Help Mottling genetics Question

[luckiestck1]

hi
need help with mottling genetics. if a buy a bird with just a little mottling will it have babys with more mottling or will all the babys only have the slight mottling?

 

[Trish1974]

hi
need help with mottling genetics. if a buy a bird with just a little mottling will it have babys with more mottling or will all the babys only have the slight mottling?

You will need to breed it to another bird that is mottled or carries a recessive mottling gene to get mottled chicks. I have a mottled cockbird with very low expression, and bred him to his mother who is a carrier and does not show any mottling. So far 3 of the 6 chicks I have hatched from the pair has more mottling than the father did at his age. I believe you can build up your mottling by just breeding the most mottled ones, but it will take awhile as opposed to starting out with two good mottled birds. I'll let you know when I get there!

 

[sylviethecochin]

Mottling is recessive. In order for the adult bird to have babies with mottling, the other parent would have to be mottled as well (or at least have a mottling gene), so the other bird would have some affect on the quality of the mottling.

The chicks might or might not have slight mottling; it's qualitative genetics, rather than quantitative. A short person is likely to have short children, but I know a couple who are 5' 6" and 5' 2" and both of their children exceed six feet in height.

 

[Bo Garrett]

I have been breeding large fowl mottled cochins for 11 years and I have found that some express the mottling gene more so than do others. Males tend to be darker and need to be bred to heavily mottled females to produce males of decent mottling. As with most mottled breeds the females tend to become more mottled as they age, thus becoming whiter about the head and neck. Keep this in mind, double mating may be needed in this variety to produce showable males and females, i.e.: dark males to heavy mottled females to produce good females and moderately mottled males to mottled females to produce males of good mottling.

Bo