Chantecler Thread!

[toofarout]

I have some photos of Buff and Red Chanteclers pullets that came from Ideal Poultry in a Flickr set. Right now I'm unable to post any of them on here, but here is the link is https://www.flickr.com/photos/toofarout/sets/72157632716717142/

The combs of the Buff's and Red's are pretty much perfect as adults, that I can see.
The Red Chanteclers had two variations of patterns, solid colored and not solid. Both patterns darkened considerably as adults.
The Chanteclers were all somewhat smaller than the Buff Orpingtons when younger, but now the Chanteclers all are larger than the Buff Orpingtons.

 

[Chantecler7]

I check out your Flickr photos. I'm seeing buff and wheaten - no reds. Buff is based on wheaten, so when they start crossing varieties and then breed the offspring together, it is not surprising they would get some different colors. There seems to be a lot of black in the tail of some of those buffs; they should be all one color. I was not satisfied with the buffs I got from Ideal some years back; many of them had wry tails.

 

[toofarout]

I check out your Flickr photos. I'm seeing buff and wheaten - no reds. Buff is based on wheaten, so when they start crossing varieties and then breed the offspring together, it is not surprising they would get some different colors. There seems to be a lot of black in the tail of some of those buffs; they should be all one color. I was not satisfied with the buffs I got from Ideal some years back; many of them had wry tails.

Well, regardless of what people think or want the Reds to look like, those I identified as Red Chantecler are what *Ideal Poultry* sells as Red Chanteclers. I posted the link to show what *I* received from them.
When I specially order Buff Chantecler males, Ideal sent Red Chantecler males. I no longer have any Red Chanteclers of any sex.
It would be nice to have better birds.
I will have to look at my Buff's closely this weekend. I think that most of the black in the tails is gone. They are all 2 and 3 years old now.

 

[toofarout]

I check out your Flickr photos. I'm seeing buff and wheaten - no reds. Buff is based on wheaten, so when they start crossing varieties and then breed the offspring together, it is not surprising they would get some different colors. There seems to be a lot of black in the tail of some of those buffs; they should be all one color. I was not satisfied with the buffs I got from Ideal some years back; many of them had wry tails.

Help me out here , please. I don't want to mislabel my photos ... What would you suggest I mention in a comment for each photo of a Red Chantecler?
"Wheaton color pattern"
sold as a Red Chantecler, but really is Wheaton
Or?????
I don't want to get really wordy, but since they were sold as RED's, but are really Wheaton colored or patterned, I would like to say that.
Thanks much!

 

[toofarout]

Wheaten, not wheaton.

 

[Chantecler7]

I guess whatever makes you comfortable. You could just label them all as Ideal Hatchery Chanteclers, and not even mention the color.

 

[CanuckBock]

Tara, may I have permission to use a few of your photos in the CFI Newsletter? I had not seen photos of the Reds before, but I know that Ideal Hatchery and Sandhill Preservation both offer chicks. Yours seem similar to the New Hampshire color, not so much the Rhode Island Red color. Since there is no standard for them there is no "right" shade of color either.

Mike

Yes permission granted (thanks for asking) but under one condition you mail me a paper copy of the issue they appear in. For my scrapbook...getting to that age now where I need to collect up bits of colourful papers! LOL Do you need a $ contribution from me to cover printing and postage? The CFI club should not have to pay for things like this.


New Hampshires and Rhode Island Reds are all colour forms of the genetics most commonly found in "black tailed reds."

The Rhodes in Red are really dark (and handsomely unique for that!) with far more melanisers (recessive blacks) than I would expect to find if a self-Buff and a Partridge were used to make this hybrid variety cross. Buff contributes (Di) as in dilute.

I think the Red Chants would make for a rather miscoloured New Hampshire (male tail is black, not copper/brownish and the female neck feathers are suppose to be "distinctly tipped with black"). I do however, like the term "chestnut red" better than my call of the Red Chants as being "orange." Not sure many would want a PUMPKIN chicken...walnuts, pumpkin pie, and ORANGE chickens.

The down is very unique on the Red Chants and whilst chicken down should never really be visible until the judge has one in hand for the exam, New Hamps are "light salmon in all sections" and RIR's are "rich intense red." Red Chants are not either of these.

