- Thread starter
- #11
Quote:
White's an autosumnal recessive. True white carries nothing but the white gene and is very hard to find. Chicken is a true white - totally recessive, because the chicks have no white on them. Which makes me sad.
A&M's are whites crossed with Jumbos and bred until white is the dominant colour of the bird - however, it's still not a dominant gene trait, which is why A&M's have the random dark feathers and when bred together can throw brown chicks. Which means the expressed white - which is normally a recessive - isn't a true recessive. It's called a masking recessive if the expression of the colour isn't representative of the genome. As to where I read that.. I forget where. It was the reason I didn't get any A&M's though. If I find the cite, I'll pass it on. As for figuring out it was a masking recessive.. that came from years of breeding other animals.
Hotot rabbits are another example - they're not white rabbits even though their bodies are white. You can occasionally get some with much more black markings than around the eyes - and sometimes completely black or brown babies, though that's rarer now than it was when I helped establish the breed here in the US.
If you can get all white A&M's that express nothing but white feathers and breed them exclusively to others expressing all white feathers, eventually you should be able to breed out the brown genes. However.. I don't know about the jumbo gene. That may breed out too. In theory, it'd be like producing any other colour mutation of the quail. You'd basically be breeding back to the English line but trying to keep the Jumbo gene trait. Since I know nothing about the development of the Jumbo lines, can't really say what'd happen - not sure what it's linked to.
I'll stop being a genetics geek on you now
-Spooky
White's an autosumnal recessive. True white carries nothing but the white gene and is very hard to find. Chicken is a true white - totally recessive, because the chicks have no white on them. Which makes me sad.
A&M's are whites crossed with Jumbos and bred until white is the dominant colour of the bird - however, it's still not a dominant gene trait, which is why A&M's have the random dark feathers and when bred together can throw brown chicks. Which means the expressed white - which is normally a recessive - isn't a true recessive. It's called a masking recessive if the expression of the colour isn't representative of the genome. As to where I read that.. I forget where. It was the reason I didn't get any A&M's though. If I find the cite, I'll pass it on. As for figuring out it was a masking recessive.. that came from years of breeding other animals.

If you can get all white A&M's that express nothing but white feathers and breed them exclusively to others expressing all white feathers, eventually you should be able to breed out the brown genes. However.. I don't know about the jumbo gene. That may breed out too. In theory, it'd be like producing any other colour mutation of the quail. You'd basically be breeding back to the English line but trying to keep the Jumbo gene trait. Since I know nothing about the development of the Jumbo lines, can't really say what'd happen - not sure what it's linked to.
I'll stop being a genetics geek on you now

-Spooky