Chicken Genetics?

[TKGray5711]

OK, so I understand human genetics, biology, punnet squares, etc. What about chicken breeding?

Our flock is all BO ladies, and we are on the market for a roo (and maybe more girls to lol). If we got, say a Barred Rock Roo, for example, what would the hatched chicks be? I feel like I've seen "mixed breed" listed somewhere before, but maybe not.

So would the chicks from a BR Roo and BO hen be either one of those breeds?- a potential mix?- or always Roo genetics, maybe? How does this work?
I eventy want to get more into selective color breeding, but need to first understand how the basics work.

 

[MysteryChicken]

Barred Rock X Buff Orpington.

It would be a mixed breed.

 

[TKGray5711]

Barred Rock X Buff Orpington.
View attachment 3201456
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It would be a mixed breed.

Oh my gosh, look at that little fluff butt! ❤.

Thank you! So then, when your breeding for specific characteristics, is it just selective breeding between two with the traits you want, and crossing fingers for the results?

 

[MysteryChicken]

Barred Rock Rooster X Buff Orpington hen = 100% Barred offspring, with some males with gold leakage.

Barred Hen X Solid Rooster = Sex Links: Barred Males, & Solid not barred females.(Males will hatch with headspot)

Barred X Barred = 100% Barred offspring.


Male Barred Rocks are Double Barred, which makes them lighter then females.

Female barred Rocks are Single Barred, which makes them darker then the males.


If you cross a Barred male to any solid female, all will be single Barred, gender telling would be difficult until male characteristics start developing.

 

[MysteryChicken]

Oh my gosh, look at that little fluff butt! ❤.

Thank you! So then, when your breeding for specific characteristics, is it just selective breeding between two with the traits you want, and crossing fingers for the results?

What specific traits are you wanting to combine, exactly? I know you're talking about mixing Barred Rock, & Buff Orpington though.

 

[NatJ]

What about chicken breeding?...So would the chicks from a BR Roo and BO hen be either one of those breeds?- a potential mix?- or always Roo genetics, maybe? How does this work?

I eventy want to get more into selective color breeding, but need to first understand how the basics work.

Basics:

When you cross two chickens of the same breed, you get more of the same kind.
Example: Buff Orpington x Buff Orpington = Buff Orpington
When you cross their offspring, you still get more of the same kind.

When you cross two chickens of different breeds, you get a mix, also called a mixed breed.
If you breed those mixes, after they grow up, their offspring tend to be quite variable. They will show traits from either parent breed, and some traits that were not obvious in either one of the original parent breeds.

Here is an example with real chicken breeds:
You can cross a Rhode Island Red rooster, with a Barred Rock hen. This gives mixed chicks.
This particular mix is so common is has a specific name, "Black Sexlink." You can tell the gender of the chicks by their color & markings. Females will be mostly black, while males will have a light dot on their head. As they grow up, females will stay mostly black, while males will have white barring across the feathers.

If you breed two Black Sexlinks together, you do not get more Black Sexlinks. Instead, you get some chickens that look like Rhode Island Reds, and some that look like Barred Rocks, and some that look like Black Sexlinks (but the colors/genders can go either way, so not actually sexlinks), and some that look like Delawares, and some with other appearances.

If you look up photos of Delawares, they do not look much like Barred Rocks and they do not look much like Rhode Island Reds. But you really can get that color using some genes from Barred Rock and some from Rhode Island Reds!

when your breeding for specific characteristics, is it just selective breeding between two with the traits you want, and crossing fingers for the results?

Yes, that can work.

But people have studied chicken genetics quite a bit, so for many traits you can make useful predictions about how to get what you want.

Here is one site that talks about chicken genetics:
http://kippenjungle.nl/sellers/page0.html
There are several pages of discussion, in various levels of detail.
The last page has a listing of chicken genes, telling what they do and which alleles are dominant over which other ones.

http://kippenjungle.nl/kruising.html
Here is a chicken calculator, where you can put in some genes and watch the image of the chicken change, and you can tell it to figure offspring from chickens of two particular colors.

That site has quite a few versions of the calculator, some with more options than others.
This version is a lot more complex:
http://kippenjungle.nl/breeds/crossbreeds.html

The basic method for figuring out what you will get when you cross chickens: work it out for one gene at a time.

