Creating the MF Pattern

[tadkerson]

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From the ratios and phenotypes of the chicks, it appears that the gene is a recessive sex linked and sex influenced gene that adds eumelanin to the feathers. If this is true both parents would carry one recessive sex-linked gene.

Additional crossing would help to better understand the nature of the gene or genes involved in the cross.


It is possible that the gene is dominant sex linked and sex influenced. If the original male parent was dark ( as a cockerel) like some of his male offspring then the gene would be dominant. The black on the male could have been replaced with the white mottling.

Tim

 

[amazondoc]

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He was not. The black mottled cockerels start out dark with their first feathers, and although they gain a bit of red as they mature, they stay dark. They pretty much follow the male wheaten growth pattern, in that they can be differentiated from "normal" red birds by a few days of age.

You can see pics of the parent roo as a chick, in the gallery here:

http://eggheadhill.smugmug.com/gallery/8826543_okqGc

Thanks again to everyone for your input. I love trying to figure these things out!

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Amazondoc, I don't think you correctly understood what Tim was saying. (Or else I misunderstood.)

You both agree that the chicks start dark, as they matures white replaces black pigment at the feather tips (the mottles).

Time, am I correct in reading into your answer that whatever gene this is is a melanizer that replaces the buff colouring that should be there for mille fleur?

 

[amazondoc]

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No, that is not what I am saying. I believe you are the one who is confused here.

Tim was saying that the parent roo might have been one of the black mottled chicks -- in which case, the black mottling could have been a dominant trait rather than recessive. I was telling Tim that the parent roo was NOT a black mottled chick. None of the parent birds were black mottled as chicks.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Okay, I misunderstood, sorry.

So he was a solid black bird?

 

[amazondoc]

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No, I have no solid black birds in the mille fleur project. I have never hatched any solid black birds in the mille fleur project. I don't know where you could have ever gotten that idea.

Take a look at the galleries that I have already posted links to. They clearly show many stages of the lives of these birds, including the nice yellow down and the very first feathers, all the way up to adulthood.

All of the birds start out mottled and stay mottled, whether they are the "charcoal" mottled ones or the red mottled ones. The red mottled ones eventually develop black in their feathering and thus gain the mille fleur pattern, while the charcoal ones do eventually develop *some* red but remain mostly black mottled. All of that is clearly shown in the pics.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

I'm not trying to argue! I have looked at the galleries, and as I read your post it sounded like that is what you were saying.

FWIW, I don't think the dark ones are mille fleur. They look closer to tolbunt, although I don't know enough about how that colour pattern manfests to say that that is what I think they are. Mille chicks are not usually yellow downed.

 

[amazondoc]

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The dark ones are NOT proper mille fleur. That's what we've been talking about all along. The dark ones are likely to be missing the Columbian gene. As I mentioned earlier, they are therefore likely to be what Henk's chicken calculator calls "black patterned gold wheaten pied/mottled".

As for mille fleur, it can be created on e(b), E(Wh), or e+. As I said many posts ago, my mille fleurs are wheaten based. Thus the yellow down.

 

[Goose and Fig]

OK- forgive my lack of knowledge on the MF- but what happens if you cross an MF with a black, white, or buff?

 

[tate]

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nothing with black or white with buff you will get some milli pattern in your f3s