I really like the way the Cemani Chickens look...and I have three hens that look like they may be

[CheekyMare]

however they're extreme frizzles and I would like to breed some smooth feathered healthier looking chooks. They are excellent, large to jumbo egg layers and I love their calm personalities. The Roo is a nice big boy but not mean or flighty. I should add that the hens are all quite heavy solid birds.

I also have one that is "Wild Type" Coloured.

If I took those four and crossed them with this roo would I have a decent chance at a better feather?

Obv, it would be so much easier to just go out and buy a quality bird, but that's just not an open option to me here. I'm going to have to make do with what I have.

 

[Summerlove]

Frizzle feathers are dominant... not sure if this helps

 

[CheekyMare]

Somewhat, but the quality will improve no true? And it seems to me, there are degrees of frizzle. I have some birds that just look shaggy, some look what I consider normal frizzles, some more curly, and then my three naked girls.

 

[Summerlove]

I am not experienced at breeding birds for certain traits I just have a bit of an obsession with genetics. IMO yes you should be able to improve the feather quality. Extreme frizzles carry 2 of the dominant frizzle gene. You only need 1 copy of the gene to produce frizzle. So all offspring from an extreme frizzle and a regular feathered bird would be frizzle. If you breed a regular frizzle that has only 1 copy of the frizzle gene with a regular feathered bird around half the offspring would have regular feathering half would be frizzle (mathematically half but that is not always the case). Naked neck is also dominant. I would assume your naked girls are carrying more than one gene for naked neck ( I am not sure how many genes contribute) because of the severity of their nakedness lol. So my guess is that all their offspring if crossed with a regular feathered bird would have naked neck. Again I am not a professional breeder just making my educated guesses with punnet squares.

 

[Summerlove]

punnett*

 

[Summerlove]

Also not all the babies will have black skin...

 

[nicalandia]

If I took those four and crossed them with this roo

if you cross your Black Skin females to the roo above ALL of the chicks will hatch with Black skin and have better feathering...

now if you want to have normal feathering birds with black skin I would us the hens coming out of that cross and cross it back to that same roo.. but at this stage only 50% off all chicks will have black skin, but alot of this black skin chicks will have normal feathering.. select a black skined normal feathering male and mate him back to the original hens and repeant the process

 

[nicalandia]

Also not all the babies will have black skin...

all of the chicks will have black skin if he cross the hens with that Brown Red rooster(ER gold Birchen)

 

[Summerlove]

all of the chicks will have black skin if he cross the hens with that Brown Red rooster(ER gold Birchen)

I thought pullets would inherit fathers color roos would inherit mothers color, because female determines sex?

 

[nicalandia]

I thought pullets would inherit fathers color roos would inherit mothers color, because female determines sex?

thats only true for Sex linked genes, and Fibromelanotic is not a sex linked gene and both parents have id+(sex linked none derman inhibitor) which allows for the black skin to expressed..


can Sexlinked id+ and Fm(Fibromelanotic) used as a sex link trait? Yes..

how?

Male would need to be id+/-id+ Fm/Fm
Female would need to be Id/Id(yellow shanks) fm+/fm+(no black skin)

this cross would produce id+/- Fm/fm+ females with black skin and can be detected at hatch
this cross would produce Id/id+ Fm/fm+ Males with white skin, and this is because Id is inhibiting the expression of Fm. so they will have white/yellow skin