Creating Autosexing EE

[nicalandia]

the easiest wy to creating an Autosexing EE that lays Dark colored Gree eggs(olive egger) is to cross a green egger EE with a silver/golden cuckoo maran.. getting a golden or silver cuckoo maran is the difficult part, OR if you already have a barred EE project(I have seen one here) you can use that Barred EE and cross it to Black Copper marans, your first cross wont be autosexing, neither your second(keeping sex link barring and ER birchen and peacomb ofcourse)...

but say you mate your BC1(bat to parent one) with each other(BC1xBC1) at this tage you will get sex links, males will be much lighter than the females(at least homozygous barring males)

 

[tadkerson]

Quote:
That is wierd that the yellow shanked ones do not have pea combs or beards, I have hatched one hen with yellow legs, beard and pea comb. Unfortunately, she lays a light brown egg. What is your goal as far as feather color? I am assuming the Leghorns were rose combed? So the F2s will have ether rose or cushion combs?

No, the barred leghorns (production blacks,) are single combed birds, but of the F1 birds I've seen, all combs look more like a sloppy walnut comb than anything else. Wrinkled, no spikes or points, varying sizes from very small to rather large. The small walnut combs accompanied small wattles, the larger walnut combs that tended towards single comb accompanied larger wattles.

With these birds, we're just going for a nice, sharp looking black barred bird that would be autosexing like a Dominique or Barred Rock. The males are significantly lighter in color than the females as adults. I didn't have any of the F1s as chicks, but I assume they were sex-linked. This F2 generation should be all barred, so it will be more challenging to sex, but we'll see!



If you cross a single combed bird ( production black in the USA are single combed) with a pea combed bird, the pea comb is incompletely dominant- this is why you get the weird looking combs in the F1. Walnut combs are a combination of pea and rose comb, if the production black are purebred rose combed then you can produce a walnut comb. If you cross rose combed birds that are not purebred then you could get various comb types. If the rose combed and the pea combed birds are hybrids you will get all kinds of combs if they are crossed; single, rose, hybrid pea/single and walnut.

If you are going to have semi-autosexing birds ( barred and black), that lay a blue egg; the birds will have to have a pea comb. The probabilities of you hatching a single combed blue egg layer is very low. It could only happen if you cross an F1 ( hybrid single and pea comb) with another F1 or an F1 with a single combed bird but as I said most likely not.

Follow the pea comb to get the blue egg laying birds. Only cross pea combed or heterozygous ( split single and pea) pea/single combed birds together to get blue egg layers.

I worked with blue egg color and pea comb / single combs for six years.


Tim

 

[Bresseman]

This is a fascinating thread! I'm in the process of experimenting with an auto-sexing blue egg layer. I'm probably not doing it in a scientific way. I too want a meat and blue egg bird. To that end I have put a Legbar cockerel over 3 of my Black Bresse hens. The Black Bresse hens lay approximately 200-250 large white eggs a year. The Legbar's lay 300+ a year. I have my first crosses out of this in my brooder now. Problem is the autosexing is not extremely contrasting. From what I can tell I have one Cockerel (marked by a small faint white spot on the back of his head) I'm fairly sure he is the cock as he is bigger feathered sooner and has a much larger comb. The four hens are black with no white spot or stripe and are smaller and have smaller combs at this time. I have banded all of them differently than the possible cockerel. I have about a dozen more eggs from this cross in the incubator it remains to be seen if they continue to autosex as I hoped. The real test is do the hens lay Large Blue eggs and can I caponize and have tasty capons from the cockerels.

 

[DMRippy]

Could you use a Cream Legbar roo x Cuckoo Marans hens and get autosexing? if so could you use a Blue Cuckoo Marans or would a Reg Cuckoo work best? I am thinking all the pullets if I used a blue would be harder to tell the color difference??????????

OK, I am now confused... I thought I got an answer to this..... To use a Blue Cuckoo Marans was best.... but I was told these would not breed true. If that is true, would they just be a sexlinked? I thought AUTOsexing breed true? How could I make these breed true? Or is it more trouble than it is worth since I have to worry about egg color (Olive Eggers). These are just a thought in my head, but I would like to try and make and autosexing (Breeding true) Olive Egger.

