Falb-fee breeding

[kigon]

Hi! I was wondering what colours you should breed on the parents to get the highest chance of falb-fee offpspring? Is it falb + falb or...?
(Also, is there a good site to explain how all the colours genetics work? For my chicken I have a handy little chart with all the combinations & outcomes but I haven't been able to find anything like it for quail)

Thanks!

 

[CoturnixComplex]

There is not, unfortunately. If you search around you will mostly only find discussions of individual colors or picture guides without much information (or semi-accurate info at best). You'll also stumble across the quail color calculator; I have really mixed feelings about it because it's about 70% correct/figured out (there are A LOT of color combos and they're not all mapped) but that's somehow less helpful than just not relying on it at all (for me, at least; my strategy is knowing I have no idea what tf I will hatch out and puzzling out genotypes by going backwards off of research studies).

If you can wade through the technical jargon there's lots of good information in the studies listed here.

And a few of us are undertaking an attempt at cataloging the colors and their respective genetic information here, BUT you'll notice only a few pages got completed before we all got derailed by learning new information and second-guessing everything we'd already posted. I'm sure we'll get around to giving it a second whack soon.

As for falb-fee, it's either a simple dominant or an incomplete dominant. Most sources say the latter but I've yet to see a good comparison pic of the actual heterozygote vs. homozygote expression so just take it with a grain of salt.

It's definitely not a lethal gene at all, so you don't need to worry about crossing two carriers together. I would go that route if I was hoping for the highest % of expressing chicks (theoretically 75%-100% depending if parents are heterozygotes or homozygotes). You should also get at least 50% falb-fee chicks even if you breed a heterozygote to a non-carrier (wild-type).

 

[CoturnixComplex]

Actually, this one is a pretty helpful little summary of a few colors, there are just a LOT more that aren't described (like the "fee" gene and it's variants - although those in particular aren't well described anywhere else either):

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...uail-color-genetics-plumage-mutations.416724/

(Also, I think they did officially change "bleu" to "lavender" but I need to find a source on that).

P.S. @Texas Kiki I forgot the other description of the redhead gene I found was on the gene guide on here, in that link! I don't know if yours matches it or not yet though. I need more coffee.

 

[Kiki]

Falb + Falb = Falb

 

[mixedUPturk]

Falb + Falb = Falb

Falb + wild type = 50% Falb 50% wild

 

[CoturnixComplex]

If you want to get super super technical about it:

homozygote x homozygote = 100% falb-fee offspring

homozygote x heterozygote = 100% falb-fee offspring

heterozygote x heterozyogete = ~75% falb-fee ~25% wild-type offspring

homozygote x non-carrier/wild-type/pharaoh = 100% falb-fee offspring

heterozygote x non-carrier/wild-type/pharaoh = ~50% falb-fee ~ 50% wild-type offspring

*hides under nitpicker's table*


I do not know offhand how to tell if a bird carries 1 copy (heterozygote) or 2 (homozygote), besides breeding it to a pharaoh and noting the % of wild-type offspring. If the gene is an incomplete dominant the two phenotypes will theoretically look slightly different (and I have noticed some birds retain way more warm tones than others so maybe that is it)

 

[CoturnixComplex]

@Nabiki This is where the definition of "true-breeding" gets a little debated, and it might've been me who misled you before, so if so I'm sorry.

If you wanted to go by the strictest interpretation of it the only inherently "true-breeding" traits would be recessive genes (celadon, lavender, recessive white, etc). That means every time you breed any birds expressing those traits together, you're guaranteed to get only more of the same, because they each had to carry two copies to show the trait to start with.

But you can see that even with dominant genes, if you have confirmed homozygotes you can create true-breeding lines of those colors, that can be said to produce only more of the same because the parents always carry two copies of the gene. This is only not possible with homozygous lethal genes like silver and some golden types, or in other weird situations, like if a trait's expression depends on certain combinations of multiple different genes.

So, lots of colors like falb-fee can be true-breeding with the right bookkeeping, but aren't inherently.

 

[kigon]

Thanks everyone! This was really interesting... I'll buy eggs from a falb-only group and see what percentage I land on, I wouldn't mind a falb & wild mix as long as I'd have a good chance of falb-fee I really want to have a 100% falb-fee flock spanning many years, so I was slightly afraid my luck would be so bad you could only get 5% per hatch or something :') I mostly see a few falb-fee in groups where there's (usually more than falb) wild, honey and pearl-fee as well...