How to... Single comb to Pea comb

Baybrio

Crowing
14 Years
Jun 11, 2008
537
214
291
Poplar Grove, IL
I love my speckled Sussex. I love their size, their eggs, their color and especially their temperament! What I don't love is how hard the winter temps are on the rooster combs.

I know several breeds come in both single comb and pea comb varieties - my first question is do the speckled Sussex come in the pea comb variety?

Second question - how would one start to create a pea comb variety?

Thanks
 
I know Pea Comb is Dominent over Single Comb. So if you crossed a PP X SS You would have PPSS SO the first generation hybrids would all be pea combs. But f2 generation would be 25% Pure Pea comb 50% hetero Pea comb (unpure carries striaght gene) and 25% straight comb. So what you would have to do is keep taking out the straight comb until you have a true producing strian. This will take many generations.
 
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Umm, that is PP x pp giving Pp F1s--all will display some variation of a pea comb; however, they will probably not be nearly as well formed as PP combs, and many will display evidence of the p allele.

Pp X Pp will give 25% PP, 50% Pp and 25% pp.

Of course you have all the other breed and variety charactersitics to deal with as well.
 
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Sonoran Silkies, I'm just learning about genetics so let me make sure I understand.

PP = pea comb
pp = single comb
Pp = will show as a sort of mid size comb or some variation of pea or single comb. (Yes of course, I've seen the oddly formed Pp combs in my Faverolles/Buckeye cross roos. This was not a planned cross but the Pp combs are standing up well to the below zero weather we've had recently.)

My first mating of my Speckled Sussex with their single combs (pp) should be with a pea comb bird (PP). All the offspring (F1s) will be Pp and have smaller but not consistent combs.

Then I mate these Pp F1's together and will get (statistically speaking) 25% actual pea comb birds (PP) these are my F2s.

Then I mate the PP F2's and I will forever forward have pea combs.
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Then I can work for many years and try to get the other characteristics of my beloved Speckled Sussex back on track. Not too bad. I should have stopped here!

Now I just went to look and see what type of comb a Russian Orloff has (the color looks similar to the Speckled Sussex to me) and the sad truth is I've read several descriptions and I still don't know, but I believe it is a walnut comb, but perhaps they have a rose comb.

So I googled some more because I'm not sure what the difference is between a walnut, rose and pea comb, and well, this is what I found:

11751_comb_genetics.jpg

http://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~mcclean/plsc431/mendel/mendel6.htm (accessed 1/9/2010)


So I am again confused. But have had a bright thought. I really don't care that all the combs look the same, I just want to avoid frost bite on the comb. So perhaps I can just cull birds that show a single comb and move on from their. I should only have to cull one bird in 16.
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maybe???

Now for color, what breed has a walnut/rose/pea comb and the color of Speckled Sussex, or a color that I can get back to being Speckled in a reasonable amount of time?
 
First of all I don't know of any breeds that come in both single comb & pea comb.
That said, please realize that if you cross something with a pea comb onto youe Sussex it's easy enough to produce birds with pea combs but they won't look like the Sussex you're so fond of. It might be possible to ultimately produce something thay looked like a pea combed Speckled Sussex but it would be a years long process.
 
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