First Run of Cornish Cross Meat Birds and Super Excited!

[JRNash]

In other words a closed flock starts concentrating traits until the point birds start resembling one another. Once this happens if you introduce new blood you will see hybrid vigor. The university of Arkansas proved this to be a fact

 

[JRNash]

Some of the publications I've read said(dogs) it can take up too 50 years to create a stable breed. One where traits are fixed and reproduce consistently.
In all of the stuff ive read,you will see ..so and so developed this breed by selectively breeding this breed with this breed. What GAULS ME Is they DON'T give you any idea of what the time frame was or how many generations it took to achieve the results

 

[JRNash]

I keep adding birds with the traits that I want in a meatbird. This should load the odds in my favor for the right genes in the flock to increase the traits Im looking for in offspring.

 

[Kev]

Picture didn't load.

Hi and thanks.. hard to tell what exactly the comb is though.. is it a single or a funky pea comb?

Want to say I can see you're starting to become defensive. It's not our intent to do that, I think most of us are very surprised at that bird's appearance and want to figure out what is up. That chick is not very typical for a oriental- heavy bird cross. I'm seeing now you are saying that apparently some of the marans involved were tall skinny things..? That could happen- but again, keep in mind maybe many of us think of Marans as a large heavyish bird that would give a very different result when bred with a broiler type chicken.

As for me personally, I asked about the comb because most broilers(including slo gros) have single combs. Marans are a single comb breed. It is flat out impossible for single comb parents to produce a pea or walnut comb because both pea and rose are dominant over single comb.... so if the parents both had single combs and the chick has pea/walnut then the parentage is not as said.

 

[Kev]

JR is correct throw back happen when you are playing with genetics and sometimes when you don't.


I have a CLB rooster that showed up with a kind of Pea comb, (backwards looking but a pea comb, it almost looks like a rose comb) I had to talk to a guy that really knows chicken genetics to figure out what happened. He said, it was a throw back gene that has hung on since the CLB were developed and just popped up.

When you are combining genes and traits looking for one or two things like we do, size or growth rate, you never know what will be removed and what recessive genes you might bring out. I would not expect JR to be able to make another bird like this, but it could happen. That bird has so many recessive genes at work it might be closer to a T-rex than a chicken.




Nothing to do with the thread, but here is the pea comb..








You can see a pretty typical CLB except the comb.

CLB= cream legbar?

If so, I have to say he would look normal for a CLB cross. Darker coloring overall- looks to possibly have a single dose of barring.. if he throws some non-barred daughters, this is proof(and this to me would be proof he is a cross/mix instead of pure CLB). He also looks to have a heavier build than typical CLB. His feathering also looks harder.

I have to call nonsense on pea comb being a "throwback" that just popped up. Pea comb is dominant, his comb is very typical of pea-single cross/mix. Pea comb also visibly reduces wattle size. There is just no way it can float down undetected for generations.

"Throwbacks" is something that happens with recessive genes like lavender, silky feathering etc. and not with dominant genes.

to be honest, the term "throwback" is all too often used to describe something not understood.

IF there are other breeds around, especially a pea combed bird the far simpler and far more likely answer is it's a pea combed cross.

 

[JRNash]

Its single comb Kev,not so much defensive as exasperated.lol. I believe most people do not bother with the history of most breeds. And i know for a fact that few
(Including myself) understand genetics. The marans were not skinny. They had an upright carriage and were taller than the one that looked "right"
Eliminate the imposible,then what's left,no matter how improbable is the answer.
My whole point to all of this is that the geneti variations in my flock can and have produced birds of all types.

 

[JRNash]

Geneticist working on broilers have stated that we have in no way come close to the full potential for growth in chickens. And they were not talking about chemicals or genitic tinkering. Just old fashioned selection for breeding

 

[JRNash]

And Kev,throwbacks do occur.i won't argue semantics.

 

[Kev]

Its single comb Kev,not so much defensive as exasperated.lol. I believe most people do not bother with the history of most breeds. And i know for a fact that few
(Including myself) understand genetics. The marans were not skinny. They had an upright carriage and were taller than the one that looked "right"
Eliminate the imposible,then what's left,no matter how improbable is the answer.
My whole point to all of this is that the geneti variations in my flock can and have produced birds of all types.

If the slo gro broiler have single comb, and marans have single comb.... then pea/walnut is not happening. It does not matter what their history is.

 

[JRNash]

The geneticist still do NOT understand the difference ways that genes can interact. They still do not understand the ways that environment can influence gene expression. There is thing known as convergent evolution and also mutations. There are no absolutes.