Breeding blue egg laying Olandsk Dwarfs?

[SourRoses]

I don’t know if anyone still have any of the University of Arkansas Blue’s around but they come in blue/splash and lay blue eggs. When they first became available about 15 years ago there were even some of them that would come out with single combs. I was guessing that they were the foundation of the Whiting True Blues since the University of Arkansas is where Dr. Tom Whiting did one of his post graduate degrees in Poultry Management and he got his True Blue start from a former University Colleague who had worked with creating the blue egg flock for about a decade but didn’t have time to do much with them so he shipped them all to Whiting.

Wow, so he just stuck his name on the True Blues?
I guess it fits with what he did to the Genetic Hackle fowl, buying up the major lines and accepting credit as the creator of Flytie birds despite the hard work of their developers since the 50's.
It doesn't seem right to me to claim other people's work as your own, especially then to go on to say things like the True Blues were created "to show what he can do".

 

[NatJ]

Wow, so he just stuck his name on the True Blues?
I guess it fits with what he did to the Genetic Hackle fowl, buying up the major lines and accepting credit as the creator of Flytie birds despite the hard work of their developers since the 50's.
It doesn't seem right to me to claim other people's work as your own, especially then to go on to say things like the True Blues were created "to show what he can do".

From what I have read, he did a fair bit of work himself too. So the birds with his name are not exactly the same as the ones he started with. Of course he had to start somewhere, but that doesn't tell how much of the work was his and how much was not.

Someone posted a link just recently to an article talking about them, but now I can't find it. I think it said that some of the Genetic Hackle fowl were producing blue eggs, so Tom Whiting used them plus Leghorns to produce good layers of blue eggs. Edit: I did find the article I was thinking of, and just put the information in a later post. Whiting True Blues are NOT related to Genetic Hackle Fowl. I'm putting this edit here so no-one else gets confused by my mistaken post.

 

[SourRoses]

From what I have read, he did a fair bit of work himself too. So the birds with his name are not exactly the same as the ones he started with. Of course he had to start somewhere, but that doesn't tell how much of the work was his and how much was not.

Someone posted a link just recently to an article talking about them, but now I can't find it. I think it said that some of the Genetic Hackle fowl were producing blue eggs, so Tom Whiting used them plus Leghorns to produce good layers of blue eggs.

I understand. But the nuances of credit have been bugging me for a while with the GHF side, I probably sound like a broken record. The 5-6 guys who developed them worked much of their lives on GHF. I can't imagine putting in so much effort to just have someone come along and slap their name on the birds. The creators are barely a footnote.

It's an old myth that spread pretty far that GHF were used for True Blues. In one of Whitings youtube videos he said they are not related.
The (still available) lines of GHF remaining lay a light tan egg. And the ones I had were good producers, surprisingly.

 

[NatJ]

From what I have read, he did a fair bit of work himself too. So the birds with his name are not exactly the same as the ones he started with. Of course he had to start somewhere, but that doesn't tell how much of the work was his and how much was not.

Someone posted a link just recently to an article talking about them, but now I can't find it. I think it said that some of the Genetic Hackle fowl were producing blue eggs, so Tom Whiting used them plus Leghorns to produce good layers of blue eggs.

Correction to that. I found the article I was thinking about. It was actually a post on this site, not a link to anywhere else. It says it is from a Q&A with Tom Whiting, originally posted on a facebook page.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/hatchery-whiting-true-blues.1608138/page-3#post-27442926

Partial quote:

1. The original intent, of what you now know as the Whiting Blue, was to provide a high production and high egg quality line of blue egg layers. This is what a fellow named David Caveny intended and did for maybe 10 years. Dave is a close friend from our days at Colorado State University in the late 1970s, where he was getting his Masters degree, and I my B.S. degree in Avian Sciences. Starting with just Ideal Poultry "ameraucanas," Dave crossed them twice with what were then the top commercial White Leghorn production strains available. Dave sent me some, and I so liked them, he basically said “Fine. Then I will send them to you and you do something with them.” This was in the late 1990s. I have continued to do this basic theme, and have further out crossed them with 3 or 4 of the more recent top Leghorn lines. Then I intercross them to get the dominant white gene out so they will have colored plumage, and similarly strive to tame the single comb enlarged pea comb. All while selecting for blueness of eggs. So really the Whiting Blue is a high production commercial White Leghorn, that happens to lay blue eggs, and has colorful plumage and a pea comb. As a side note, to make sure you know the distinction, these layer and meat lines I work on are NOT part on my fly tying feather breeding and production program and company. They are something I do in concert with the fly tying feather business, but more because I just enjoy it and believe there is worth in doing it.

So that says they are not, and never were, part of the genetic hackle flytying line. But it also does say where they did originate (not the University of Arkansas program, not anything terribly complicated either: just commercially available Easter Eggers from a particular hatchery, bred to Leghorns, with selective breeding and some additional backcrosses to Leghorns.)

 

[DarJones]

For breeding objectives, here are a few things that can help.

1. Blue egg is dominant but a single copy of the gene usually produces lighter blue eggs than 2 copies. With practice, you can select homozygous hens based on eggs they produce.

2. Any trace of porphyrin (brown eggs) in your starting birds will take generations to remove. Carefully select starting birds. Cream Legbars have genes for porphyrin.

3. Zinc white is a modifier gene present in leghorns and most birds derived from them. Whiting True Blues iirc are derived from leghorns and will carry zinc white. Use this to your advantage if breeding with these birds. Zinc white can accelerate your breeding work quite a bit because pure blue eggs are produced by early generation birds.

4. Cream Legbars have a background gene that can reduce egg production substantially. If you use them, be very careful about breeding from hens that lay low numbers of eggs. It is not present in all lines of Cream Legbars.

5. Breeding bantam roosters with medium size hens can be done reasonably well. Whiting True Blues would be a good choice if you go this route.

6. Any breed which has multiple feather colors will introduce a lot of variation which is extremely hard to breed out later. For this reason, I suggest not using easter eggers. Ameraucanas of some specific colors are a better choice. Black would be my first choice if going the Ameraucana route.