Breeding Projects for Dummies

[Kezzie]

Dummy- that's me! I'm just learning about genetics and trying to do as much reading as possible but I still find much of it confusing. I have some questions and I hope they're not abnormally stupid ones (but they might be)!

My goal is to breed meaties from heritage birds. I want to work on a Dark Cornish/Cuckoo Marans cross. The DC are for large breasts and heaviness. The Marans are for tasty meat and quicker maturity (and maybe better egg production). They will make a sexlink which I think is useful also. I am assuming the boys will be cuckoo and the girls will be black.

If my goal is to ultimately (and yes, I know this takes years and many generations) make a stable line, will the F1 cross ultimately be able to breed true or am I always going to have to go back to the DC and Maran parents? At what point does a hybrid start to breed itself stable enough to become standardized?

Someone recently said here in the forums that the goal is the F2 hybrid. So mating the F1 with another breed. What are the benefits and complexities of bringing in a third breed?

I think that's probably all the questions I should ask right now. I would appreciate any and all feedback!

 

[onthespot]

I know this is not what you are asking for, but my line of clean legged black marans is faster maturing than any of the other lines of dual purpose birds I have. They are slow feathering but they sure do pack on the meat faster than the CBMs. The are very incubator tolerant when hatching eggs, prolific and hardy. (they breed like RATS, okay? LOL) Their temperament is not as docile as my CBM's but hey, you can't have it all F1. That's why it is called a breeding project.

FWIW, F1 cross with my CBMs showed a marked improvement in temperament. The blacks are not bad, just "average" and who wants to be "average"!!!??? Not me!

If you would like some eggs from them to try out and add to your line, PM me.

Also, due to current market trends for people prefering darker eggs, you can't go wrong adding more egg color. Here's the rooster (before he lost his tail feathers.

)

 

[Kezzie]

I guess my questions were dumb then?

 

[onthespot]

cuckoo is a sex linked trait. If the hens are cuckoos, then all the boys will be cuckoos, but only with a single gene of it. If both parents are cuckoo colored, then the boys will have two copies of the gene and have tighter barring and a lighter colored overall look to them. If you cross a DC on a cuckoo roo, half of the babies will show cuckoo. It will NOT be sex linked in this instance. Half the boys will show it, half will not. Same with the girls. So.... for one thing, your F1 will not all show the same trait, so unless you crossed only the cuckoo ones and went with that color you would get mixed results for generations to come, if what I have read on BYC about barring inheritance is true. Sorry I ignored your question the first time. It was not a dumb question. I asked it several times on here before I could get it through my heavy duty skull how it worked.

 

[Kezzie]

Really interesting stuff. Thanks for answering! So breeding the F1's together will give me a grab bag of traits, right? If the boys are only getting one copy of the cuckoo gene? So then how does an F1 ever turn into a standardized breed? Sorry for all the goofy questions!

 

[walkswithdog]

In genetics two birds bred together is F1 - to get F2 you breed two F1's together. Breed an F2 to a parent of F1 and you go back to a different lined F1. Welcome to confusion... it's okay to be confuddled.

It makes sense in time. Your goal bird - the ideal is what you shoot for in each successive generation. So you take the closest to it - F1 birds - breed them together, and see if you get closer with those F2 birds (means growing them out aka FEEDING them for a long while) if they're Closer to your goals - you breed some of THEM together to get F3. If when bred together you LOSE some or LOTS of features you wanted to bring in and an original parent bird had those features, you BRING it back in, and consider the birds bred to be F2. (Not the F4 you would get if you bred two F3 birds.)

That's for accuracy's sake and done more in goats and dogs and things with actual pedigrees. Generally in chickens someone would say the birds bred are still fourth generation. But REAL record keeping really helps so I do it that way...

Each generation chosen and progressed from adds one. Add back in an original parent to reintroduce desired traits -1. Add in a THIRD breed to try for the traits you want and you're back to - you guessed it - F1.

Weeee....

There's a sense and reason to it, once you get your head around it.

In general if the lines are compatible and your goals NOT cancelling each other out (some goals aren't compatible with breeds/colors/features chosen) you should see it gel in the fourth to sixth generation - more birds showing up fitting your goals and fewer and fewer weird surprises.

If all you get is weird surprises and birds that just won't go the direction you want - your goals and the features of the breeds chosen don't work together - like labradoodles and goldendoodles - the traits desired don't set so they're forever doomed to be a mutt, not a breed.

Make sense? If not hang in there, keep reading it will.

 

[onthespot]

Quote:
The only way you will get consistent results is to choose one color or the other and breed for that. You will not get a DC/Cuckoo in the same bird that breeds true in one generation. It is sort of an either/or choice and still it will take you a few generations to get them to breed true.

I am workng on a barred olive egger project from a barred rock x Ameraucana hen bred to several different marans roosters. Right now I am on F3 and am still getting solid birds and single gened barred males, badly marked minimal barred chicks of unknown gender until they crow or lay an egg, not to even mention straight combs and all the feather legged shanks I will need to clean up later on. That is the least of my worries right now.

Since you are breeding for meat, I would guess that you wouldn't care if you could sex the chicks early on, as they would all be used sooner or later for meat. If you are breeding for egg laying also, you may want to choose the barred/cuckoo look just because you can sex them more or less at hatching (not perfectly, but a pretty good guess) and some people would pay extra if they could be guaranteed pullets. You could sell off the pullet chicks for extra $ and just raise the roosters for meat.

Here are my F2's

And here are my F3's

The F2's were just the eggs I hatched from her that she laid right after I bought the original hen. She was in a pen with a dozen different marans roosters and I just took advantage of that situation and hatched her eggs, and started my program from there.

The F3's also had solid colored birds and single combs and several without beards, but I just pulled this lot of them as what I thought would be my best bet to get me going stronger on my F4 effort. There is only one single comb I saved, and only barred birds. I have ignored the feathered shanks for now. I have time to clean that up later. Should be easier to get rid of since it is dominant and just choosing the cleanest legged birds in the next few generations should get rid of it. Also, my best roo prospect from this bunch is clean legged, so none of his babies will have more than one copy of the gene. WOOT!
Genetics and breeding is fun! Plus, you get to eat your mistakes so it is a win-win!
Thanks for posting your question and giving me a chance to show off my birds.

 

[onthespot]

Quote:
Here is my F2 rooster, a single gened cuckoo male.

See how his hackle feathers are darker than normal? Double gened barred roos have lighter colored hackles than their body color usually.

I crossed him back on his barred bearded peacombed mother, as well as his black sisters that had pea combs and got a real mixed bag, from which I chose the F3 bunch shown above.

Here is the single gened roo's mother.

 

[Kezzie]

Thank you SO much for all that great info! It really helps to have that kind of step-by-step explanation with pics so I can "see" what's going on. I'm excited to start my program even though I know I'll make a ton of mistakes in the beginning.

ETA: your F2 boy and his mom are gorgeous!

 

[onthespot]

I KNOW!!! ( I mean... thanks!

)

I saw her when i went to someone's house to buy marans hens. I left without her and then I came back a couple days later just to get her! I couldn't forget about her and she wasn't even in my project at ALL and here I started a whole project out of just her! The olive eggs look FANTASTIC next to the dark marans eggs too!