Crossing my Red Ranger Hens.

[Compost King]

I haven't done an update in a long while. The Red Rangers are currently on laying strike. I put one of their sons in their pen but he isn't dominant enough to breed with them yet. He is half Naked Neck. Since I do have a Red Ranger Male I am going to use him to make Red Rangers and work towards having Naked Necked Red Rangers. I will see if there is some recessive dwarf gene in the Red Rangers.

Update on the Slow White Broiler. She still hasn't had her Comb and Waddles turn red, She is somewhat large but not as large as the Red rangers were at her age. She is at 21 weeks now. Currently she is in with the White Naked Neck Rooster I have.
Update on CX, I have 6 CX I bought from TSC 10 days ago. 3 of them are feathering out very fast and 3 slightly slower, I assume this means I have 3 males and 3 females. My plans call for a female but if I end up with a Male I like maybe I breed him over the Red Rangers or over the Slow White broiler directly.
The Plan with the Slow White Broiler and CX are to breed both of them to my White Naked Neck rooster, then cross the 2 sets of offspring. Keep all the fully naked necked after the 2nd crossing and work towards starting my one Breed of supersized Naked Necks.
The Dorking X Red Ranger cross has turned into a project of its own. I may even open a thread for it. Currently in 3 different brooder are 3/4 Dorking 1/4 Red Rangers. This is the point where I need to start getting selective toward SOP. I am not an SOP type of guy unless P stands for production however in this case I do want to make sure that I have mostly dorking traits because the current dorkings I have seem to have inbreeding issues. I want to greatly improve The Dorking with a blast of Genetic Diversity. I may be crossing 3/4 Dorking to 3/4 Dorking or to 1/2 Dorking the next generation. Not sure though. I may push it to 7/8th Dorking 1/8th Red Ranger before I do that. Its going to be a nightmare trying to weed out all the chickens that have the recessive 4 toes trait.
Here is a run down of what I am doing with the Female crosses I made with the Red Rangers since i have only eaten males so far. The Ayam Cemani x Red Rangers are in my egg laying flock, I may choose to breed them in the future but all my breeding pens are being used and they are on hold. Their egg size has gotten large and are white or off white. The Dorking Red Rangers were just moved to my Barnyard Mix Sex Link pen. They are incomplete Columbians and when bred to a Red Rooster the chicks will be Red Sex Links. They happen to lay very well and their eggs have gotten quite large. The Barn Yard Mix Sex Link pen is a work in progress where I want to mix various barred chickens together as well as Various Columbian Patterned Chickens and put a Red Rooster over them. Right now my Red Rooster is a Production Red but I want to start making Red Mutts and have all sorts of different mutt Roosters over a large flock of Mutt Barred and Mutt Columbians. The one Male Dorking x Red Ranger cross is currently being bred to a Light Brahma and a Delaware. All the columbian Patterns from those crossings will be going to the Barnyard Mix Sex Link flock.
The Naked Neck x Red Ranger girls are starting to lay, the oldest one has been laying a while and I have her offspring ready to hatch this weekend maybe Monday. The males are sizing up and being dressed out nicely. The Females are being bred back to their Naked Neck father.
This spring I picked up a few other birds that seem like they would be fun to mix into the Meat Bird experiments. I have 2 Splash Jersey Giants, looks like 1 male and 1 female. I also snagged one straight run Rhode Island White who turned out to be a rooster. His frame grew rapidly and he gained weight awfully fast for a non meat bird. Since the Red Rangers lay through out winter I should have plenty of roosters to breed them to.
I haven't been taking pictures because its Cutting season in my nursery and I am overwhelmed with plant duty. I spent all my non chicken time building a sandbox and sprinkler system where I put all my cuttings. I really need to get 10k cuttings before Sept 15th and I am about 11 days behind schedule on that. Once I have it set up and get far along on cuttings I will break out the camera and take pictures of all Red Ranger crossings that have gotten larger since the last photos were taken.

 

[BlueBaby]

You are so busy over there, but it is interesting reading your updates. Are those one's supposed to have 5 toes instead of 4 then?

 

[Kris5902]

I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of that! Especially the 10k cuttings and hatches going on! I never got past more than 500 cuttings at a time when I was doing indoor gardening and propagation. Sounds like the nursery business is booming.

 

[Compost King]

You are so busy over there, but it is interesting reading your updates. Are those one's supposed to have 5 toes instead of 4 then?

Dorkings have 5 toes and that is Dominant, all their crossings have 5 toes but carry the recessive trait. 3/4 Dorkings I assume have half of the offspring with 4 toe recessive trait hiding behind 5 toes.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of that! Especially the 10k cuttings and hatches going on! I never got past more than 500 cuttings at a time when I was doing indoor gardening and propagation. Sounds like the nursery business is booming.

