Looks like your right.
I read everything I could find on the fifty five flowery and it does indeed not
have the elusive B^sd gene. The combination of B/B S/S mo/mo e+/e+ seems to give
the same effect. It also seems that the flowery is not available in the US.
However, we do have ready access to each of those genes just not all in one breed.
The genes are:
B - Barred, this is sex-linked and dominant
S - Silver, also sex-linked and dominant
mo - Mottled, recessive
e+ - Light brown, recessive
The recessives are easy to breed for. Barred isn't that hard either since even though
it's dominant, homozygous males show a dosing effect and are lighter than heterozygous
males. Females would only be hemizygous if they showed any barring. The problem is silver.
I'm not sure how easy it would be to tell a S/S male from a S/s male.
I plan to try this since I already have all of genes running around except mottled. I'm thinking
an ancona would be a good bet. I'll breed it to a california grey and I should get some offspring
that is both barred and mottled in the 2nd generation.
After that I would need to breed out extended black and replace it with light brown. Breeding my
project birds with a light brown leghorn and the breeding the offspring back should generate
some offspring that is barred, mottled, and light brown. But the chicken calculator shows that the
% is pretty low (3%) so I would have to hatch
alot of chicks to find them.
Then I would still need to work in silver. There is a chance the california greys are already carring
silver. I would probably not be that lucky.
The chicken calculator calls the final result that I'm looking for "black patterned silver duckwing barred
mottled". I think I would come up with another name.
The calculator also says that I only have a 0.78% chance of getting the correct male. That's only 1
keeper out of 128 hatched.
If the B^sd gene ever raises its head then this would be soooooo much easier.
(edited for spelling)
