Iowa Blues - Breed thread and discussion

[karimw]

I'm so proud

I have little Rex babies everywhere!

So glad the trio handled the move OK. I sure hope they turn out well for you Connie! Good luck with your incubator upgrades!

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

I think I may have figured out the genetic combination of the Iowa Blue as depicted in the pictures presented in Kent Whealy's article. (The hen pictured with herman and the picture that says "Young Iowa Blues").

Here Goes-

Pg eb Db Co (and obviously S for the silver color) and maybe ER. (obviously ER plays a big role now, but I think it's role (if it was maintained in the early stock) was limited by Db).

Pg obviously creates ability for a pattern (in our case penciled)

eb eliminates the silver breast on the females among other things

Db creates a dark brown chick down (when in combination with ER or in rare cases eb will create a solid brown chick). Also introduces autosomal barring (also known as parallel penciling).

Co blends the penciling with the autosomal barring, creating "pseudo" penciled/autosomal barring mix. This would account for the laced/speckled/checkered breasts that appear in the pictures and some of the accounts from ealy breeders. Also, it would allow us to keep the chocolate colored chicks.

From what I'm gathering, if we create our standard to look like Kari's silver hen #1 (which by the way I absolutely love), then we will automatically breed away from the solid brown chicks because they will develop into hens that carry a more speckled lacing on the breast instead of a uniformed lacing.

Is it possible we can keep the standard vague enough to allow for the breeding of both "types" (for lack of a better word) of silver penciling on the hens? Or would the differences be too pronounced to be considered consistant? Taking a long look at the pictures of Kent's birds as well as a couple that Kari has, I'm wondering if we should make sure to include the hens with "speckled/laced" breasts in our wording of the Standard........

My speculations as to the breeds used in the development of the Iowa Blue are as follows-

Silver Campine Cock over Minorca and Rhode Island Red hens. The S.Campine cock introduces the Pg, eb, Db and S. The RIR introduced Co (with the obvious gold bred out). And the Minorca would have intorduced early on E, which could be present in the early birds, but was modified from being expressed phenotypically because of Db placing restictions upon it.
The Campine would reduce the size of the Minorca and RIR and give us a bird that is of medium size. It would obviously have a level back from this breeding, as well as a tinted to light brown egg. All three of these breeds would have been accessible to the average farmer in the early 1900's.

So, my task for everyone.......pick away at what I've shared. Confirm it, tweak it, or completely break it apart!

Curt

 

[Hurley]

Base coloration on our IBs:

Silvers = eb/eb (brown/partridge, no salmon breast)
Birchens = ER/ER or ER/eb (birchen - dominates brown/partridge)

Color modification:

Silver being the desired look, though many birchens seem to have some gold influence.
Silver is dominant to gold, and it is a sex-linked trait.

Desired genotype:
Males = S/S
Females = S/_

Have seen some Birchens carrying a gold gene (males S/s+; females s+/_), which is undesirable and should be bred out. Silver dominates gold incompletely, gold leakage is noted in heterozygotes.

Pattern Mutations:

Pg/Pg - converts eb stippled pattern to a penciled pattern

Db/Db - the dark brown / ginger gene - converts pencilling to autosomal barring - my problem with this one is that the autosomal barring becomes straight and horizontal, losing the feather shaped pencilling. Looking at photos of Kari's birds, the Storey hen, and others, these birds very much are penciled, not barred. While I can see modifiers dispersing the penciling to stippiled/less distinct, the lines are penciling, not flat/straight barring. Based on that, I don't believe our guys are Db.

This photo below is of a pair of birds that is gold (so imagine the red is white) partridge/pattern gene/dark brown = eb Pg Db = autosomal barring. The bars are horizontal and though the bird does resemble Kari's/Storey's, it lacks the penciling that follows the shape of the feather. Also from this image makes me think Silver would make the cock bird more white with a black tail, but can't find anything to verify this so far.

Then looking at this photo below of what happens when you put the same genes over Birchen, you get this type of barring in the Birchens, which we have not seen. (Ignore the male here, he also has the henny feathering gene, so appears in female plumage.)

Ml/Ml - enhances melanization, thickens the lacing - does not appear to be present in our IBs, so our IBs should be gentically ml+/ml+ (wild type/non-melanized). Lack of Ml keeps our birds from having wide black bands, thinning the bands to fine even barring. Also the gene causes blackening of the back of the heads, which may explain my dark headed birchen gals, but I'm not seeing the effect in the silvers. I know expression is variable, so you can get black heads/nearly black birds with birchen.