The juvenile Red Chanteclers can look very "Campine" colour patterned. If I make an effort, I might be able to dig up a photo or three of a young F1 Red off one of my old laptops exhibiting this feature if anyone wants to see that feature. They don't remain that way though! Sorta like the barred expression of juvenile gender similar Partridges at 8 weeks or so and how that moults out to more adult like pencillings.

I think if the Red Chants were to be a new variety, it would be best they had a colour description all their own. I highly doubt they are worth all that trouble though since by their very genetic makeup, they are the colours/patterns they are from lots of heterozygous combinations (impure and won't breed true) to make what looks like the initial F1 cross of Buff x Partridge.

Yes, they are FUN! Should they have to "fit" a standard variety worded description, I doubt it.

​

Uh, my Reds are pictured here (years ago now) on this thread...page 20 of this thread on January 7th, 2011--Jim posted one of my cockerels (same photo I just posted above) and Medusa...she is also a 2009 hatch. Link to my website across each photo.

Here's the same male a month ago, Feb 3rd, 2014.
Comb and wattles on him are a tad bigger from when he was a five month old cockerel.
​

There is also a photograph of one of your Buff Chants on the same post Mike. The name "Dufus" I think you called this one, but been a lot of years to remember details like that correctly.

I am better with numbers than names but names of chickens...well goes to show you what is important, eh?

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[Chantecler7]

Sure will. The next issue comes out in June. I'm not sure I still have your email address though, so maybe you better send that to me in a private message on this forum. Or if you want a paper copy send me your regular address. Thanks!

Mike

 

[Northie]

Nothing like learning to swim by jumping in the deep tank but....

Could the red colour ever breed true? Is it due in part or in whole to genes that are incompletely dominant like blue? Or just so many hiding recessive genes that it would be exeptionaly difficult to eliminate them all... ?

Next question, do pullet's wing feathers come in faster than males?? The ones I suspected to be female due to their colouring are also growing wing feathers faster... yes I have been glued to the brooder, still excited... Haven't found leg bands yet but I'm going to have to.

 

[CanuckBock]

Nothing like learning to swim by jumping in the deep tank but....

Could the red colour ever breed true? Is it due in part or in whole to genes that are incompletely dominant like blue? Or just so many hiding recessive genes that it would be exeptionaly difficult to eliminate them all... ?

Hmm...use a handle like "Northie" on a person residing in the Great White North and taunt us about having "fluid water" to dog paddle in, eh? Rub my feathers the wrong way shall you!

NO, realistically and statistically speaking, the Red Chantecler will not breed true.

The Buff contributes half the mutations it has and the Partridge contributes half the mutations it has--in these mutations, the Buff and the Partridge do not share the same mutations from wild type...so in simple terms, a Red Chant is 1/2 Buff and 1/2 Partridge...take that Buff/Parti (lookit what you done--now the cops will have to attend that kinda party & make it more a decent affair, eh?) and what portions of the halved made up impure parts in the Reds are you going to expect to be lined up and passed along to the next generation?

In even simpler terms, l00k at each parent...one is Buff, one is Partridge...the colours, even to a child observing, are not similar to each other (which further explains that each variety does not share the same mutations as each other). So taking half from each contributing parent, produces offspring that don't look like the same variety in EITHER parent. Think in terms of the union of a horse and a donkey making a mule or a hinny. The first cross will make Red...but a Red to a Red is astronomically unlikely to produce the same genetically formulated Reds again. Because you are putting together a bird, the Red Chant, that has a single dose of a whole bunch of different mutations...IMPURE doses of mutations that interact differently than when those same mutations are not present OR pure in a bird. Double up on these new mutations (make them pure) and the outcome of what the bird looks like can be completely different than the impure or not there at all state.

In my experiences, the Red Chantecler chicks have dotties of dark pigment on them...they are half eb/half eWh...if the down is way too light &/or with no dark dots...that is no F1 Red Chant from a Parti x Buff crossing.

