- May 19, 2009
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More than welcome Ashlie,
I love this little book because there is no theory in it. It's all simple "If you do this, then that will result". Plus, Card keeps as much science out of it as possible. It's like sitting down and listening in on a chat between experts. Plus the chart makes everything so simple. I'm a very visual person and I need that to make sense of the back and forth matings between birds in a linebreeding project. I also love the simple way he explains how one can start with only 2 birds and still prevent inbreeding problems.
The color breeding sections are priceless. Today we hear so much genetics quoted in color breeding. Like , The eb allele allows dark stippling to bleed thru on a silver Columbian when the hues of the undercolor aren't correctly balanced. Say what? Now I need to know the names and functions of three color factors to understand the sentence. Card just says things like. ( paraphrase) When a white feather appears in a dark bird it is evidence the dark color has reached the end of it's strength and needs to be reenergized. How simple is that? VBG.
It's the difference between the "art of breeding" and "the science of breeding". A fascinating study. This little book was written before the naming of most of the color genes and alleles we know today. Back then the poultry breeders bred based on cause and effect. There was a lot of art involved. There still is today. By trial and error, the early breeders worked out the visual notations of the rising and waning of "strengths" in color breeding. They called it then ( and now) "breeding to feather". When the strengths of the colors in a particular color pattern were correct, the color manifested correctly. ( as in the Speckled Sussex). When a color ( or part of a color pattern) was too weak or too strong, then adjustments were made to bring the proportions back in line by complementary breedings. ( Just like adjusting the tea and water in your drink until it "tastes" just right. ) Too light? Breed that bird to a darker bird. Too many speckles on that bird? Breed it to a plainer brown bird without a lot of speckles.
Nowadays we deal with balancing gene names instead. Frankly, Tho is it helpful to the initiated, I think it makes it harder for the new learner to get a grasp on color breeding.
There's a wonderful book out there I think you will really enjoy. Not just because it discusses color breeding in easy-to-understand terms...but because the back 1/2 of the book is a stunning color atlas of poultry colors. Each picture captioned by the genetic formula for that color ( yeah!). http://www.chickencolours.com " The Genetics Of Chicken Colours-The Basics". I just love my copy. It really brings to life the colors people discuss on BYC. People will be discussing some color on BYC and I can run to my book and open the page to see what they are talking about.
The author has also written another book ( The Genetics Of Chicken Extremities") of the same type and style dealing with breeding to body type ( called in poultry circles "breeding to type"). The experts leave the "body" out), smile. That's for later on, not now, smile.
l love reading the old books because comparing their "art of breeding" to today's "science of breeding", really helps me better understand the whole picture. Here's a good example:
In the Light Sussex, we have a variety in the breed which is a silver white bird with black in the neck and tail feathers plus black on portions of the underneath of the wing feathers. But when I read the old lit on the Light Sussex, I see lots of references to black dots appearing in the white feathers and how do we correct this? Now the genetic formula for Light Sussex today is eWh/eWh S/S Co/Co. That is 2 copies of the Wheaten allele, 2 copies of the Silver gene and 2 copies of the Columbian gene. Technically these black dots on the white aren't possible because :
1. The Wheaten allele ( an allele is the basic canvas on which all the color factors are "painted") keeps the Light Sussex body Silver in spite of the black genes the Columbian gene is shoving around the bird's body. Now the eb ( brown ) allele will allow those black dots if the color isn't balanced correctly). We see this in a breed variety called the Light Brahma. ( The "Light" coloring on any allele base is called "Silver Columbian").
2. The Silver gene is often called the "stay white" gene. On an eWh based bird, 2 copies of it keep the white parts of the bird, snow white.
3. The Columbian gene is a pretty gene. It makes pretty birds by shoving colors ( in this case, Black) to the bird's body extremities. Like the tail , neck, end of the wings, etc. Leaving the rest of the birds body some other color ( in this case, White").
Back to the Light Sussex story. So... if the genetic formula doesn't allow body dotting, why were these early breeders plagued by it? Hum... to answer that question, we need to look at the three breeds which were the foundation for the Light Sussex. ( their names aren't important) . Three breeds which were bred together and out of the mix was refined the Light Sussex. If we look at these breeds under today's genetic microscope, we find out 2 of them were eWh based and one was eb based. Aha@! There's the culprit! Even tho those early breeders didn't have a name for it! The eb ( Brown) allele. When this allele is used as a base for a bird colored like the Light Sussex, suddenly we have to do color balancing to get that pure white body. If we don't get it correct, black dots show up in the white parts. In the eWh based Light Sussex, the feathers are white to the skin.
In the eb Based Light Sussex colored birds, the underfluff ( what many call "down") is colored. What? Yes, it has a "hue" to it, kinda a pale slate or grey color. Now this hue in the underfluff affects if the top feathers will be solid white or not. If the hue is too dark, black dots appear in the top feathers. So there we see the problem.
When the early lit on the Light Sussex breed was being written, the breeders were still winnowing out the eb allele from their variety's foundation. Birds were still cropping up which had one copy of the eWh allele and one copy of the eb allele So their genetic formula looked like this: eWh/eb S/S Co/Co. And they still needed to color balance the underfluff in order to prevent black dotting from showing up in the white areas.
After the 1930's we no longer see references to the "black dots in white body feathers" problem. We see references to breeders who have discovered the "stay white" gene and moved past the "black dots" problem. This is when the Light Sussex as a whole had winnowed out to 2 copies of the eWh allele in their formula and the black dots no longer appeared. eWh/eWh S/S Co/Co , the lovely Light Sussex as we know it today ( see my avatar). Moral of the story? When we read the classic old lit, do so with the modern genetic basis of your breed and variety in mind. That way you will understand if you see discrepancies between then and now.
Best,
Karen
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