Cold weather lightweight autosexing egg machine

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

Wait... is there any reason you're not interested in golden cuckoo Marans? Autosexing, dark egg layers. It would be a much shorter trip to select a line of those for laying and smaller size than the route you're talking about.

I would not mess with rose comb Brown leghorns, personally. I don't know of any production focused lines. They are fairly average layers, and much smaller eggs, too.

If you really want to "breed your own" just get a wheaten ameraucana roo over your existing flock of barred rocks and follow the chart, also selecting for peacombs. You'll have interesting olive/greenish hued eggs to boot.

I'm planning to do this For fun in bantam size after I track down some good quality wheaten ameraucana bantams and Dominique bantams.

 

[lazy gardener]

When I stumbled on this thread, my first thought was that OP could use a Dominique and be done with it, but while it's a nice thrifty, smallish, and hardy bird, I don't think the Dominique would be the egg machine that he is looking for. As I understand it, barred and cuckoo patterned birds are already auto-sexing.

This Legbar chart is a short cut to the direction I'm planning to head with my flock. I am planning to start with a flock of rose comb brown Leghorns, Dominiques, and hoping to add silver laced Wyandottes. I already have EE and a RIR to add to the gene pool. The intent was to end up with a barn yard mix of hardy, small combed birds that would do very well in my area, and provide a source of entertainment for me as I play around with the mix and match of genetics. I like the Dominique personality, and smaller size. and realize that with the right rooster, the F1 generation would be sex linked. I hadn't thought ahead past this generation to the future possibilities, but see here that it would be fairly easy to create a rose combed Auto sexing bird in just a few generations.

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

There are even lines of heritage RIR that are autosexing at birth. But it sounds like the OP wants a crele or golden cuckoo bird. Consider Rhodebars, too.

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

Ideal has the cuckoo production-focused leghorns you're looking for that would be good to start with: http://www.idealpoultry.com/item.html

(If that link doesn't work, look for "Production Blacks")

 

[donrae]

So Dheltzel, what you're saying is that rosecomb is a dominant allelle? So a bird can be heterozygous and carrying allelles for both rose and single, but rose will be the phenotype?

If that's the case, it will take a lot of backcrossing for me to get birds that are homozygous for rosecomb (what I would want) if I try to put a little commercial white leghorn strain into it......I wonder if its worth it, if the exellent laying abilities would be lost after so many generations???

H

This is my understanding. Random single combs are known to pop up in Wyandottes now and again, I've heard some breeders think the rose comb is linked to a decrease in fertility, but others say no....that I have no idea. I know in my limited crossing of striaght to rose combs I've gotten rosecombed birds...




these guys were a barred rock over a slw. Haven't used them as sires yet, so don't know how they'd do if bred back to a single combed hen.

 

[HaikuHeritageFarm]

I totally forgot about Them. ... But Norwegian Jaerhons fit the bill to a t aside from white eggs. Just introduce a golden cuckoo Marans and work back towards what the jaerhon Originally was. ... But with the brown egg gene. They're literally everything you want aside from brown eggs.

 

[tadkerson]

Oh Haiku and Donrae, I am LOVING this thread.

Ok, so I don't think I can get cuckoo leghorns here...but I may be able to get the rosecomb leghorn, and I can def. get dominiques...but I do really like the idea of using my existing barred rock flock....although using dominques would keep the weight a little lower wouldn't it, which is something I want.

Haiku, I know I can make various sex links, for my own purposes, but what I **really** want is a true breeding chicken that autosexes easily at day old, which can be used by others than myself, who may not be as chicken geeky as myself....and just want to keep one breed. And it would need to compete with RSL for conversions. And frankly, I'd kind of rather keep something a little more exotic if I need to keep 3 breeds.

So, this is what I have come up with-

Procure brown leghorn eggs, keep a small flock of BL and continue to cross them with my BR for black sexlinks as Donrae suggested, and at the same time work on the gold legbars, cause its gonna take 15 years.

Can I begin, by using a white production leghorn and crossing it with the brown leghorn for a few generations to get brown leghorns with factory quality egg producing skills? Does anyone know if the brown is dominant or recessive to the white? I know that white leghorns are a dominant white, so it seems it would be pretty straight forward to select for brown chicks, and they wouldn't carry recessive white (hopefully!)

And THEN cross with the barred rocks (or dominiques) to begin producing the gold legbars.

And 6 generations later.....select the legbars for autosexing qualities at birth and laying quantities at breeding time. For another 10 or more generations......



H

GENETICS 101

dominant white can be removed from the genetic pool after two crosses p x p = F1 F1 x F1 = F2 some non dominant white offspring



white leghorns carry dominant white plus the extended black and or birchen alleles at the extended locus, barring, melanotic, silver, sometimes mottling and blue. I worked with dominant white for six years and had mottling and barring segregate from my crosses.

You could produce an auto-sexing breed from light brown leghorn x white leghorn crosses ( not sure if he started this way; he may have also made a reciprocal cross). Martin Silverudd produced his 55 flowery leghorns from the cross but he was not worried about brown egg color. Flowery leghorns are mottled and barred on a wild type phenotype. They must have also picked up some melanizers because the females are dark in color. With the correct genotype barring can add melanin to a bird; not say that is causing the dark in the females but it could be. A gene like melanotic can do the same thing.

I had a mottled and barred bird segregate during my breeding program. See picture below.

Your biggest problem is the auto-sexing trait. The E locus allele that expresses the auto-sexing trait is the wild type E locus allele. The light brown leghorn carries the wild type allele and produces chicks with the chipmunk down color. In order to tell the difference between male and female chicks at hatch, the barring gene is introduced into the wild type breed. Males carry two barring genes and females carry one. The double dose of the barring genes reduces the intensity of the down color allowing males to be separated from females. Females have darker down color than males.

If you do not want large combs on your chickens dub them - that takes care of the comb problem.

For egg color read the following review I wrote concerning egg color in chickens. I left out a study and there is a recessive sex linked gene that is found in white leghorns that can inhibit the addition of brown pigments to an egg shell, They may or may not carry the gene because crossing white leghorns and brown egg layers can produce offspring that lay light brown/tinted eggs. My work with white leghorns and the blue egg shell seemed to indicate that the same gene or genes that remove the brown pigments from an egg shell seriously reduces the blue egg pigments in the egg shell.

www.maranschickenclubusa.com/files/eggreview.pdf

Tim

 

[stoneunhenged]

Based on your parameters, I think it would be hard to beat the Bielefelder. Lots and lots of very large brown eggs, and the chicks are very easy to sex. They do well in a large flock, and are gentle toward humans.

 

[donrae]

Based on your parameters, I think it would be hard to beat the Bielefelder. Lots and lots of very large brown eggs, and the chicks are very easy to sex. They do well in a large flock, and are gentle toward humans.

Are they available in Canada? And how about weight--they look fairly meaty....

 

[stoneunhenged]

Are they available in Canada? And how about weight--they look fairly meaty....

Yes, several people have them in Canada. Google search Bulbs of Fire and you can see one source.

And yes, they're meaty. But, great egg layers, too. You will not be disappointed.