Iowa Blues - Breed thread and discussion

[gracefarm]

One or both of your hens is silver penciled (not autosomal barring). I would say your hen or hens carry two patteren genes. What was the color of the chicks down? The penciled pattern is usually expressed in birds that are brown at the E locus. Chicks that are homozygous brown at the E locus can have a down color similar to a birchen chick that carries the dark brown gene. 

As chicks did they have a broken pattern on their head. 

The two hens you lost to predators had a secondary color pattern called autosomal barring. They carried the pattern gene and the dark brown gene.

Your male- is he penciled as in straight bars on the feathers or does he have feathers that are laced? In either case it is unusual because males do not normally show secondary patterns on the body ( males that are silver pencilled or autosomal barred). There are exceptions for certain secondary patterns- spangling is one. 



No one on this forum has posted comments concerning my suggestion for a double pen system.  One pen would produce males and females that are carrying the genes for autosomal barring the other pen would produce birds that carry genes for silver penciling.

You would then cross a silver penciled male ( he will not be penciled on the body-some penciling in wing )but basicly a white bird with silver lacing on a black tail with an autosomally barred female. (or vise versa) The females will be autosomally barred and penciled. Which will be expressed to a greater degree- I would expect the autosomal barring to be expressed to a greater degree. 


The males will not express the secondary color patterns because males ( autosomally barred/penciled) do not normally express secondary color patterns. I would expect the breast of the male to show some white tipping on the black breast feathers. There are modifiers that can cause the males breast to be white ( more like an autosomal barred male and less like the penciled male). To get males that look like the females the henny feathering gene would have to be introduced to the breed.

The problem with this system is that the males would be very different from the females. 


A double pen system that may work in producing a secondary pattern on the male is a pen that produces single laced birds and a pen that produces autosomally barred birds. You would cross a single  laced male ( good lacing on the breast) with an autosomal barred female. The offspring should be interesting. If the autosomal barred birds carry a modifier- the breast of the offspring males may only be white.

If anybody has silver single laced wyandottes cross a male wyandotte with a silver penciled female and see what happens.

Thank you Wappoke for the information. I got these Iowa Blues around 3 weeks ago so unfortunately I don't know what the chicken down color of them was at hatching. The male looks to have more of a straight barring pattern with a breast that is becoming more black with white spangles. I will be keeping a very detailed records information on the chicks that I hatch with toe punch & pictures showing their chick down at hatch then weekly pictures showing how each chick feathers out. My goal is to get my future Iowa Blues breeding to the color pattern that Glenn Drowns from "Sand Hill Preservation" believe to be the original color pattern.

 

[Wappoke]

Thank you Wappoke for the information. I got these Iowa Blues around 3 weeks ago so unfortunately I don't know what the chicken down color of them was at hatching. The male looks to have more of a straight barring pattern with a breast that is becoming more black with white spangles. I will be keeping a very detailed records information on the chicks that I hatch with toe punch & pictures showing their chick down at hatch then weekly pictures showing how each chick feathers out. My goal is to get my future Iowa Blues breeding to the color pattern that Glenn Drowns from "Sand Hill Preservation" believe to be the original color pattern.

I have finally seen what the group is working toward in the iowa blue, The E locus is definitely
purebred birchen in the male. He is also carrying a restrictor ( the white on his breast). He is probably heterozygous for Db ( carries one Db/one dark brown gene). He is silver at the silver locus. He may be carrying the pattern gene ( one or two); the pattern gene is hypostatic (is not expressed) in males that produce partridge/penciled offspring and also in males that produce autosomal barred offspring.And then he may not be carrying the pattern gene.

The female is a poorly penciled on the body but shows autosomal barring in the tail. I would say she is purebred birchen at the E locus and silver at the sex-linked silver locus, I believe she carries two pattern genes and only one dark brown gene,

There is also the possibility that she is carrying a variant of the birchen gene that is producing the phenotype. If a chicken does not have the variant- then you can not get the specific phenotype that is observed in the picture. If she is it would be called the Iowa blue birchen allele.

I still think a double pen system will accomplish the goal. AS your flock grows, keep this in mind. I will be happy to work with you. I have worked with others in producing new varieties of chickens.

Hatch plenty of chicks- If I was in your place , I would hatch 15 or more chicks to start with- keep good records and take pictures of each chick. You only have one rooster. No problem there but you have two hens. I would hatch eggs from one hen at a time. This makes record keeping much easier. I would start with the duller hen, the hen in the background, See your pic below. Hatch eggs from her. Let them grow for a couple months- then hatch eggs from the second hen. This way you can not get the two breedings mixed.

