How to breed Cuckoo chickens

[maldojas]

I'm very new to chickens but this question is just out of curiosity. Recently I came across cuckoo chickens, the ones with cuckoo feathers. I saw some cuckoo bantams and I've to say that I just fell in love with them. So, I was thinking, is there any way to get the cuckoo gene into my brahmas, so that I could also get Cuckoo brahmas. Is there any way to do this in reality or I just have to get a magic wand???

How has it gone with this project?

 

[Madie'sOddFlock]

I love genetics, so it's easy for me to say this -- but read posts on this site about barring and cross breeding. It will take several generations to get something that looks and acts like a cuckoo brahma, but it certainly is possible. I'm not an expert on Brahmas, so I can't say exactly how the breeding plan should go, but I can tell you it will be faster to start with a male barred bird, so that both sexes have barring. Barring is sexed linked and a barred rock hen to non-barred roo will produce only barred males. Those can then be bred back to brahma hens, but a BR roo will produce all barred chicks.

Do read up on this first if you can, it can save you a lot of time to understand what you are trying to do.

I know that this is a super old thread, but I just had to thank you for this comment all those years ago.
This year I hatched out a bunch of mixed breed chicks from my flocks, and I've fallen in love with my brahma x barred rocks. They're big and beautiful, but the ones that I actually like are(of course) all boys. They are nice and big and friendly, with pretty good barring as far as I can tell... I just didn't realize that this was all because their parents are all barred rock hens and light brahma roosters... But now that I know how to get barred chicks of both sexes I'll just have to try again next year.