Deerhen Project

[E flowers]

I'm looking for any information on what breeds would be best for my breeding project. Focusing on flighty temperament, natural brown coloring, brown eggs, good foragers, dual purpose.
I also wanted to know if it was possible to have a natural brown hen with a white tail? Really into the idea of a whitetail deer inspired breed. I know Golden commets and a few other more common breeds have white tails but not sure how the tail color correlates with body color. Is it even possible?

 

[NatJ]

I also wanted to know if it was possible to have a natural brown hen with a white tail? Really into the idea of a whitetail deer inspired breed. I know Golden commets and a few other more common breeds have white tails but not sure how the tail color correlates with body color. Is it even possible?

For the white tail, you will want the Dominant White gene. It turns all black into white, but leaves the red/brown colors alone.

The wild-type color of a Brown Leghorn, plus Dominant White, makes the color called Red Pyle in Old English Game Bantams. Cackle Hatchery has some photos of them:
https://www.cacklehatchery.com/product/red-pyle-old-english-game-bantam/
If you look through the photos, you will see that some of them have more white and less red/gold/brown coloring, and some have less white and more of the other color.

You could selectively breed for the ones that have the amount of white and the amount of brown that you want.

To get the Dominant White gene, maybe just cross in a White Leghorn. For example, if you cross a Welsummer rooster with a White Leghorn hen, all chicks will look white, probably with a few black dots (because Dominant White is a bit leaky when a chicken has just one copy of the gene.)

Taking a daughter from that and breeding to a Welsummer rooster again, the chicks should divide into four color groups:
--white with leakage of black and maybe red/brown
--black, maybe with leakage of red/brown
--approximately Welsummer-colored
--like Welsummer coloring, but with white instead of the black

Take one of the ones that is like a Welsummer but with white, and breed to some more Welsummers, and you should get a 50/50 mix of birds with Welsummer color and birds that have the Welsummer-with-white coloring. Continuing to breed them with Welsummers will keep giving the same results.

You can eventually interbreed the ones that have Dominant White, and get some offspring to breed true for the trait (no longer produce some chicks that show black.)

If you start with a flock of pure Welsummers, it would be easy to add one or a few White Leghorn hens, and for quite a few generations you can have a flock with pure Welsummers and with some Leghorn-mixes that have Dominant White. As you see which ones are best for your purposes, you may decide to keep having both types, or you may switch over to having just one type or just the other type (pure Welsummers vs. Welsummers with a bit of White Leghorn mixed in.)

I'm looking for any information on what breeds would be best for my breeding project. Focusing on flighty temperament, natural brown coloring, brown eggs, good foragers, dual purpose.
I also wanted to know if it was possible to have a natural brown hen with a white tail? Really into the idea of a whitetail deer inspired breed. I know Golden commets and a few other more common breeds have white tails but not sure how the tail color correlates with body color. Is it even possible?

I notice from some of your other threads that you are interested in Welsummers. They would probably be a good breed to start with, since I think they have most of the traits you want. You may even be able to start with pure Welsummers and have exactly what you want other than the white tail. Mixing in a little bit of White Leghorn can get you the white tail and may increase the flightiness and foraging by a little bit.

 

[E flowers]

For the white tail, you will want the Dominant White gene. It turns all black into white, but leaves the red/brown colors alone.

The wild-type color of a Brown Leghorn, plus Dominant White, makes the color called Red Pyle in Old English Game Bantams. Cackle Hatchery has some photos of them:
https://www.cacklehatchery.com/product/red-pyle-old-english-game-bantam/
If you look through the photos, you will see that some of them have more white and less red/gold/brown coloring, and some have less white and more of the other color.

You could selectively breed for the ones that have the amount of white and the amount of brown that you want.

To get the Dominant White gene, maybe just cross in a White Leghorn. For example, if you cross a Welsummer rooster with a White Leghorn hen, all chicks will look white, probably with a few black dots (because Dominant White is a bit leaky when a chicken has just one copy of the gene.)

Taking a daughter from that and breeding to a Welsummer rooster again, the chicks should divide into four color groups:
--white with leakage of black and maybe red/brown
--black, maybe with leakage of red/brown
--approximately Welsummer-colored
--like Welsummer coloring, but with white instead of the black

Take one of the ones that is like a Welsummer but with white, and breed to some more Welsummers, and you should get a 50/50 mix of birds with Welsummer color and birds that have the Welsummer-with-white coloring. Continuing to breed them with Welsummers will keep giving the same results.

You can eventually interbreed the ones that have Dominant White, and get some offspring to breed true for the trait (no longer produce some chicks that show black.)

If you start with a flock of pure Welsummers, it would be easy to add one or a few White Leghorn hens, and for quite a few generations you can have a flock with pure Welsummers and with some Leghorn-mixes that have Dominant White. As you see which ones are best for your purposes, you may decide to keep having both types, or you may switch over to having just one type or just the other type (pure Welsummers vs. Welsummers with a bit of White Leghorn mixed in.)


I notice from some of your other threads that you are interested in Welsummers. They would probably be a good breed to start with, since I think they have most of the traits you want. You may even be able to start with pure Welsummers and have exactly what you want other than the white tail. Mixing in a little bit of White Leghorn can get you the white tail and may increase the flightiness and foraging by a little bit.

Ok do you know how pure cackle hatchery stock is? Or where I could find pure stock to start with?

 

[NatJ]

Ok do you know how pure cackle hatchery stock is? Or where I could find pure stock to start with?

I do not know how pure the stock is from which hatcheries. Since you are already talking about making mixes, it may not be a big deal whether your starting stock is actually pure, so long as they have the traits you want.

Hatchery chickens often look sort-of like the right breed, lay fairly well, and are fairly healthy. So they might be a good kind of chicken to start with.