I found it was so much easier to mass produce them and sell them dirt cheap to a wholesaler than it was to produce a few of them and try to sell them on a retail level. With retail you have to be available all day long for buyers even if none show up, So I spend my late summer early fall doing massive amounts of cuttings.... the rest of the year I am free to pursue other things. Depending on what size pot I plant them in and how long they grew I get about $4 to $9 a plant and there retail price is more than double that. Anyways I have to get back to my set up, I am about 10 days behind schedule (still trying to catch up from the wettest winter ever).

 

[Ridgerunner]

Dorkings have 5 toes and that is Dominant, all their crossings have 5 toes but carry the recessive trait. 3/4 Dorkings I assume have half of the offspring with 4 toe recessive trait hiding behind 5 toes.

The way the dominant recessive genes work, if you cross a chicken pure for the dominant with one pure for the recessive, the first generation offspring will have one dominant gene and one recessive. When you cross that offspring, about 1/4 will carry two dominant genes, about 1/2 will carry one dominant an one recessive, and abut 1/4 will carry both recessive.

To try to do it graphically and not knowing the genetic symbol for four or five toes, I'll go this route. If you cross a 44 with a 55, you get all offspring 45.

If you cross two 45, you get

1/4 - 44
1/2 - 45
1/4 - 55.

With the "5" dominant, the 55's, and 45's will have 5 toes. Only the 44's will have 4 toes.

 

[Compost King]

The way the dominant recessive genes work, if you cross a chicken pure for the dominant with one pure for the recessive, the first generation offspring will have one dominant gene and one recessive. When you cross that offspring, about 1/4 will carry two dominant genes, about 1/2 will carry one dominant an one recessive, and abut 1/4 will carry both recessive.

To try to do it graphically and not knowing the genetic symbol for four or five toes, I'll go this route. If you cross a 44 with a 55, you get all offspring 45.

If you cross two 45, you get

1/4 - 44
1/2 - 45
1/4 - 55.

With the "5" dominant, the 55's, and 45's will have 5 toes. Only the 44's will have 4 toes.

Your way of explaining it is a lot less confusing than when the genetics folks explain it. Its like a whole new language. Alls I know is that I need to do a lot of breeding and culling to get me some 55's and find out which ones are the 55's. I will likely test breed them with with 4 (44) toe birds, if all of the offspring come out 5 toes then the parent is a 55. If any of the offspring has 4 toes then the parent is a 45. Not sure if I worded it correctly But I know I have a lot of work to do to separate my 45's from my 55's.

 

[BlueBaby]

Your way of explaining it is a lot less confusing than when the genetics folks explain it. Its like a whole new language. Alls I know is that I need to do a lot of breeding and culling to get me some 55's and find out which ones are the 55's. I will likely test breed them with with 4 (44) toe birds, if all of the offspring come out 5 toes then the parent is a 55. If any of the offspring has 4 toes then the parent is a 45. Not sure if I worded it correctly But I know I have a lot of work to do to separate my 45's from my 55's.

I guess that if you wanted to keep or work back to the Dorking look, you would keep the one's that have the 5 toes, then?

 

[Compost King]

I guess that if you wanted to keep or work back to the Dorking look, you would keep the one's that have the 5 toes, then?

All of them have five toes currently, I have to breed them to 4 toe birds and see the offspring, The parents that only produce 5 toe birds are the keepers. Parents that produce any 4 toe birds will be culls. Although some of those culls might go into some other meat breeding project.

 

[igorsMistress]

@BlueBaby I did as you suggested, met a nice lady and bought her Naked Neck. He is heavier than a lot of my dual purpose roosters, and bare breasted as well as bare necked View attachment 1618593
I took better quality pictures as far as focus goes but this is the best shot of his chest.

@Mosey2003
I am not interested in doing AI, but I am interested in knowing how it is done, thanks for suggesting I look up videos on it, who knows.. after seeing a video it might not be as complicated as I think it would be. Always good to learn something new.
The more I think about it, finding out how to do AI might end up solving certain mating problems with Seramas and I could mate the females who absolutely refuse to be penned in with Roosters.

I'm still reading, I started at the beginning, but had to reply to this. What a handsome boy!!! I'm in love

 

[BlueBaby]

I guess that if you wanted to keep or work back to the Dorking look, you would keep the one's that have the 5 toes, then?

I really like what you are doing over there, and you explain thing's so well. This is about the only thread that I almost live on, beside's my states thread.