How do you breed out for a certain trait?

[Reurra]

I wanted to try my hand at breeding certain traits.

I wanted to try to breed a combless bird from my flock. Theres a gentleman down the road that has Russian breed that has no comb or wattles at all and is an enormous bird. It has a beard, but absolutely no comb or wattles.

Last winter my poor GLW rooster got frostbite on his wattles, but his comb was fine. It gets very very cold here by the bay, it can be as cold as -32C Wind chill makes it worse, so I cant use tons of ventilation. He was the only bird to get frostbite, all the others were fine (australorps, JGs and Americaunas) I bred him with my current flock had have a beautiful mix of chicks.

I want to try and see if the guy up the street will let me use his roo, or buy some of its offspring for breeding through the combless feature. At the same time i want to bring out body size and egg production. I have a cornish chick, i hope will be a hen, That i want to throw into the genetics too.

This is for personal use, Im not making a breed standard or anything. I just would like to mash together a few traits for a sturdy, winter hardy, meat/egg layer. But I dont know where to start, other than what ive done already.

I decided on the GLW because of the pea comb, but after seeing the frostbite on the wattles, I would like to get rid of that feature all together. Im not after color, just size/laying/combless/wattless.

So far I have the following crosses from my GLW Roo.

GLW/Australorp

GLW/Americauna

GLW/Jersey Giant

Out of the 8 chicks hatched, 50% with combs 50% without, (2 with beards of course).

 

[Ridgerunner]

As far as size, eat your small ones and breed your large ones. For egg laying, hatch eggs from the hens that lay well. Both males and females contribute genes to these traits but roosters don’t lay eggs. You can get an idea of what they may be contributing to egg laying by looking at their mother and grandmothers but you really don’t know what they are actually contributing. I eat my females as well as males but tend to look to hens for egg-laying traits and roosters for size. It’s just easier that way.

As far as the combs and wattles. Are you sure he didn’t just dub the rooster? I’ll ask a silly question. No shame at all here.

Assuming that is a genetic trait, I don’t know if it is a dominant trait or a recessive trait. It may even be a combination of different genes which really confuses it. Recessive genes are pretty easy to set in your flock. Take a rooster with the trait you want, breed him to your hens with the other traits you want, then breed that same rooster back to his daughters. About half the offspring will be pure for the trait you want. Use those offspring for future breeding.

A dominant trait is a lot harder to figure out. All the first generation will have it. Do the same thing, breed a rooster with the trait to your hens then breed him back to his daughters. Half the offspring will be pure for the dominant trait but half won’t. They will be split for that trait but you won’t know which are pure and which are split. Occasionally you can tell by looking if there is one copy or two of the dominant trait. A better known example of that is the barred gene. A rooster with two copies of the barred gene will be lighter in color that a rooster that has one barred and one not-barred gene. Or a chicken with one pea comb gene and one not-pea comb may have a bit of a wonky looking comb, not a pure pea. But with most, you just can’t tell by looking.

You can just always select any breeders that have the trait and by pure randomness you will intensify that trait. Just never breed one that doesn’t have that trait.

Another way is test breeding. Take a chicken that has the trait and breed it to a chicken that does not and hatch several chicks. If you get a statistically relevant number and all the chicks have the trait, then the parent with the dominant trait is pure for that trait. If some don’t show that trait, then the parent is not pure but split for that trait. This would require setting up several breeding pens and hatching a lot of chicks to be sure to get pure parents. I’m not set up for it and it sounds like you may not be either.

I don’t know if this helps or not. Good luck with it.

 

[Reurra]

Wow, I never knew to breed them back over the daughters.

The rooster the gentle man has, I got a good look at him. His comb, or lack thereof is nothing but a warty looking squiggly line. It does not look like its been cut off. Since he does look like he has some shared traits with Americaunas that naturally seem to ahve small combs, I dont think he has had his altered.

I have plenty of room to set up pens and enclosures. Ive got 2 garages I can use if needed, so space isnt a problem. Im not going for a breed standard, so i probably wont be worried so much for exactness, but just a basic set of traits.

My Australorps laid all winter without any trouble at all, my red hen though wasnt doing the best, so she will be out of the program. The Americaunas are laying pretty good, they started laying about 2 months ago. So I think I ahve some good laying stock. The Jersey Giant is doing well too and is so docile. i love that trait in her.

The roo is a bit of a flake, but thats ok, I want the comb, not the brains lol. Of 8 chicks, 4 have combs, 4 dont. The ones with combs will be going, the others will stay. we will see what the wattle situation is like as they mature. Ill be throwing the Cornish in there when she is old enough for breeding and see how she mixes up the lot for body size.

I know if I go for too big a size the eggs will be in peril and that would not make a good egg layer, so I cant breed for too big, but I would like to add some heft to the frame for a good mix purpose bird. I know too that cornish lay an average of 180 eggs per year, so I will really need to breed back the laying capabilities of the australorp back into the offspring.

So my guess is, what i should do, is weed out the combed birds, cross the roo back over the uncombed girls that lay well and see what that gives me? I was thinking of keeping one of the chicks if its a roo and cross it with one of its aunts (Americauna), but I dont know what that might do. I dont want to bottle neck the gene pool too much lol. Ive heard some stories about doing things like that!

This is what the guy has:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orloff_(chicken)