Stock from one hatchery vs. another may have slightly different traits. So if you want to start with Welsummers, you may consider buying some from more than one hatchery, then use whichever ones seem best for your purposes. Or the same idea, for whatever other breed(s) you want to try.

You can also buy several breeds of chickens and compare them for yourself, then decide which ones to use for breeding and which ones should become chicken soup. You might settle on one pure breed, or you might find several with good traits and end up mixing them together.

I have personally bought chicks from several hatcheries:
www.mcmurrayhatchery.com
https://www.idealpoultry.com/
www.cacklehatchery.com
www.dunlaphatcherypoultry.com
www.welphatchery.com

I had reasonably good experiences with each of them. The chicks arrived in fairly good shape every time. I think every hatchery sent me at least one or two chicks that were a bit off in one way or another (wrong leg color, a clean-faced chicken of a breed that should have muff/beard, a "white egg" breed that actually laid cream-colored eggs, etc.)

The chickens I ordered did not include any breeds that I think would be useful for your purposes, so I can't give recommendations about specific breeds from specific hatcheries. I also have no personal experience buying chickens from private breeders, so I cannot give a direct comparison of hatchery vs. breeder quality for any kind of chicken.

So I can't say exactly what you should do, just sharing my own reasonably-good experience with ordering from various hatcheries, plus thoughts on things you could try.

 

[E flowers]

Ok do you know how pure cackle hatchery stock is? Or where I could find pure stock to start with?

Is this sorta like what you were saying?

 

[NatJ]

Is this sorta like what you were saying?

Yes, I think that is pretty much what I meant.

Have you played with the Chicken Calculator at all?
http://kippenjungle.nl/chickencalculator.html

You can change the genes in the dropdown boxes, and the picture of the chicken will change. It can also predict results from crossing the chickens, but I don't use that feature as much.

The default genes in each box are marked with +
This means they are the wild-type genes, found in the original wild junglefowl ancestors of chickens.

Those default settings are pretty much the ones that a Welsummer would have.

For White Leghorns, the first box changes to E/E
That is "Extended Black," which spreads black all over the chicken.

And White Leghorns have I/I instead of i+/i+
That is Dominant White, which changes black to white (I think the "I" is because it "inhibits" black.)

Because E and I are both dominant genes, the first generation of crossed chicks will show both of those traits (black all over, with the black turned to white.)

The next generation is when you get chicks of types 1,2,3,4 in the chart you drew. 1 is chicks who inherited both E and I, 2 have E with i+, 3 have e+ with i+, and 4 have e+ with I (the combination you want.)

There are some other genes that White Leghorns usually have that are different than Welsummers, but the main ones should be eliminated if you start with a Welsummer rooster and a White Leghorn hen, then use just the daughters from that cross to breed with more Welsummers.

That is because of how the sex chromosomes work in birds: Males have ZZ, with one Z inherited from each parent and one Z given to each chick. Females have ZW, with Z inherited from the father and given to each son, while W is inherited from the mother and given to each daughter.

Among the known genes on the Z sex chromosome, the Welsummers have all the ones you want. The mixed daughters inherit a Z chromosome from their Welsummer father and a W chromosome from their Leghorn mother, so the only Z chromosome they have is the one you want (the one that originated with the Welsummer rooster.)

 

[E flowers]

Yes, I think that is pretty much what I meant.

Have you played with the Chicken Calculator at all?
http://kippenjungle.nl/chickencalculator.html

You can change the genes in the dropdown boxes, and the picture of the chicken will change. It can also predict results from crossing the chickens, but I don't use that feature as much.

The default genes in each box are marked with +
This means they are the wild-type genes, found in the original wild junglefowl ancestors of chickens.

Those default settings are pretty much the ones that a Welsummer would have.

For White Leghorns, the first box changes to E/E
That is "Extended Black," which spreads black all over the chicken.

And White Leghorns have I/I instead of i+/i+
That is Dominant White, which changes black to white (I think the "I" is because it "inhibits" black.)

Because E and I are both dominant genes, the first generation of crossed chicks will show both of those traits (black all over, with the black turned to white.)

The next generation is when you get chicks of types 1,2,3,4 in the chart you drew. 1 is chicks who inherited both E and I, 2 have E with i+, 3 have e+ with i+, and 4 have e+ with I (the combination you want.)

There are some other genes that White Leghorns usually have that are different than Welsummers, but the main ones should be eliminated if you start with a Welsummer rooster and a White Leghorn hen, then use just the daughters from that cross to breed with more Welsummers.

That is because of how the sex chromosomes work in birds: Males have ZZ, with one Z inherited from each parent and one Z given to each chick. Females have ZW, with Z inherited from the father and given to each son, while W is inherited from the mother and given to each daughter.

Among the known genes on the Z sex chromosome, the Welsummers have all the ones you want. The mixed daughters inherit a Z chromosome from their Welsummer father and a W chromosome from their Leghorn mother, so the only Z chromosome they have is the one you want (the one that originated with the Welsummer rooster.)

Is this the right combination?

 

[NatJ]

Is this the right combination?

Yes, that is what I was saying for the first cross.

The Leghorn probably has B (Barring) and S (Silver) as well, if you want to put them in and see how those are inherited differently in sons and daughters.

The Leghorn may also have Bl (Blue), which turns black into a gray/blue shade. When you have Dominant White turning all black into white, you don't notice the blue, although it may be visible in some chicks of later generations (ones that don't inherit Dominant White.) Since you do want the chicks with Dominant White, it won't matter whether they also have Blue or not.

 

[E flowers]

This would be the (e+ & I )correct?

 

[NatJ]

This would be the (e+ & I )correct?

Yes.