Genetics help

[Blw18]

Hello everyone, I need help with the genetics within my line. I am creating a new breed and I’m around 4 years in at the moment. I’m looking to make very muscular, tall, impressive breed with a pea comb, yellow clean legs, red earlobes, white/yellow skin, dark eyes, beetle brows, and a thick, curved beak. It should be a good laying breed with great meat qualities as well. I’m looking to introduce jubilee coloring into the breed as well as several others. At the moment, I’ve gotten pretty close as far as the “look” I’m wanting but I’ve got a long way to go. There’s several project birds with the dominant white gene with orange, beige, and black leakage, several blacks (roosters have red saddle and hackle feathers so I guess black copper), one crele, and a few cuckoo. In the current line, I’ve got turken, black langshan, orpington, egyptian fayoumi, and Brahma genetics that make up the current line. I’ll be introducing a 2nd generation cross rooster with the jubilee coloration, liege fighter, and Cornish cross later this fall and winter to add a bunch more of the traits I’m looking for. The main problem now is getting rid of the feathered legs, keeping good laying traits, getting yellow legs, introducing dark eyed genes, keeping the pea comb, and introducing the jubilee color. I was given great information on my thread about the breed but I still need help understanding the nitty-gritty genetics of it all. I’m expecting many years of work to complete this and I’m very determined to do it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[Blw18]

Oh and if I wanted to create the porcelain color in my birds, how would I do that? I’ve got blue colored birds and jubilee colored birds on the farm right now. Do I need mottled and lavender or can I work with what I’ve got?

 

[nicalandia]

Hello everyone, I need help with the genetics within my line. I am creating a new breed and I’m around 4 years in at the moment. I’m looking to make very muscular, tall, impressive breed with a pea comb, yellow clean legs, red earlobes, white/yellow skin, dark eyes, beetle brows, and a thick, curved beak. It should be a good laying breed with great meat qualities as well.

Sound like a Good Old Heritage Cornish to me, also there is a strong negative relationship between body weight and reproductive efficiency in chickens, dual purpose breeds can't put on the same weight of dedicated meat type birds(CornishX, Colored Slow growing Broilers, Fat Dark Cornish lines) but can't also lay as good as highly productive strains like White Leghorns, so there is a balance to strike here, that is why the Broiler Pedigree Line Breeders have up to 4 different lines, the Sire lines put as much weight and meat as fast as they can(but are poor layers, hens laying about 100 eggs per reproductive life cycle) and the Dame lines, these are a few percentage slower growing than the parent line but make up by better reproductive efficiency(about 160-180 eggs per year).

And please just stay with one color, solid white would be best

 

[Amer]

Not gonna lie, that sounds a lot like a Buckeye. The only difference is the dark eyes. If it isn’t broke, why fix it? I would recommend getting started with some birds from a reputable breeder. Purebreds, not crossbreds, are typically the only way to produce birds that are productive at any sense of the word. When you cross breeds, you may have the fortune that the parents will have the genes to produce productive offspring, but once you breed the offspring together, production is going to be all over the board. And it sounds like even the first generation won’t be very productive with the breeds you are using. Remember that CX parent stock are actually carefully bred for productive traits for generations before crossing.
Buckeye breeders carefully breed for productive traits and get nice, meaty carcasses and egg production through selective breeding, though the big difference is that they breed true. Why reinvent the wheel? Crossing birds never got very far, and no heritage meat or egg producer uses mixed birds because the carcass will never be there.
If productive traits is what you’re after, I’d recommend you’d go to a good breeder like Mike Sullivan and Christopher McCary or Aaron Baker. They use their birds for meat and select for egg production as well.
The colors may be limited but think about the fact that no productive breed has more than a couple varieties that could be used for utility purposes.
In the end feathers are just feathers. And Buckeyes are pretty dang beautiful the way they are in my opinion.

