Color genetics thread.

[rainbowrooster]

I love the look of isabel colored chickens. So, I thought I'd go through the chicken calculator to figure out how to make an isabel laced chicken. First step: cross lavender with blue laced red. Results: two phenotypes- blue unicolor and black unicolor. Next step: cross the two blue unicolors together. What do you get??
260 different phenotypes!!!
Talk about a "grab bag" of breeding! I'm thinking it might be a fun experiment, despite the odds of only 0.02% of getting an isabel laced chicken...

You will get half black and half blue chickens. If you really want to do this and have decent laced birds then plan on 8 to 10 years.

If you are interested I will tell you how.

 

[rainbowchick]

You will get half black and half blue chickens.  If you really want to do this and have decent laced birds then plan on 8 to 10 years.

If you are interested I will tell you how. 

After messing around on the calculator for three days, I finally found a way to do it in 2-3 years. After that, I'm sure there will be several years of refinement. But at least I'll have the basic genetic structure in 3 generations.

Have you done this yourself?

 

[rainbowchick]

You will get half black and half blue chickens.  If you really want to do this and have decent laced birds then plan on 8 to 10 years.

If you are interested I will tell you how. 

Also, the half blue half black would just be for F1s. Once you breed those together, you end up with a myriad of gene differences because of all the possible combos of Co, Db, Pg, Ml, and Lav...
ETA: As well as the combos of E, ER, and eb (depending on what your parent stock was based on)...

 

[rainbowrooster]

Don't even keep the half that are blue. You don't want to be guessing if you have a blue instead of lavender chicks in further generations.

Only 25% of your F2s will be pure for lavender. Get rid (sell) off the other 75% as mixed breed birds. Breed F2s back to laced Wyandotte. Repeat this two step process several times. The reason I say 8 to 10 years is that you will only be breeding back into the laced bird every other year. That means you only get 4 to 5 matings to really clean up the lacing. Depends on how good you want/need the lacing to be.

I am doing this with blue on partridge and lavender on partridge. The blue goes twice as fast because I can breed into partridge every year instead of every other year. It took 3 years of breeding to get "OK" blue partridge so it will take more than 2-3 years to do lavender on a (good) laced bird.

There are lavender Wyandottes now but they are expensive. Probably easier to get a lavender Orpington for the initial cross.

 

[rainbowchick]

Don't even keep the half that are blue.  You don't want to be guessing if you have a blue instead of lavender chicks in further generations.

Only 25% of your F2s will be pure for lavender.  Get rid (sell) off the other 75% as mixed breed birds.  Breed F2s back to laced Wyandotte.  Repeat this two step process several times. The reason I say 8 to 10 years is that you will only be breeding back into the laced bird every other year.  That means you only get 4 to 5 matings to really clean up the lacing.  Depends on how good you want/need the lacing to be.

I am doing this with blue on partridge and lavender on partridge.  The blue goes twice as fast because I can breed into partridge every year instead of every other year.  It took 3 years of breeding to get "OK" blue partridge so it will take more than 2-3 years to do lavender on a (good) laced bird.

There are lavender Wyandottes now but they are expensive.  Probably easier to get a lavender Orpington for the initial cross.

I'm thinking I'll use Lav Ameraucanas and Gold Laced Wyandottes. The calculator shows that the Gold Laced genes are much less complex than the Blue Laced Reds or the Silver Laced. This will produce Olive Eggers/Easter Eggers, which are really popular right now. I'm not looking to make a new color to be approved, just having fun...

 

[Kev]

I'm thinking I'll use Lav Ameraucanas and Gold Laced Wyandottes. The calculator shows that the Gold Laced genes are much less complex than the Blue Laced Reds or the Silver Laced. This will produce Olive Eggers/Easter Eggers, which are really popular right now. I'm not looking to make a new color to be approved, just having fun...

There's only one main gene difference between gold and silver lace- it's silver. It's sex linked so you could use it to your advantage sometimes by a gold male over silver females...

