dominique skin color

[TomNY]

Yellow skin and the barred or cuckoo color pattern are both Grey Jungle Fowl traits. The ancestors of the Hawk-marked fowl of New England would have carried those genes before Dominiques were set as a breed. Tom

 

[centrarchid]

Quote:
Tom,

You are correct findings by Eriksson et al. 2008 (link below) very strongly support yellow coloration of legs is derived from gray jungle fowl and that very likely most if not all domesticated jungle fowl stocks are derived from that hybridization event(s). Early dominiques were not fixed for the character of yellow legs, some clearly did not exhibit the characteristic until market demand drove selection for dominique stocks that were homizygous for trait. This occured as I understand prior to designation of APA standards. Regardless, my interest with Missouri dominique is to fix within lineage a leg / skin color that will set it appart from American dominique. Could you or anyone point me to line of evidence supporting the cuckoo / barred pattern of domestic chickens being derived from gray jungle fowl?


http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1000010

 

[Chris09]

The earliest record of the Dominique that I know of go's back to the 1830's and the description of the bird go's as following;

"The originals were yellow and blue Dominiques, yellow legs and beak, with the cocks generally having white tails, speckled with blue or yellow.
The hens were either solid blue with dark eyes or modeled, pale blue or nearly white."


Chris

 

[centrarchid]

Quote:
So feathering cuckoo / barred with blue meaning shades of gray (extended black) like existing dominiques and yellow means with barring over a brown / red base. The works I have seen concerning early dominiques suggest they were extremely variable. From what I can determine from the early literature, not everyone reported same on breeds characteristics.

Some of characteristics I associate with early dominiques comes from drawings and photographs, former in particular a function of who generated image. Common them is the early dominiques appeared to exhibit qualities more similar to old english games. Feathering in particular was different from the soft / slow feathering typical of existing dominiques.

 

[Chris09]

Quote:
The, "Old Dominique" before the standard had a wide variation in the coloring. One breeder may have bread for more a Blue Slate color barring with some gold leaking much like a Crele pattern another may have bred for a more Black-Gray color barring.

But this is how I read it.
The originals were yellow and blue Dominique
They where a, "Light Crele" color (Blue being a Light Blue to Gray color)

with the cocks generally having white tails, speckled with blue or yellow
Some had a White tails feathers to a few stray White tail feathers and had either, "Blue" or, "Yellow" specks to fuzzy barring.

The hens were either solid blue
Solid Blue like a today's Blue but without the lacing

modeled
A really, "broken" Barring

pale blue
Some what like a Self Blue

or nearly white
White with some color bleeding through or some, "Ghost Barring"

Chris

 

[centrarchid]

Chris,

Feather coloration will be selected to the "blue". Barring willl be complete. I was considering introduction of white feathering into tails by way of cuckoo / almost crele American games reasoning that such a trait might enhance color sexing at hatch. Rooster carrying such genetics would cost me $250 plus shipping and would be a management headache with games already on place. The hen coloration will have to be determined as to whatever color I can set / fix easily. I suspect the existing dominique hen pattern can be fixed within ten generations or so.

Problem I have even with show birds are the stray black and red feathers. My production birds do not show this.