 

[Amer]

Sound like a Good Old Heritage Cornish to me, also there is a strong negative relationship between body weight and reproductive efficiency in chickens, dual purpose breeds can't put on the same weight of dedicated meat type birds(CornishX, Colored Slow growing Broilers, Fat Dark Cornish lines) but can't also lay as good as highly productive strains like White Leghorns, so there is a balance to strike here, that is why the Broiler Pedigree Line Breeders have up to 4 different lines, the Sire lines put as much weight and meat as fast as they can(but are poor layers, hens laying about 100 eggs per reproductive life cycle) and the Dame lines, these are a few percentage slower growing than the parent line but make up by better reproductive efficiency(about 160-180 eggs per year).

And please just stay with one color, solid white would be best

Haha, you beat me too it. Excellent point. Cornish definitely would make the best meat producers of all breeds though I personally think Buckeyes are better, (though I am biased) because of the work that breeders have gone into for selecting for dual purpose qualities. They have sped the time it takes until butcher at 16 weeks and have increased fleshing. Also body capacity and wide pubic bones. While they will never be to the laying extreme of Leghorns or the meat production extreme of Cornish they make the best of a happy medium that you can get.

 

[Blw18]

I gave y’all the extreme shortened version of what I’m trying to produce so that’s my bad. I’m satisfied with very few purebreds so I’m trying to create something that’s suited to my farm here in Mississippi. I started this project with very high quality, purebred stock. I like Cornish for what they’re good for but they wouldn’t last here on free range very long at all. Buckeyes are nice but don’t have the height, look, nor the behavior I want. I’ve had nice buckeyes but what I’m trying to do is nothing like one. You can check out my thread at https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/potential-breed-creation.1374377/ for a better view of what I’m doing. In short, I’m creating a breed very well suited to free range life. White coloring, although good for butchering, is the first thing to be eaten by predators almost without fail when compared to a more camouflage bird. The jubilee color, flashy as it is, blends very well with the undergrowth and woods around my home. I’m not looking for absurd pounds of meat and I’m not at all interested in a compact body, but simply a very muscular bird with it all spread out on a big, tall frame. The CX are intended to be crossed with a very lanky, big boned rooster of mine to reduce the muscle mass some. This “splinter line” will be introduced to the main one probably on the 3rd generation cross. I understand egg production drops with weight and I’m not expecting them to be high performers, just enough to provide eggs for my family and I regularly. I’ve had chickens all my life and probably owned 75 different breeds or more and I certainly have been doing my homework to start this thing off right. I’m very happy with the progress I’ve made so far but I need a little help working out the genetic kinks as far as getting rid of some traits, and introducing others...more phenotypically than anything. Here’s one of my project roosters at 5 months old. I haven’t weighed him yet but I would guess he’s close to 8 or 9 pounds and 25 inches tall

 

[Amer]

I started this project with very high quality, purebred stock.

You would get similar effects from crossing mutts, I’m afraid. Once bred together, all the work put into the purebredness goes out the window.
I’m glad you received my message with politeness, and please sir, just get the Buckeyes.
They have both the free-ranging tact (the breeders who own them keep them on range, and the height. A Buckeye cock is nine pounds, and you can’t get a lot taller without sacrificing frame shape.
If I can’t drill the idea of breeding them into your head, at least use them as the major component in your project. The fact that they have literally all the traits you want except for the eyes and color makes using them crucial.
Additionally, their color lends a lot better to spangling than a black-based bird would.

 

[nicalandia]

Saipan Jungle Fowl

 

[Blw18]

You would get similar effects from crossing mutts, I’m afraid. Once bred together, all the work put into the purebredness goes out the window.
I’m glad you received my message with politeness, and please sir, just get the Buckeyes.
They have both the free-ranging tact (the breeders who own them keep them on range, and the height. A Buckeye cock is nine pounds, and you can’t get a lot taller without sacrificing frame shape.
If I can’t drill the idea of breeding them into your head, at least use them as the major component in your project. The fact that they have literally all the traits you want except for the eyes and color makes using them crucial.
Additionally, their color lends a lot better to spangling than a black-based bird would.

