Best Books and Resources for Breeding Poultry and Genetics

[Rock17]

Poultry colour guide by dr. J batty and C francis is a great book for understanding colours. It is expensive and out of print

 

[Rock17]

Here is a paragraph about black breasted red carlisle OEG

Also I'm specifically looking for an understanding on how the different colors and patterns work together in real life situations. Would love lots of photographs in a book as well. I'm very visual

It has lots of drawings. It is very good at explaining male and female pens to get to the SOP of that colour

 

[Rock17]

Poultry colour guide is better at explaining the colour than how to breed to get that colour

 

[RememberTheWay]

Poultry colour guide is better at explaining the colour than how to breed to get that colour

Yeah I think I'm looking for something that explains the breeding side of things very well too. Have you read the book another person suggested above? On color genetics?

 

[Andrew Gordon]

Are these books easy to understand for a beginner? I understand some foundational things but not everything and I am by no means an intermediate or advanced

From my perspective, Sigrid van Dort has a very accessible style of writing combined with a serious scientific-based approached.
On the other hand, I would say her books suffer somewhat from problems concerning spelling and grammar. At least, this goes for her books on "Chicken Extremes" and the "Crested Breeds". The book on "Chicken Colours" I only know in its german version, which was pretty badly translated.

Nevertheless, well researched, superbly ilustraed, very useful, and higly recommendable.

P.S.: You might want to check out her website
https://www.chickencolours.com/
which offers quite a number of articles for free, in order to get an impression of her writing style.

 

[RememberTheWay]

From my perspective, Sigrid van Dort has a very accessible style of writing combined with a serious scientific-based approached.
On the other hand, I would say her books suffer somewhat from problems concerning spelling and grammar. At least, this goes for her books on "Chicken Extremes" and the "Crested Breeds". The book on "Chicken Colours" I only know in its german version, which was pretty badly translated.

Nevertheless, well researched, superbly ilustraed, very useful, and higly recommendable.

P.S.: You might want to check out her website
https://www.chickencolours.com/
which offers quite a number of articles for free, in order to get an impression of her writing style.

Thank you. I'm going to take that advice. Right now I am pondering on how to start a few projects with a few different breeds. I would like to create some blue and chocolate variants in Cochin Bantams and it is almost impossible to find good Cochins in my area let alone a chocolate. I am considering using another breed to introduce the chocolate gene. I have access to chocolate English Orpingtons but the LF. And I'm struggling to find any information on using a large fowl in a bantam line and how difficult it is to breed back out. I have also considered using chocolate silkies or maybe houdans but those also bring other things to breed out instead of size. I would like to create a line of blue millefleur possibly with silver genetics in their too but not sure if that is even possible and a line of chocolate. I like working with paint variety, splashes, and mottled birds.

Right now I think Orpingtons are an okay choice because they have a straight comb and are supposed to have a compact and low body type as well just much larger. If I use a silkie I will have to correct comb types and skin color. But lots of people work with silkies in Cochin lines and the other direction. I also won't be working to correct size as much as with a large fowl Orpington. But I also would like to bring in a chocolate rooster instead of hens because of how the genetics play out and I think it would be faster and easier to introduce a chocolate male. But then I'm talking about a LF Orpingtons over bantam Cochin hens. Is that even possible?

 

[NatJ]

...But then I'm talking about a LF Orpingtons over bantam Cochin hens. Is that even possible?

Yes, it is often possible for large fowl roosters to mate with bantam hens without injuring or killing the hens. Artificial Insemination is also possible.

...would like to bring in a chocolate rooster instead of hens because of how the genetics play out and I think it would be faster and easier to introduce a chocolate male.

You can do it either way. Overall, I don't think it will make much difference in how long the whole project takes.

I would like to create some blue and chocolate variants in Cochin Bantams and it is almost impossible to find good Cochins in my area let alone a chocolate. I am considering using another breed to introduce the chocolate gene. I have access to chocolate English Orpingtons but the LF. And I'm struggling to find any information on using a large fowl in a bantam line and how difficult it is to breed back out.

I would expect that to work reasonably well.

If you can get black Cochin Bantams, and a chocolate large-fowl Orpington, you can cross them and just keep breeding back to Black Cochin Bantams until you get the other traits right (including size).

A simple two-generation alternating plan would be:

Breed a chocolate female to a black male. All chicks will look black, but sons will carry chocolate. Choose one of the males to use for the next step.

Breed a male who carries chocolate (but looks black) to a black female. Half of daughters will show chocolate, the other half will show black. All sons will show black, with half carrying chocolate and half not. Choose one or more of the chocolate females, and repeat the previous step (breed her to a black male.)


For the first generation, you can either start with a chocolate female, or you can use a chocolate male. Using a pure chocolate male with black hens will give sex-linked chicks, with all daughters showing chocolate, and all sons showing black (but carrying chocolate.) You can use either a chocolate daughter, or a chocolate-carrying son, in the next generation (basically, start at either point in the two-generation alternation.)

Once you have birds that show all the correct traits for Bantam Cochins, breed chocolate females to males that carry chocolate, and you should get a 50/50 mix of black and chocolate chicks, with both males and females of each color.

I have also considered using chocolate silkies or maybe houdans but those also bring other things to breed out instead of size....Right now I think Orpingtons are an okay choice because they have a straight comb and are supposed to have a compact and low body type as well just much larger. If I use a silkie I will have to correct comb types and skin color. But lots of people work with silkies in Cochin lines and the other direction. I also won't be working to correct size as much as with a large fowl Orpington.

Orpington sounds like a reasonable choice to me, but I don't have any personal experience with any of the breeds you are discussing.

I would like to create a line of blue millefleur possibly with silver genetics in their too but not sure if that is even possible and a line of chocolate. I like working with paint variety, splashes, and mottled birds.

Silver Mille fleur is definitely possible (in a genetics sense), although I don't know what Cochin varieties might be available to start with. Yes, the blue gene or the chocolate gene or both could be combined with normal Mille Fleur and with Silver Mille Fleur.

 

[RememberTheWay]

Blue and splash are caused by the same gene as each other. One blue gene dilutes black to a gray shade, two blue genes dilute black to splash. Blue is considered incompletely dominant because one copy of the gene has a visible effect (blue) and two copies have a stronger effect (splash).

For any chicken that can show black, then you can tell if the chicken has blue or splash because the blue gene is dominant. That goes for chickens that are black all over, and chickens that are black in just some places (like black lacing or a black tail.)

But white chickens are a bit of a special case. The genes that turn a chicken white can hide the effects of many other genes, including blue.

One gene called Dominant White turns all black into white. If that black was diluted to black or splash, it still turns white when the chicken has Dominant White. If the black was diluted to chocolate or lavender, it also turns white. This doesn't really make Blue a recessive gene, more that Dominant White hides the effect.

A gene called recessive white is recessive (obviously), and when a chicken has two copies of this gene it is white all over. No matter what other color genes it has, the chicken still looks white. Again, you can't tell if the chicken has the blue gene, or the genes for any other specific color or pattern.

The Silver gene turns gold into white, and is the only "white" gene I can think of that has no effect on blue (because the only color it affects is one where blue would not be anyway.)

This is very interesting. So how does mottling play into all this if a bird also has the chocolate or blue gene because doesn't mottling include a black barr separating the white feather tip from the other feather color?

Do you know what genes play out with silver laced sebrights? I'm assuming silver and lacing but if I introduced that to a separate pen of Cochins and then introduced the chocolate or blue how would that play out?

Yes, it is often possible for large fowl roosters to mate with bantam hens without injuring or killing the hens. Artificial Insemination is also possible.


You can do it either way. Overall, I don't think it will make much difference in how long the whole project takes.


I would expect that to work reasonably well.

If you can get black Cochin Bantams, and a chocolate large-fowl Orpington, you can cross them and just keep breeding back to Black Cochin Bantams until you get the other traits right (including size).

A simple two-generation alternating plan would be:

Breed a chocolate female to a black male. All chicks will look black, but sons will carry chocolate. Choose one of the males to use for the next step.

Breed a male who carries chocolate (but looks black) to a black female. Half of daughters will show chocolate, the other half will show black. All sons will show black, with half carrying chocolate and half not. Choose one or more of the chocolate females, and repeat the previous step (breed her to a black male.)


For the first generation, you can either start with a chocolate female, or you can use a chocolate male. Using a pure chocolate male with black hens will give sex-linked chicks, with all daughters showing chocolate, and all sons showing black (but carrying chocolate.) You can use either a chocolate daughter, or a chocolate-carrying son, in the next generation (basically, start at either point in the two-generation alternation.)

Once you have birds that show all the correct traits for Bantam Cochins, breed chocolate females to males that carry chocolate, and you should get a 50/50 mix of black and chocolate chicks, with both males and females of each color.



Orpington sounds like a reasonable choice to me, but I don't have any personal experience with any of the breeds you are discussing.


Silver Mille fleur is definitely possible (in a genetics sense), although I don't know what Cochin varieties might be available to start with. Yes, the blue gene or the chocolate gene or both could be combined with normal Mille Fleur and with Silver Mille Fleur.

Because I intend to create some variants of chocolate/silver and blue/silver, mainly on MF and Mottled patterns, shouldn't I begin by crossing a mottled bird to a chocolate bird? Is that not eliminating a step? Or will doing that mess things up? I thought I understood mottled to be on a black base, so can't I use that as my black bird instead of an actual black bird? What about the MF pattern? I've also considered trying to bring in a double lacing pattern like what's on a silver laced barnevelder or a gold laced into a Cochin line. Those would be some show stopping birds!

What I would love to be able to do is create a millefleur patterned bird that had shades of blue, silver, and black on it no red/gold. Not certain I could keep the black though because blue changes black to grey. I purchased my chocolate Orpington stock yesterday. They are chicks though so I've got time to think about all this. Maybe I. The meantime I will find a bantam Orpington in chocolate and then I don't have to worry about size. Do you happen to know how long it takes to bred large fowl out of a bantam line once it's introduced? What happens when you cross LF with bantam hens? Do end up with something in the middle? Wouldn't they have to be smaller coming out of bantam sized egg?

 

[NatJ]

This is very interesting. So how does mottling play into all this if a bird also has the chocolate or blue gene because doesn't mottling include a black barr separating the white feather tip from the other feather color?

The black bar caused by mottling is just "black" for purposes of dilution genes. It goes blue, or chocolate, or lavender, or white, along with any other black that happens to be on the chicken.

Do you know what genes play out with silver laced sebrights? I'm assuming silver and lacing but if I introduced that to a separate pen of Cochins and then introduced the chocolate or blue how would that play out?

The black lacing should go chocolate or blue, just like any other black would do.
Yes, definitely silver rather than gold.
Yes, they have lacing (several genes involved in getting that right.)

Because I intend to create some variants of chocolate/silver and blue/silver, mainly on MF and Mottled patterns, shouldn't I begin by crossing a mottled bird to a chocolate bird? Is that not eliminating a step? Or will doing that mess things up? I thought I understood mottled to be on a black base, so can't I use that as my black bird instead of an actual black bird?

Yes, you can use the correctly patterned bird instead of a solid black one. If you just wanted solid chocolate birds, using a solid black one would be the obvious step, and it was easier to focus on explaining the chocolate gene without having other genes involved in the discussion too.

If you do a cross of chocolate (solid) to black mottled, then take a son and cross him back to the black mottled line, you should get:
--half of chicks are male. You can't tell which of them carry chocolate, so don't use them for breeding.
--half of chicks are female. Of them, half are chocolate. Of the chocolate ones, half will show mottling and the other half will not. (So chocolate mottled females are about 1 in 8 of the chicks you hatched.)

If you choose a chocolate mottled female to breed with a black mottled male, you can then ignore the mottled/not-mottled part, and just focus on breeding chocolate mottled into your black mottled ones, the same way you could use solid chocolate and solid black.

What about the MF pattern?

This would be the same as above (chocolate x black mottled), except that you have an additional major gene: the black-based ones have Extended Black (abbreviation E) and the Mille Fleur colored ones have something else (probably Wheaten, abbreviation E^Wh).

So after you make the first cross of chocolate solid to Mille Fleur and take a son, you will get about 1 in 16 chicks that are female, show chocolate, show mottling, and show a base color that is not solid black. If the original chocolate bird had the silver gene, your 1 in 16 pullets will be split between gold and silver.

If you want to combine all of this into one breeding program:
--Cross solid chocolate with Mille Fleur (either parent can be either breed)
--Pick a son, and breed him to a Mille Fleur hen.
--From those chicks, pick out:
chocolate pullets with mottling (about 1 in 16 chicks from this cross)
chocolate Mille Fleur pullets (about 1 in 16 or 1 in 32 chicks, depending on whether any silver Mille Fleurs are also present)
chocolate silver Mille Fleur pullets (about 1 in 32 chicks, if they appear at all)

By this point, there are getting to be so many possibilities it is hard to organize them and keep track of them.

In that example, the mixed rooster bred back to a Mille Fleur hen, there will also be pullets that show chocolate but do not show mottling. Half of them will be solid chocolate, the other half should be Gold Columbian or Silver Columbian (counting as a fraction of total chicks hatched: about 1 in 8 chocolate, either 1 in 8 Gold Columbian or 1:16 each of Gold Columbian or Silver Columbian.)

Since these pullets all carry the mottling gene (from their Mille Fleur parent), and even the solid chocolate ones would have to carry the Wheaten gene (also from the Mille Fleur parent), you could breed them back to a Mille Fleur rooster too. These chocolate pullets will give the chocolate gene to all of their sons, which will be split among ones that show black and ones that show the Columbian pattern (with some of each group also showing mottling, and some not.) If some of those pullets had the Silver gene, they will give it to their sons as well, which advances your chocolate/silver Mille Fleur idea.

I have some thoughts on the rest of what you posted, but I'm currently out of time, so I'll post this now and continue later.

 

[NatJ]

I've also considered trying to bring in a double lacing pattern like what's on a silver laced barnevelder or a gold laced into a Cochin line. Those would be some show stopping birds!

Yes, they would be beautiful! Genetically speaking, it is much easier to breed solid-colored chickens than to breed good quality laced ones.

I'm not sure if there are a different number of genes involved, or if the real difference is that solid colors do fine if you go to extremes (there is no such thing as "too much black" on a solid black chicken, or "too much white" on a solid white chicken.) Laced chickens only look good with the right amount of black in the right places, so they have to strike a balance between "too much black" and "too little black," plus having the black in the right places with the right shapes.

I am sure it could be done, just a bit more difficult than some other ideas.

What I would love to be able to do is create a millefleur patterned bird that had shades of blue, silver, and black on it no red/gold. Not certain I could keep the black though because blue changes black to grey.

You should be able to get Millefleur patterned chickens with Silver, and they can have black markings or blue markings but not both on the same chicken. Due to how the blue gene works, it would be easy to have both versions in the same flock.

I purchased my chocolate Orpington stock yesterday. They are chicks though so I've got time to think about all this. Maybe I. The meantime I will find a bantam Orpington in chocolate and then I don't have to worry about size. Do you happen to know how long it takes to bred large fowl out of a bantam line once it's introduced?

It will partly depend on how many chicks you hatch in each generation. Two generations is the absolute minimum, but it could easily take three or four or more generations if you are working on many traits at once and hatch small numbers of chicks. Hatching large numbers of chicks in the second and third generation will speed things up quite a bit, because the smallest of 4 chicks is likely to be bigger than the smallest of 100 chicks (you see more different re-combinations of the size genes in the bigger group of chicks.)

What happens when you cross LF with bantam hens? Do end up with something in the middle? Wouldn't they have to be smaller coming out of bantam sized egg?

If you cross a large rooster with bantam hens, the chicks will be small at hatch, because they have grown in a bantam-size egg. They will probably grow to be middle-sized at maturity, because half of their genes come from a large chicken and half come from a bantam.

When you breed one of those mixed chicks back to a bantam, for each gene that affects size, the mixed chicken can give either the large size or the bantam size one to a chick, and it can give the same gene or the other gene to the next chick. This happens for each of several genes controlling size. I do not know how many genes are actually involved, but the more chicks you hatch, the more chance you have of getting a few that have just "small" genes and no "large" genes. It is quite similar to how the chocolate, mottling, mille fleur pattern genes work: to get all the right genes in one chicken is rather unlikely, but if you hatch a large number of chicks you might get lucky.

As a practical matter, I would probably do something like this:
--cross the chocolate large fowl with a Mille Fleur Bantam
--Either breed a son to a Mille Fleur and keep chocolate daughters (1/4 of the chicks hatched)
--Or breed a daughter to a Mille Fleur and keep any son (1/2 of chicks hatched)

Among those "chocolate daughters" or "any son," look for small size, mottling, and the Mille Fleur pattern rather than mottling on black. Pick the best comination you can, and breed back to the Mille Fleur Bantam again. (This is the other half of the male/female alternating pattern for getting chocolate in the bantams.) Each generation you should be able to get a few more traits right. Once you have the mottling, every later generation will have mottling. Once you have the Mille Fleur pattern (instead of mottling on black or chocolate), you will have that pattern in all later generations. Once you are free of a specific gene for large size, that gene will not pop up to bother you again later.

So you certainly can work on everything at once. There are times when it is easier to hatch more chicks and try to pick one with a better set of traits. There are other times when it is easier and overall faster to raise up a chick with some of the right traits and go on to the next generation. You can change up strategies along the way, too: raise a chick that has chocolate but no mottling, while hatching more of the same cross to see if you do get one with chocolate and mottling. Or raise a big chick with chocolate and mottling, while hatching more to see if you get a smaller one with chocoalte and mottling. Or whatever other trait combinations you have.

Of course you will also be trying to get the right amount of leg feathering, correct body shape, and so forth. Repeatedly breeding back to the existing bantams, if they are good quality, will gradually "fix" most of those isssues, because each time you elminate a wrong gene from your breeding group, that gene will stay gone unless you re-introduce it. So you might get rid of non-mottling or big size or non-feathered feet in various different generations.

I was using Mille Fleur Bantam as the example here, meaning Mille Fleur color of Cochin Bantam. If you do not have access to them, the breeding plan shifts a little bit, depending on what you do have access to. I have been assuming Bantam Cochins of one color or another (solid black, or black with white mottling, or Mille Fleur color.) That means you are mostly dealing with color genes (which are easy to see and talk about), rather than large changes in body shape (like if you use d'Uccles to get the Mille Fleur color.)

Actually, if you want smaller size, and don't have access to Mille Fleur Cochins, you could use some Mille Fleur d'Uccles in your project. Muff/beard is caused by just one gene (can be gone in two generations), but you would probably have a lot of work to do on the body type and I don't know how many genes are involved in that.