 

[nicalandia]

OK, I am now confused... I thought I got an answer to this..... To use a Blue Cuckoo Marans was best.... but I was told these would not breed true. If that is true, would they just be a sexlinked? I thought AUTOsexing breed true? How could I make these breed true? Or is it more trouble than it is worth since I have to worry about egg color (Olive Eggers). These are just a thought in my head, but I would like to try and make and autosexing (Breeding true) Olive Egger.

if you cross a Cream legbar with a Cuckoo(blue or black) you will get chicks that look like cuckoo at hatch, cuckoo marans are autosexable at hatch, but they are far from easy to sex at hatch,

 

[SixHix]

So I was thinking of using a white leghorn instead of brown in a scheme like the chart from the beginning of this thread.
Does it not work because the white leghorn might be carrying a recessive barred gene?

 

[DMRippy]

So I was thinking of using a white leghorn instead of brown in a scheme like the chart from the beginning of this thread.
Does it not work because the white leghorn might be carrying a recessive barred gene?

I don't think you can use a white leghorn for many crosses since they are Dominate White. All the chicks would be white.... with some leakage. But you would not see spots or chipmunk stripes with WL.

 

[tadkerson]

So I was thinking of using a white leghorn instead of brown in a scheme like the chart from the beginning of this thread.
Does it not work because the white leghorn might be carrying a recessive barred gene?

The chart is just like making a cake. If the cake recipe calls for a cup of sugar you can not substitute a cup of salt for the cup of sugar. It will not work. One bird must have the genetics of the light brown leghorn and the other must have sex linked barring without any genes that would cause problems in the crossing. Sex linked barring is a dominant gene.

It will not work for a number of reasons.

As Dmrippy posted, dominant white will not work. I worked with dominant white and white leghorns for 6 years. White leghorns do carry sex linked barring but you would have to get it to segregate from the birds as you did the crosses. That would require a more sophisticated breeding regimen and a barred male that carried gold and not silver. The white leghorn carries silver so you would need a barred bird that carries gold- you could get that in a black sex linked male. You would never get a gold bird in the end if you used a white leghorn and a barred rock-all the chicks would be silver in every cross. Lots of problems if you substitute with the white leghorn.

Tim

 

[tadkerson]

I deleted this post.

 

[nicalandia]

The cream legbar has four genes that make it autosexing

Tim you only need two genes, Sex linked barring and an autosexing able chick down(eb/e+ER) gold/Silver and Cream have no incidence on the autosexing trait of a autosexing breed example: Wybars http://autosexing-poultry.co.uk/wordpress/wybar/ and Silver Welbars http://autosexing-poultry.co.uk/wordpress/welbar-2/

wild type basic plumage color- Caused by the wild type allele at the E locus (E*N/E*N) this down color works the best in the barred auto-sexing breeds,

Tim

Tim, what´s the cause of some females on the legbar breed headspot? some females show a headspot(its even mentioned on their SOP) I advised them(the Cream legbar club of america) not to breed for this trait as this will make sexing them very difficult, some of them are hatching very dark males..

check this links, the links shows alot of dark males and females with headspot, making sexing them not so easy
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...group-standard-of-perfection/260#post_9758438
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...group-standard-of-perfection/280#post_9760639

at first I thought they were heterozygous males, but the ones with faint headspot were reported to be females, but the dark males have not been able to be test mated.. this issue does not accurs on other wildtype based autosexing breeds(Welbars,Rhodebars)

Any bird that is sex linked barred ( Barred Rock, Cuckoo Marans, Barred Holland, Production Blacks, etc.) will be semi-autosexing. You will never get 100% properly sexed chicks.

Tim

Tim this is because of the inability of homozygous sex linked barring to dilute the Extended black chick down as much as other e alleles, I believe this could be fixed by changing the e locus from E to ER and the need it addional melanizers need it to turn a crow wing to a self black phenotype, its doable

here check this gold cuckoo maran(s+ ER B)source https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/504443/golden-cuckoo-marans-chicks-sex-linked-pic#post_6407766

Blue down will work but splash down will not.

Tim

I think splash could work as long as they are not too diluted,

check this Lavender cuckoo ameraucana chicks