The down colour expression in the Red Chantecler is like no other recognized ABA/APA variety of chicken...the combination of eb/eWh (brown and Wheaten) is not pure, it is impure at the e-series...then keep going and going and going until you have SEVEN impure mutations to make the first generation Reds. Better off buying lotto tickets if you think you can get seven mutations to repeat that alliance of being impure in the second or third or...generation.

If it was a matter of just one mutation as in a very simplified example of the case for blue dilution...yes you have the offspring from a Splash-Bl/Bl (pretend Buff) and a Black-bl+/bl+ (pretend Partridge) which would all be Blue-Bl/bl+ (Reds for the Chanteclers)...but in the case of the Reds, it is not ONE mutation (the Bl in one dose to dilute the black to blue) impure that decides the colour but SEVEN mutations that are impure. I don't do statistical calculations on what the chances are for seven mutations to line up once again in an impure state, I can however do the Blue x Blue calculations.

Blue x Blue = 25% Splash / 50% Blue / 25% Black

And yes, it IS possible to have a variety that does NOT breed true accepted as a recognized variety.

Now, the heterozygous (impure) mutations that line up with wild type (the subscript of a plus sign "+") to make RED Chanteclers are: Cb/cb"+", possibly Co/co"+" (pending how diluted a version of self-Buff you use), Db/db"+", Di/di"+", Mh/mh"+", possibly Pg/pg"+" (pending if you double mate your Partridge or not). I will mention the last mutation which is eb/eWh which is TWO mutations of the e-series and is not wild type which happens to be e"+" duckwing.

You are asking that the seven impurities required to make the Reds to be replicated in that same impure form in the offspring to make more "pure" impure Reds. <---yes, pure impure has a rather nice confusing tear your hair out by the roots sound to it...doncha think? Wanna be prematurely bald...keep going here...pool diving in the buff in April...starting to sound like a REAL party here I want no part of.

If you need further proof, merely look at the "Reds" that the hatcheries are selling...after a few years/generations...you can easily see whatever they are producing is not from the original cross of Buff x Partridge. I suspect they are taking the offspring of the original cross (which would have been Reds one hopes!) and breeding those Reds together and we all easily see that the resulting birds don't resemble the F1 generation of a Buff to Partridge now do they? Oh you are most certainly getting Red x Red Chants, just how many generations far removed from that initial cross.

Besides...who said or promised that Red Chanteclers were suppose to breed true? If you like the looks of the Reds, no problemo...be like the commercial hybrid cattle breeders...first be a purebred cattle breeder and keep a line of Buff and a line of Partridge and then be a commercial cattle breeder and cross the pure Buff and the pure Partridge once to make the Reds. You'll be both a purebred cattle breeder AND a commercial cattle breeder of hybrid cattle...um, uh, ahem...sorry, hybrid variety chickens.

Lots get along just fine using this method to produce outstanding productive livestock but, as said, it is a terminal cross...meant to make meat cockerels and have pullets to make eggs but never to be kept back to be breeders if you wanna make more Reds outta them...and that be that. Have you ever kept seeds from hybrid plants...if you plant those seeds, most often you will be very disappointed with the plants that result from growing seeds from crossing these hybrids. The original hybrid plant is spectacular, but it don't make more of the same from its seeds, now does it?

The Red Chantecler is a great hybrid between two varieties.

For those of us real keen Chanters, we often know that in the Chantecler breed, that the Partridge requires a much firmer feather than say the Whites or the Buff to decently show off the pencilling pattern in the females. We also see far too many of the Buffs with feathers too soft and with more volume that we personally prefer for that variety in the Chantecler breed. Now cross both those varieties and...well you might get a sorta firmer and sorta softer feather, or either of each.

Us keen Chanters also know that if you have Partridge Chants that are NOT pure for eb in the e-series....you then lose the well defined "diamonds" in the hackles of both genders and the saddles of the males.

Father and son - Partridge Standard Chanteclers expressing "diamonds" in hackles and saddles...both would be eb/eb, pure in the e-series.


​

There are consequences when mixing varieties, not drastic if you have a handle on the inheritance of colour genetics and such but rather much more confusing if you don't.

Embrace the Reds for what they are, a one time cross of two varieties...a terminal cross as in the BOCK a BOCK stops there.

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada