Difficult! Silver wheaten questions for genetics experts!

[draye]

I'm just trying to learn.
Very interesting.

 

[saladin]

Where did the dominate white come from?

The only white I have in my Cubalaya is recessive. And, yes, you can make Red Pyle with recessive white. I first learned you could do that from Craig. Tried it and it does work. It takes 2 or 3 generations but does work.

I also made my Black Cubalayas with my White Cubalayas.

 

[gallorojo]

All I can say is that the dominant white was there when Jim got his whites from Sandhill. To the best of my knowledge he never added anything with dominant white and neither did I. It is without a doubt there though. Recessive white is there as well. I have my guesses and Zook has his own, but we don't truthfully know for sure. They should just be recessive white over wheaten but they are not. Not even close.

I have heard and read many times that you can make pyle from recessive white. I have absolutely no idea how that is possible and if you say that to anyone who knows genetics you may as well say you bred a turkey from 2 chickens..lol..
I do know better personally than to doubt you or Craig. These oriental type birds don't always match up to the textbooks. The more you think you know, the more they seem to throw you a curveball. I am sure that it all obeys the laws of nature somehow, but not always the way it does in other breeds.

Finally, you really don't need any knowledge of genetics to breed chickens well. I enjoy learning about it personally, but it is NOT NEEDED TO BREED GOOD CHICKENS OR EVEN MAKE NEW COLORS. It's really just as simple as breeding the best to the best, like with like. If you want a black bird, you cross to a black, and breed the blackest to the blackest til you get there. I'm dorecting this mostly for the lurkers who might get intimidated by all this technical stuff. Don't be!! Just get out there and get breeding! Experience is really the best teacher!!

 

[troyer]

Which two are you wanting to breed together? Are you wanting to breed any of the Cocks in post 37 with this hen.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/content/type/61/id/5480660/width/500/height/1000/flags/LL

What do you want in the offspring? Do you want black offspring, wheaten, red what? You do not want white tail and mottling?

Tim

I'm specifically looking for the real wheaten coloration, where the head is chestnut shading to wheaten in the hackles where they meet the shoulders. Really I guess any color is fine but I was wanting to stay away from the whites and blacks with red in the shoulders.

 

[gallorojo]

Saladin has said before that you need to use a female with white in the primaries to get this hackle color in her sons.

 

[tadkerson]

I'm specifically looking for the real wheaten coloration, where the head is chestnut shading to wheaten in the hackles where they meet the shoulders. Really I guess any color is fine but I was wanting to stay away from the whites and blacks with red in the shoulders.

I would use this male

over the female in front not the blue female.

Tim

 

[saladin]

That may work and certainly worth a try.

What I think will happen is that you will get males with breast lacing or at least a lot of red in the breast. Whenever I have used light colored females on the BBR side of the equation that is the results and it just gets worse and worse by the generations. Amazingly it doesn't happen in the SDWs and those females all come with a lighter coloration.

Now if you have an exceptionally dark cinnamon female that is the one I'd use with that male.

Remember Cubalaya 'wheaten' (BBR in the Standard) is actually 'cinnamon' in coloration. (The doctor perfers the non-technical language of the past to the genetic language of the present. It's like a preacher quoting Greek to the congregation. lol)

 

[tadkerson]

Where did the dominate white come from?

The only white I have in my Cubalaya is recessive. And, yes, you can make Red Pyle with recessive white. I first learned you could do that from Craig. Tried it and it does work. It takes 2 or 3 generations but does work.

I also made my Black Cubalayas with my White Cubalayas.

1. What was the breeding regimen you used to produce recessive white red pyles?

What test crosses did you perform in order to determine that the white birds were recessive white and not carriers of dominant white? How many progeny did you produce in the test crosses?

Did you always cross white to white to produce the red pyle?

If so, how do you know one of the birds was not carrying recessive white and dominant white?

If a white bird was always used in a cross, how do you know dominant white did not segregate during the crosses?

Is there some time in the breeding regimen where you did not use a white bird in the cross and the crossing of the non-white birds produced progeny white birds that you continued to use to make the red pyle? The progeny white birds were then crossed with each other to produce the recessive white red pyle?


There are different recessive white alleles floating around in the chicken gene pool. And it is possible that there is a recessive white that allows some color to be expressed in a fowl.

But, you will still have to prove to me through your breeding regimen and test crossing that the red pyles are not due to dominant white. It is the scientist in me that has to see the numbers, etc,. I have seen some things happen in my birds that are not found in the published literature but I will not say anything until I get the data to support my observations.

Tim

 

[saladin]

Those are really good questions. I'll try to answer them all by telling the story.

I collected 6 different strains of BBR Cubalaya from all over the country. Most were quite rundown; so, I decided to just mix them. Most of the time I just had one or two birds from each of those strains collected. On a few I had a trio but never more.


When I combined two of those strains a white 'sport' was produced from the breeding of the two wheaten birds. That same year I lost both the cock and the hen that produced him in a dog attack; so, I don't know which strain carried the white. I checked with both strain owners and Cubalaya breeders across the country. A white sport had not been seen in Cubalayas in more than 25 years.

I was delighted but stumped as to how to breed him. I contacted Craig and Dave K. Both suggested that I mate him to several different strain hens all wheaten; which I did: a total of 5 hens that year. I hatched 100 chicks off him and all the chicks were wheaten. Thus, unless dominate white acts recessive to Cubalaya wheaten (and I couldn't find anything in all my poultry genetics text books from ag school that said it would) then it is/was recessive white.
I then chose a few hens that showed some white in the wings and tail and mated it back to him again. The result was what Craig called a 'cinnamon' pyle which as you know is just pyle from a wheaten and not a stippled hen. Anyway that is how the Pyles were produced. The Pyles still came relatively small so I've been working on them to increase their size but that is a different story.

To get more Whites I bred the White cock bird to a Blue hen and then back to him again. The result was dirty Whites males and good white females. This is the way I introduced the idea of soot colored chicks in the white line instead of the normal white down of the cubalaya. Those dirty soot colored chicks produce the most beautiful white birds.

The reason I didn't use the Pyles to produce more White was because Dr Braulio Saenze told me it would take forever to get the brassiness out of the whites and to take another route to clean the white up because the original white was also brassy.

I'm southern. Everything has to be in story form. lol.

 

[Henk69]

I then chose a few hens that showed some white in the wings and tail and mated it back to him again.

A wheaten hen that carries dominant white looks like that...