gene, so it will be pretty easy to arrange matings among them to get true-breeding barred birds.

 

[The Moonshiner]

Sorry I'm a bit late to notice this thread.

I agree, that is the logical first step.


Yes.


No, that does not sound right to me.

For mottling: 1 in 4 birds should be mottled.
For lavender: 1 in 4 birds should be lavender.
For mottled AND lavender, it should be 1/4 of 1/4, which is 1 in 16.

Are you familiar with how barring (sex linked) behaves?

Half of your F2 pullets will be barred, so 1 in 32 will be barred, lavender, and mottled.

All of your F2 cockerels will be barred, but half will have 2 copies of the barring gene and half will only have 1 copy of barring. If you pick ones with 2 copies of barring, you've got 1 in 32 cockerels that are pure for barring, lavender, and mottled.



You certainly could hatch a bunch of F2 chicks. That would work just fine--and you might be able to cull some of them at an early age, if you don't want to raise them all for a long time. For example, it would be easy to cull the not-lavender ones (3/4 of the total), then raise those longer to find which are mottled (1/4 of them, which is 1/16 of the original number of chicks).

I tried to come up with a method of backcrossing that might be better, but I think just hatching lots of F2s and culling at a young age will actually be the fastest way to get lavender and mottling in the same bird.

When you have an F2 bird that is lavender and mottled, you can get faster by crossing it to the F1s to get more:
F1 x F1 = 1 in 16 lavender mottled
F1 x lavender mottled = 1 in 4 lavender mottled

I would focus on the lavender and mottling first, and then deal with barring. Probably 3/4 of your lavender mottled birds will have at least one copy of the barring gene, so it will be pretty easy to arrange matings among them to get true-breeding barred birds.

Playing the odds it will take around 250 hatched to get I.

 

[NatJ]

Playing the odds it will take around 250 hatched to get I.

To get one of what?
If you just go for mottled + lavender, it should be 1 in 16.
So hatching 250 chicks should give you over a dozen of them.

If you are trying to get e+ instead of E, and barred instead of not-barred, and be picky about gender, of course your odds get worse very fast.

I think getting even a single bird with mottled + lavender will make the rest much easier, no matter which way you then have to cross to get the rest right.

 

[The Moonshiner]

I thought they wanted e+ barred mottled lavender.
Whatever they want you still have e+/E barred/non barred mottled/non mottled lavender/non lavender all in play.
For each gene they want or don't want they have to deal with its opposite. You can't deal with that many genes and get any one particular pattern with 1 in 16.

 

[PepsiCatt]

Woah. neat

 

[NatJ]

I thought they wanted e+ barred mottled lavender.
Whatever they want you still have e+/E barred/non barred mottled/non mottled lavender/non lavender all in play.
For each gene they want or don't want they have to deal with its opposite. You can't deal with that many genes and get any one particular pattern with 1 in 16.

True, to get the entire correct pattern in the F2 would require hatching large numbers of chicks, any way you do it.

I was suggesting that they select F2s for lavender and mottled (1 in 16). Then they would have have less genes in play as they work among those birds to fix e+ and barring.

And I thought they were citing ratios of getting barred, mottled, lavender while ignoring e+/E (1 in 32 chance, not 1 in 500 that they said the chicken calculator was giving.)


I wonder if getting a different breed is an option?
If the ultimate goal is a 55 Flowery type bird, using a Spangled Old English Game Bantam (mottling on wild type) instead of the Houdan would keep all birds pure for e+, and would also avoid the Houdan's crest, v comb, and extra toes. Of course it would introduce a smaller size and poor laying ability, so it might just be trading one problem for another, and not really be any easier.

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

I wound up with two f1 pairs this year. It was a rough year, for sure, and I ultimately only hatched from one Houdan hen and then most of what I hatched wound up being from the bantam Columbian rock I'd had running around in general population for a while. (Ooops.) The pullets are really pretty flighty and prefer the racoon-populated trees to safe coops, so I lost a few more to that the last couple of months, too. (Also why they're now on probation and locked up in a coop that needs to be cleaned.)

This more dominant cockerel has a very large, ugly "antler" type duplex + single comb. I see no comb or wattles to speak of on the pullets. The less dominant cockerel has a much tidier/smaller comb/wattles but probably mostly because he's lower on the pecking order..

Here's a couple of shots from the end of September when I could snap some shots outside. They've bulked up quite a bit since then.

I found it interesting that you can see faint traces of the recessive mottling on all of them even though they are only f1 carriers of the gene.