If I can come across some good quality buckeyes, I will most definitely get them for breeding amongst themselves and the project. They’re very hard to find where I live. I had buckeyes in the past and even showed buckeyes, but mine did terrible with the heat and humidity and the roosters had crappy attitudes. Maybe just the line I had. I see what you mean about the production going down with crossbreeding, but I’ve been very selective and culled down to only the best of the best from each generation. I have crossbred hens that have 2 generations of crossbred parents and they outperform my Rhode Island reds. The great grandparents were high producing...so I picked their best producing offspring to breed and so on and so forth. Good grief those ladies can lay some big eggs!! I have 65 chickens devoted solely to this project and I keep very detailed records of every one. Each has either a name (if they’re a favorite) or an ID (BL/EF #15, BL/EF #16, etc.). And under that ID I have detailed notes on body size, egg production, all traits, traits expressed in their progeny, ancestry all the way back to the beginning, behavior, etc. If I have the slightest doubt a cross won’t produce what I’m looking for, I don’t mix it whatsoever.

Saipan Jungle Fowl

I have leige game which sorta kinda are similar the Saipans. If I could find some though that would be cool!! The only ones I’ve came across were obviously not very good quality. I’m looking at getting Malays pretty soon though!

I completely understand the position of keeping purebreds pure and improving those, and I have several pure breeds on the farm that I do that with, but this is a major hobby of mine and I’ve had the most awesome time the last 4 years developing the foundations of my breed. I’m only 19 so if it takes me 20+ years to complete it, so be it. When I’m home every afternoon from college, this takes up a major portion of my time and keeps my mind turning. I won’t be one of those to go spreading it around calling it a new breed if it isn’t. I do have a strict SOP for my prospective breed and everything I do is based upon it. I love to work with genetics and working strictly with purebreds gets old after a while. This is purely out of my own curiosity and I think it’d be really neat to (eventually) have a breed tailored to me and my area.

 

[Amer]

If I can come across some good quality buckeyes, I will most definitely get them for breeding amongst themselves and the project. They’re very hard to find where I live. I had buckeyes in the past and even showed buckeyes, but mine did terrible with the heat and humidity and the roosters had crappy attitudes. Maybe just the line I had. I see what you mean about the production going down with crossbreeding, but I’ve been very selective and culled down to only the best of the best from each generation. I have crossbred hens that have 2 generations of crossbred parents and they outperform my Rhode Island reds. The great grandparents were high producing...so I picked their best producing offspring to breed and so on and so forth. Good grief those ladies can lay some big eggs!! I have 65 chickens devoted solely to this project and I keep very detailed records of every one. Each has either a name (if they’re a favorite) or an ID (BL/EF #15, BL/EF #16, etc.). And under that ID I have detailed notes on body size, egg production, all traits, traits expressed in their progeny, ancestry all the way back to the beginning, behavior, etc. If I have the slightest doubt a cross won’t produce what I’m looking for, I don’t mix it whatsoever.

I have leige game which sorta kinda are similar the Saipans. If I could find some though that would be cool!! The only ones I’ve came across were obviously not very good quality. I’m looking at getting Malays pretty soon though!

I completely understand the position of keeping purebreds pure and improving those, and I have several pure breeds on the farm that I do that with, but this is a major hobby of mine and I’ve had the most awesome time the last 4 years developing the foundations of my breed. I’m only 19 so if it takes me 20+ years to complete it, so be it. When I’m home every afternoon from college, this takes up a major portion of my time and keeps my mind turning. I won’t be one of those to go spreading it around calling it a new breed if it isn’t. I do have a strict SOP for my prospective breed and everything I do is based upon it. I love to work with genetics and working strictly with purebreds gets old after a while. This is purely out of my own curiosity and I think it’d be really neat to (eventually) have a breed tailored to me and my area.

It is cool that you have an idea in your head and that you are interested in genetics. I love it when people show so much interest in poultry. Keep at it!