If you are not set on a particular pattern/coloring, would not worry about using BLR. Gold laced would give you color much closer to a really soft Isabel coloring though.. but the "red" might give interesting pastel shades when combined with lavender.

You didn't state your own plan... have you thought about breeding at least some of the F1 back to a pure laced? this would have higher chance ofr reasonably laced birds... the only tricky part is you can't tell which birds are lav carriers or not, however the chance would be 50% per bird. I would say a pen of 2-3 roosters and 6-8 hens from this and hatch lots (and I mean more than 20 eggs lol) should give you some chance of lav laceds.

 

[rainbowchick]

There's only one main gene difference between gold and silver lace- it's silver. It's sex linked so you could use it to your advantage sometimes by a gold male over silver females...

If you are not set on a particular pattern/coloring, would not worry about using BLR.   Gold laced would give you color much closer to a really soft Isabel coloring though.. but the "red" might give interesting pastel shades when combined with lavender.

You didn't state your own plan...   have you thought about breeding at least some of the F1 back to a pure laced?  this would have higher chance ofr reasonably laced birds... the only tricky part is you can't tell which birds are lav carriers or not, however the chance would be 50% per bird.  I would say a pen of 2-3 roosters and 6-8 hens from this and hatch lots (and I mean more than 20 eggs lol)  should give you some chance of lav laceds.

The advantage of gold laced over silver is that from my research, if you use silvers, you're likely to get lavender laced silvers (white with lavender lacing). Whereas the gold laced will produce a true isabel color (creamish). I'm going for the isabel color, although I could see another breeder preferring the white color...

Okay, fine, I'll spill my plans! So much for having a corner on the market...
F1: Lav cross to gold laced
F2: F1s crossed back to gold laced
F3: F2 gold laced crossed to F2 gold laced (hoping for a split Lav crossed to split Lav, just as you said)
I'd likely hatch 50-100 of F2s (due phenotype possibilities), and then another 50-100 of the F3s to get the elusive isabel!

If anyone else decides to try this project (or a variation of it), I'd love to keep in touch.

 

[Kev]

Yeah! Good plan, glad you have put some thought into this and realize numbers is needed. You'll reach your goal.

Be aware, it is possible the lav amer is silver... do you know? if the lav roo is pure silver, then all of the F1 will be silver with the cockerels being S/s+.

If you don't know, might not be a bad idea and also for genetic diversity to do two ways for the first cross- lav roo over laced hens and laced over lav hens. That way if the lavs are pure silver you still have gold pullets from the second cross and avoid using silver pullets from the first... however all cockerels would be S/s+

 

[rainbowchick]

Yeah!  Good plan,  glad you have put some thought into this and realize numbers is needed. You'll reach your goal.

Be aware, it is possible the lav amer is silver... do you know? if the lav roo is pure silver, then all of the F1 will be silver with the cockerels being S/s+.

If you don't know, might not be a bad idea and also for genetic diversity to do two ways for the first cross-  lav roo over laced hens and  laced over lav hens.    That way if the lavs are pure silver you still have gold pullets from the second cross and avoid using silver pullets from the first... however all cockerels would be S/s+

Oooohh, good call on the silver. I'll have two lines of lavs to work with, pics from the breeding stock of one (eggs in bator now) seemed to show gold leakage, but I'll have to ask the breeder I'm getting my adult stock (4 hens, 3 cocks) from what hers have... I was thinking I'd get away with just a few hens of the gold laced, but maybe I'll have to plan for a roo too.... Uggh, more pens to build!!

 

[Kev]

Oooohh, good call on the silver. I'll have two lines of lavs to work with, pics from the breeding stock of one (eggs in bator now) seemed to show gold leakage, but I'll have to ask the breeder I'm getting my adult stock (4 hens, 3 cocks) from what hers have... I was thinking I'd get away with just a few hens of the gold laced, but maybe I'll have to plan for a roo too.... Uggh, more pens to build!!

Yep that's the usual problem with projects. They always end up much bigger than expected lol.