Ya'll are all welcome. I thought it was interesting reading and good info for other chicken nerds as myself.
I raised some Duns from Dr Pettys stock for about 4 or 5 years. They were great birds and great Wyandottes because of the quality Blacks bred into them. Thinking I would like some again sometime. It would be interesting to take a bantam Dun and cross with a LF Black to create a Dun LF Wyandotte. Would be a striking bird indeed. If one was to do such a project I would imagine you would have to have either a very large Dun cockerel and small LF Black females or just go the AI route with breeding them the first generation and then breed up from there to increase their size.
I did something similar with LF and Bantam Silver Pencilled Wyandottes. I had been raising good bantam SP for several years when we had bought some LF SP from Murray McMurray. The LF were decent in Wyandotte type and good layers also. By shear accident I had a LF and bantam cross that year and got some absolutely exceptional birds. They were medium sized but had absolutely awesome markings, males and females. I used the smaller birds to cross back into my SP line to improve the genetic diversity and to also improve productivity. The larger fowl were bred back into true LF to improve their markings and did produce some really great birds. The most exceptional was a male who was about 3/4 size LF but had the absolute perfect markings and type for a SP. I wish I would have taken a picture of him, just so I could remember how striking the SP could look when the plumage comes out the right way. But tragically he was disposed of when the barbarian hord attacked (massive raccoon infestation) last year during the drought. Ok I am rambling about Wyandottes sorry.