Here is part of how I would work it out for Barred Rocks and Buff Orpingtons:

E is Extended Black, found in the Barred Rock. This is a dominant gene.
E^Wh is Wheaten, another allele at the same locus, found in the buff Orpington.

Locus is the place on the chromosome where the gene is. Allele is the particular form of the gene that this chicken or that chicken has. Some genes have two alleles for each locus, but some have a lot more than that.

Barred Rock E/E (pure for Extended Black)
Buff Orpington E^Wh/W^Wh (pure for wheaten)

Ever chick gets E from the Barred Rock, and E^Wh from the Buff Orpington: E/W^Wh
Since E is dominant over E^Wh, you will see E (black) on every chick.

B is the barring gene that adds white bars to the feathers.
b+ is the gene for not-barred. The lowercase letter indicates it is recessive, and the + indicates that it is the original form found in the wild ancestors of chickens.

Barring is on the Z sex chromosome. Roosters have ZZ, hens have ZW.

Barred Rock rooster is B/B (two Z chromosomes, two Barring genes)
Buff Orpington hen is b+/_ (one Z chromosome with not-barring, one W chromosome that doesn't have any gene for barring or not-barring.)

When you breed them, the rooster gives B to every chick.
The hen gives b+ to her sons, and a W chromosome to her daughters.
So you get sons B/b+ (show barring, carry not-barring)
You get daughters B/_ (show barring, do not carry anything.)

mo causes mottling (white dots on the tips of the feathers.)
Mo+ is the wild-type gene, is dominant, and does not let a chicken show mottling.
Barred Rock and Buff Orpington are both Mo+/Mo+
Since they are both pure for not-mottled, the chicks will also be pure for not-mottled.
So you can ignore the mottling gene when figuring what offspring you might get.

Likewise, you can ignore the genes that cause feathered feet, and the genes that cause other comb types, and the ones that cause green or blue eggs. Parents of these pure breeds should be pure for the genes that cause clean legs, single combs, and not-blue eggs.

And so on and so forth for all the other genes that are involved in a cross, or at least the ones you care about.

Edit to add:

I understand human genetics, biology, punnet squares, etc. What about chicken breeding?

You can use Punnet squares with chicken genes, too.

 

[TKGray5711]

What specific traits are you wanting to combine, exactly? I know you're talking about mixing Barred Rock, & Buff Orpington though.

Nothing exactly yet. Just that I have the BO, and wasn't sure what kind of Roo to get. Did I want the same, or one that would make different colored babies, etc.

Later on down the road, I'd like to try my hand at breeding orpingtons for rare "color combos", like get and breed jubilee, lavender, etc.

 

[MysteryChicken]

Nothing exactly yet. Just that I have the BO, and wasn't sure what kind of Roo to get. Did I want the same, or one that would make different colored babies, etc.

Later on down the road, I'd like to try my hand at breeding orpingtons for rare "color combos", like get and breed jubilee, lavender, etc.

I was working on my own color of Orpingtons awhile ago, & decided to go ahead, & discontinue it.

I used Buff Orpington, Barred Rock, & Australorp in the making.

 

[Chicks n stuff]

OK, so I understand human genetics, biology, punnet squares, etc. What about chicken breeding?

Our flock is all BO ladies, and we are on the market for a roo (and maybe more girls to lol). If we got, say a Barred Rock Roo, for example, what would the hatched chicks be? I feel like I've seen "mixed breed" listed somewhere before, but maybe not.

So would the chicks from a BR Roo and BO hen be either one of those breeds?- a potential mix?- or always Roo genetics, maybe? How does this work?
I eventy want to get more into selective color breeding, but need to first understand how the basics work.

The genes that cause the complete lack of black feathers on buff colored chickens is unknown. If you crossed a barred rock rooster to a buff hen then all the chicks will inherit one copy of the sex-linked barring gene, barring is dominant and would therefore be expressed phenotypically. Barred rock is also dominant black, the barring is white, so the chicks would also inherit the black(E) from the barred rock and so all chicks would end up looking very similar to the barred rock in color. But the F2 generation will have 50% black chicks,(provided you don’t breed them to a black chicken), and the color of the non-black ones will depend on what color the other parent is, and what they inherited from the buff mother.
If you want to look at other specific colors and read the cool info on various chicken genetics I’ve got a conversation on here, go look at my “chicken genetics” conversation.

I’m looking into a lot of stuff. For example what breeds have what alleles. Like the cream legbar most likely has the autosomal recessive cream allele-(ig).