Black Giant x White Leghorn - White with leakage?

[tadkerson]

The females with the black in the legs are not carrying the barring gene. The sex linked barring gene would clear the black from the legs. Your males have clean yellow legs because of the barring gene.

If you cross siblings you will get some clean white birds, some birds like the females and some black birds.

Crossing the black roo to the daughters would produce black birds, white birds leaking black and may be a white bird.

Tim

 

[NellaBean]

I got rid of all the boys this last weekend......meant to weigh them before they went, but forgot (darn it). The Leghorn/Giant cockerels were bigger than standard leghorns but smaller than the RIR/Giant cockerels. Those boys were pretty big and heavy. The Leghorn crosses varied, some were smaller, some were close in height to the RIR/Giant cockerels, but were still lighter.

If I was breeding for egg laying only, I would do the Leghorn/Giant cross as I could sex the pullets vs cockerels at hatch by the dark vs light legs. If I was breeding for dual purpose, egg laying girls and meaty boys, where I would grow them all out myself until time to cull, I would use the RIR/Giant cross as those (both boys and girls) were significantly larger, but unable to be sexed until at least 4 weeks old. The red leakage occurred on both sexes, although the boys had leakage allover their whole body and the girls only around the neck area. However, by the time the body leakage on the cockerels showed up, it was obvious the sex already by comb, leg size, etc.

These chicks are about 12 weeks old now, so I still have to see how they lay. The leghorns and RIR "mothers" of these chicks all started laying at 19 weeks, my Giant pullet (sister to the rooster) started about a month later, I believe. It will be interesting to see how these ones turn out. I do expect the Leghorn crosses to be great layers, the RIR decent but not as great. I will be keeping most of these chicks either myself or a neighbor is willing to take a few to add to his laying flock, so I should be able to judge this cross through the first 6 months at least.

My rooster does have crooked toes, however I am hoping it was an incubation issue and not genetic. None of the offspring showed the defect. As I use him for breeding only for layers, it doesn't matter either way.

Here is the question.......if I breed the daughters back to him, and the crooked toes are genetic, would it show up in the offspring there?

 

[L&Schickens]

I have a few JG and true Auracuna crosses. I got rid of the boys and the pullets are not laying yet, but one of them is quite small. The mother was white and the dad was blue. The pullets are blue with black sopts. They are interesting. I should take some pictures.