In one of my crosses, I hatched over 50 chicks to get 4 birds of the phenotype I wanted. Do not be afraid to hatch plenty of chicks.


https://www.backyardchickens.com/image/id/20060041/width/900/height/900/flags/LL

 

[gracefarm]

I  have finally seen what the group is working toward in the iowa blue, The E locus is definitely
purebred birchen in the male. He is also carrying a restrictor ( the white on his breast). He is probably heterozygous for Db ( carries one Db/one dark brown gene). He is silver at the silver locus. He may be carrying the pattern gene ( one or two); the pattern gene is hypostatic (is not expressed) in males that produce partridge/penciled offspring and also in males that produce autosomal barred offspring.And then he may not be carrying the pattern gene. 

The female is a poorly penciled on the body but shows autosomal barring in the tail. I would say she is purebred birchen at the E locus and silver at the sex-linked silver locus, I believe she carries two pattern genes and only one dark brown gene, 

There is also the possibility that she is carrying a variant of the birchen gene that is producing the phenotype. If a chicken does not have the variant- then you can not get the specific phenotype that is observed in the picture. If she is it would be called the Iowa blue birchen allele. 

I still think a double pen system will accomplish the goal. AS your flock grows, keep this in mind. I will be happy to work with you. I have worked with others in producing new varieties of chickens.

Hatch plenty of chicks- If I was in your place , I would hatch 15 or more chicks to start with- keep good records and take pictures of each chick. You only have one rooster. No problem there but you have two hens. I would hatch eggs from one hen at a time. This makes record keeping much easier. I would start with the duller hen, the hen in the background, See your pic below. Hatch eggs from her. Let them grow for a couple months- then hatch eggs from the second hen. This way you can not get the two breedings mixed. 

In one of my crosses, I hatched over 50 chicks to get 4 birds of the phenotype I wanted. Do not be afraid to hatch plenty of chicks. 


https://www.backyardchickens.com/image/id/20060041/width/900/height/900/flags/LL

Thank you so much Wappoke for the help as I very much appreciate it. I will follow your breeding plan & only collect eggs from the duller/darker hen first, then only collect eggs from the more defined pencilled/lighter hen later. I very much looking forward to receiving your breeding advice in the future, Thank You.

I will start collecting eggs from the duller/darker hen below in the next month or two.

 

[Wappoke]

Thank you so much Wappoke for the help as I very much appreciate it. I will follow your breeding plan & only collect eggs from the duller/darker hen first, then only collect eggs from the more defined pencilled/lighter hen later. I very much looking forward to receiving your breeding advice in the future, Thank You.

I will start collecting eggs from the duller/darker hen below in the next month or two.

I can plainly see the autosomal barring in the wing feathers of the male. That is where he should be showing the barring if he carries some of the genes for autosomal barring. I think the cross will work well. Once the chicks hatch it will be interesting to see the down colors and the adult plumage of the F1. I will come on later and edit this post and post some genetic lingo with the definitions so you and I can communicate more effectively.

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Of the many years I spent breeding Iowas the following assessment from Wapoke is the closest I came to in my most educated guess concerning the genetic underpinnings of the Iowas -

"The E locus is definitely purebred birchen in the male. He is also carrying a restrictor ( the white on his breast). He is probably heterozygous for Db ( carries one Db/one dark brown gene). He is silver at the silver locus. He may be carrying the pattern gene ( one or two); the pattern gene is hypostatic (is not expressed) in males that produce partridge/penciled offspring and also in males that produce autosomal barred offspring.And then he may not be carrying the pattern gene.

The female is a poorly penciled on the body but shows autosomal barring in the tail. I would say she is purebred birchen at the E locus and silver at the sex-linked silver locus, I believe she carries two pattern genes and only one dark brown gene"

Two primary problems come with establishing a standard for the Iowas. 1) The 'proper' coloration always appeared for me in a heterozygous state, not a homozygous state. 2) The standard as currently written will no doubt require double mating to get the desired goal. These 'complications' are what I believe has caused the breed to linger and suffer for so many years without breeders to take them on. Our current system of breed establishment (APA) doesn't allow for landraces to be accepted as a 'breed'.


Personally, I believe the standard is still too far off from the original color. I asked Glenn about the hen in the picture of Story's guide when I first interviewed him. What you have in the caption above per Glenn's remarks are what I got from him in the interview. However, when I presented him with the picture in person and shared that she didn't really look like the hen's in the original pictures before outside blood was added in, he confirmed that I was correct and that he thought then hen looked differently in the book. Apparently there where two hens that pictures were taken from and he the hen that was listed in the book wasn't the hen that was supposed to be used. Go figure. The hens should have one gene for Db, that gives the broken penciled pattern without the strong presence of autosomal barring. It's usually limited to remnant bits in the tail and primaries. There are restrictors of some sort which allow the silver male to show secondary patterns, and I do believe these restrictors are necessary on the birchen based individual to get the proper coloration on the male.

