Do I want to learn about genetics? Yes. Is it very intimidating and scary? Yes.

[NatJ]

Would the chicks of a GLW rooster and a SLW hen be laced or solid (the females would be gold and the males silver, right?)?

Laced father + laced mother = laced chicks

Yes, you're right that the daughters will be gold and the males silver (but may have some gold leakage or look somewhat yellowish, rather than a nice clean silver color.)

So you'll have color-sexable laced Wyandottes. I don't know if you'll be able to tell the sex at hatch from the down color, or if you'll have to wait until they grow some feathers (because of how much black is usually in the down of laced Wyandotte chicks, it may be hard to see gold/silver differences.)

 

[MysteryChicken]

Crest is supposed to be a dominant gene, yes.
So a crested bird should produce either only crested chicks, or half crested/half not-crested chicks (depending on whether your crested bird has one copy of the crest gene or two.)



Male chickens have two Z sex chromosomes.
Female chickens have one Z and one W for their sex chromosomes.
Barring is on the Z chromosome.
So a male can have zero, one or two copies of barring, but a female can only have zero or one (never two.)

If a hen has barring, she passes that barring (Z chromosome) to her sons, and the W chromosome to her daughters. Her sons are barred, but her daughters might not be. (To get sexlink chicks: barred hen, not-barred rooster.)

A rooster passes one Z chromosome to every chick he sires. If he is pure for barring, then he passes it to all of his chicks, both male and female. If the rooster has only one copy of the barring gene (on one of his Z chromosomes), then he passes that barring to some of his chicks and not to others, but the barring will not tell you anything about what gender the chicks are.



Sex linked dilution is at the same locus as barring. A "locus" is the physical place on the chromosome.
So for a hen, who only has one Z chromosome, she can have one of these choices: sex linked dilution, barred, not-barred.
A rooster can have any two of the three.
(I think there are actually more than three choices at that locus, but only one produces not-barred, and it is recessive to all the others. So any of them can be used with not-barred to make sexlink chicks.)

Other genes on the Z chromosome can also be used to make various kinds of sexlink chicks.
That includes gold/silver (common in gold sexlinks or red sexlinks).
Also chocolate (there are two genes that produce colors called "chocolate." One is sex linked.)
Also dark skin. The gene for this is labeled id+ in the calculator, with the dominant gene for light skin being Id. That stands for "Inhibitor of dermal melanin," which means it blocks (inhibits) black pigment (melanin) in the skin (dermis). Learning that one took me a while!

There's a few different mutations of the barring gene. I still have the article tabbed.

 

[MysteryChicken]

@speckledhen
Here's my first Dwarf.

 

[HeatherKellyB]

So where would one find the absolute basics of poultry genetics? I became interested about a year ago with my BR cockerel and a month later my BR pullets. The visual differences helped me to understand (somewhat) the very basic barring gene. I stopped there after feeling like a kindergartener in a high school biology class Where would I find the foundation and very basic of genetics? I have so many things I'm wondering about but I feel like I'm asking questions that I should have learned from the question I asked right before. It's almost like everything ties in together somewhat, some more than others. I hate to be annoying and honestly, I apologize if I am or if I have been annoying.

Someone could make some good money writing one of those "for dummies" books! I'd buy it in a heartbeat!

Poultry Genetics for Dummies

Yes, please!

Is Self Blue the same as Lavender, genetically? Visually? Self Blue is the same silvery color throughout the bird, right?

 

[EmmaRainboe]

Is Self Blue the same as Lavender, genetically? Visually? Self Blue is the same silvery color throughout the bird, right?

Self Blue is lavender with a different name. Or at least the was my understanding.

 

[MysteryChicken]

So where would one find the absolute basics of poultry genetics? I became interested about a year ago with my BR cockerel and a month later my BR pullets. The visual differences helped me to understand (somewhat) the very basic barring gene. I stopped there after feeling like a kindergartener in a high school biology class Where would I find the foundation and very basic of genetics? I have so many things I'm wondering about but I feel like I'm asking questions that I should have learned from the question I asked right before. It's almost like everything ties in together somewhat, some more than others. I hate to be annoying and honestly, I apologize if I am or if I have been annoying.

Someone could make some good money writing one of those "for dummies" books! I'd buy it in a heartbeat!

Poultry Genetics for Dummies

Yes, please!

Is Self Blue the same as Lavender, genetically? Visually? Self Blue is the same silvery color throughout the bird, right?

Self blue, & lavender are the same genetically. Just different names for the same color.

 

[NatJ]

So where would one find the absolute basics of poultry genetics?

Some links were posted earlier in the thread:

http://web.archive.org/web/20051207...ellers.tripod.com/geneticspages/page1.html#t1

http://www.edelras.nl/chickengenetics/mutations1.html

https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006665

http://kippenjungle.nl/kruisingCQ.html

The last one is the genetics calculator for you to practice on.

I would give almost the same list:

http://kippenjungle.nl/kruisingCQ.html
(calculator)

http://sellers.kippenjungle.nl/page3.html
(list of genes, with a few comments about each one.)

For more detailed information about DNA and genetics in general, and more details about some of the chicken genes:
http://www.edelras.nl/chickengenetics/mutations1.html
http://sellers.kippenjungle.nl/page0.html


I find the genetics calculator handy--just set every gene to the option with the + and you have a wild-type chicken. Then change one gene and see what it does. Change it back and try another one. And so on.

I have tended to go back and forth between playing with the calculator, and reading about the genes. Somehow switching it up helps me learn it better. I also tend to focus on a particular few until I feel that I have them straight, then try others.

 

[HeatherKellyB]

So if you're trying to figure out what you'll get if you breed 2 of your birds that you purchased as day old chicks from TSC, you break down their genes as to what's visible? Then if something pops up in the offspring that you weren't expecting, depending on what pops up with which gender, do you change the parents genetic code, if it's a code that is gender evident?

Does that even make sense? I have changed the wording multiple times and can't quite figure out the words to express what I'm trying to ask Believe it or not, English is my first and only fluent language

 

[HeatherKellyB]

If you planned on breeding them again? ^^^

Or do you just use what's visual in the chick, for their future offspring?

I guess I'm confused on how to figure out the code for a bird whenever it has a gene that's recessive(? Is that the word used for a gene that's carried but not always expressed or obvious?)

 

[HeatherKellyB]

Or is this just something that's rarely, actually I shouldn't say rarely, I mean *not always* 100% accurate?

Again, I apologize if I am asking dumb questions. I probably should have my posting privileges taken away after 4 pm