 

[Candy442]

@Wappoke Just this year we are developing a double pen system. Due to not having a huge amount of birds to work with, we are now working with another Michigan resident that is going to work with the Iowa Blue to breed to traditional colors.

They purchase the birds from the two bowls of chicks posted on the previous pages. I believe they went from 14 total to three of the best patterned cockerels and seven pullets. Her pullets are laying now (late april hatch). These chicks were from both JB as cockerel over the older hens and the best silver cockerel that I kept from the Jamaica line hatch over the silver pullets.

I am down to three silver hens and the one silver cockerel from that hatch in one pen. I managed to get a cockerel who looks very much like JB in a broody hatch this spring. He is a big boy and I will be putting him in with the older hens and then my main rooster JB over the silvers and younger pullets in another pen. We will be marking the progeny from each pen with big hatches in this coming spring. I am going to move the silver rooster along. He is very small and getting a lot of yellow on his hackle and saddle feathers.

Fivewire is breeding for dark eyes, slate legs, six pointed cockerel combs, and chick down that is solid chestnut brown. We are going for the blue sheen in the black feathers on the rooster and the broken pattern on the hens as opposed to obvious pencilling. We do not have any heavily pencilled hens in our flock and no males that ever had it (spangles on the breast that tend to be more white, no white band on wings, no color on wings, but barring patterns on wings).

As we hatch next spring, I will band and post the chicks from each paring and hope for guidance on what we are getting in this breed.

 

[gracefarm]

Out foraging before I locked them up for the night.

 

[Wappoke]

Of the many years I spent breeding Iowas the following assessment from Wapoke is the closest I came to in my most educated guess concerning the genetic underpinnings of the Iowas -

"The E locus is definitely purebred birchen in the male. He is also carrying a restrictor ( the white on his breast). He is probably heterozygous for Db ( carries one Db/one dark brown gene). He is silver at the silver locus. He may be carrying the pattern gene ( one or two); the pattern gene is hypostatic (is not expressed) in males that produce partridge/penciled offspring and also in males that produce autosomal barred offspring.And then he may not be carrying the pattern gene.

The female is a poorly penciled on the body but shows autosomal barring in the tail. I would say she is purebred birchen at the E locus and silver at the sex-linked silver locus, I believe she carries two pattern genes and only one dark brown gene"

Two primary problems come with establishing a standard for the Iowas. 1) The 'proper' coloration always appeared for me in a heterozygous state, not a homozygous state. 2) The standard as currently written will no doubt require double mating to get the desired goal. These 'complications' are what I believe has caused the breed to linger and suffer for so many years without breeders to take them on. Our current system of breed establishment (APA) doesn't allow for landraces to be accepted as a 'breed'.


Personally, I believe the standard is still too far off from the original color. I asked Glenn about the hen in the picture of Story's guide when I first interviewed him. What you have in the caption above per Glenn's remarks are what I got from him in the interview. However, when I presented him with the picture in person and shared that she didn't really look like the hen's in the original pictures before outside blood was added in, he confirmed that I was correct and that he thought then hen looked differently in the book. Apparently there where two hens that pictures were taken from and he the hen that was listed in the book wasn't the hen that was supposed to be used. Go figure. The hens should have one gene for Db, that gives the broken penciled pattern without the strong presence of autosomal barring. It's usually limited to remnant bits in the tail and primaries. There are restrictors of some sort which allow the silver male to show secondary patterns, and I do believe these restrictors are necessary on the birchen based individual to get the proper coloration on the male.

Fayoumi males will show quite a bit of autosomal barring but they also carry fayoumi birchen ( a variant of birchen), the columbian gene (a restrictor), in addition to the dark brown etc. . Males that do not carry columbian and fayoumi birchen are a mostly white bird with some barring in the wings primaries and a white edge one a black tail.

There are modifiers that can cause a male with one Db to have a white breast- that could be columbian or something else.

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

As we've seen over the years, Columbian and Wheaten are still lingering in some individuals and is something that should be culled out. Without a steady understanding of genetics it seems some breeders struggle in identifying it. If you read back about a couple of years on the thread I was trying to convince the other prominant breeders that these genes were present and they wouldn't hear it because the genes weren't appearing as 'typical' expressions (ie like a Columbian Rock for instance). Only after much teaching did they finally come around. I could have used you years earlier Wapoke to bear evidence that I wasn't nuts!

And yes, Fayoumi Birchen in lingering in these lines as well. And when you've bred enough birds, you can identify it pretty easily.

 

[gracefarm]

I have a few eggs in the incubator from the Iowa Blue trio below & very much looking forward to see what the chicks look like at hatch.