Co/Co? - expands the non-black areas which I am uncertain if this would wipe out the penciling over the body on our birds or if the penciling would break through. Trying to find a good photo of a bird known to be eb/Pg/Co without Ml. I'm leaning towards lack of Co in our guys, but can't say that for certain. All the Co varieties I'm finding suggest to me that it would wipe out the pattern centrally on our particular birds, but can't verify for certain. Would need to cross them to knowns to verify.

Below is a rooster that is lacking Co/Ml but does have one dose of the Db gene, which they note only expresses in the slight barring in the hackles. Hard to see. The gold leakage is also observed.



Our IB genotype as far as I can tell: Not certain re: Ml and Co, but I don't think they play in.


Silvers = eb/eb S/S (S/_ hen) PG/PG
Birchens = ER/ER S/S (S/_ hen) (masked PG/PG)
(or ER/eb)

Can't conclusively say yes or no on the Co gene. Can't find conclusive photos of Co over partridge without Ml influence or Db influence.

I think I may have figured out the genetic combination of the Iowa Blue as depicted in the pictures presented in Kent Whealy's article. (The hen pictured with herman and the picture that says "Young Iowa Blues").

Here Goes-

Pg eb Db Co (and obviously S for the silver color) and maybe ER. (obviously ER plays a big role now, but I think it's role (if it was maintained in the early stock) was limited by Db).

Pg obviously creates ability for a pattern (in our case penciled)

eb eliminates the silver breast on the females among other things

Db creates a dark brown chick down (when in combination with ER or in rare cases eb will create a solid brown chick). Also introduces autosomal barring (also known as parallel penciling).

Co blends the penciling with the autosomal barring, creating "pseudo" penciled/autosomal barring mix. This would account for the laced/speckled/checkered breasts that appear in the pictures and some of the accounts from ealy breeders. Also, it would allow us to keep the chocolate colored chicks.

From what I'm gathering, if we create our standard to look like Kari's silver hen #1 (which by the way I absolutely love), then we will automatically breed away from the solid brown chicks because they will develop into hens that carry a more speckled lacing on the breast instead of a uniformed lacing.

Is it possible we can keep the standard vague enough to allow for the breeding of both "types" (for lack of a better word) of silver penciling on the hens? Or would the differences be too pronounced to be considered consistant? Taking a long look at the pictures of Kent's birds as well as a couple that Kari has, I'm wondering if we should make sure to include the hens with "speckled/laced" breasts in our wording of the Standard........

My speculations as to the breeds used in the development of the Iowa Blue are as follows-

Silver Campine Cock over Minorca and Rhode Island Red hens. The S.Campine cock introduces the Pg, eb, Db and S. The RIR introduced Co (with the obvious gold bred out). And the Minorca would have intorduced early on E, which could be present in the early birds, but was modified from being expressed phenotypically because of Db placing restictions upon it.
The Campine would reduce the size of the Minorca and RIR and give us a bird that is of medium size. It would obviously have a level back from this breeding, as well as a tinted to light brown egg. All three of these breeds would have been accessible to the average farmer in the early 1900's.

So, my task for everyone.......pick away at what I've shared. Confirm it, tweak it, or completely break it apart!

Curt

 

[karimw]

Quote:Originally Posted by Hurley



Wow, hard to follow that up! I concur with Connie, though I may have seen the influence of Db like the rooster above.
This guy was born solid chocolate with little mottling.


These are some of his daughters out of black pure Ameraucana hens:






You can definitely see the salmon on these girls.
Great layers BTW

 

[karimw]

Picks of the New Years Day chicks
These chicks were the ones born yellow. e+/e+ if I'm not mistaken.






Cockerel











Not sure what he's going to look like, but I think pretty regardless! As you can see his legs have darkened since hatch.

Yellow pullet on the left, brown on the right.



This girl did a nice turn on the cat walk for the photo session:











You can see the e+ salmon starting on her breast.

 

[karimw]

more pics
















All in all, I'm pretty happy with this hatch. I hope anyone else with them feels the same way!

 

[Hurley]

I agree, looks like those 3 are e+. As I understand it, dominance of the E locus is


Gold-Birchen (ER) > Wheaten (eWh) > Wild Type (e+) > Brown (eb)

so those could be e+/e+ or e+/eb. The Birchens could easily hide a e+ without showing it. Shouldn't see them pop up from pure Silvers.

 

[Hurley]

I'm pleased with the appearance, birchens and silvers (and the wild types). Great lacing you are getting.

LOVE my trio, they're sweet. They're hanging out inside right now in a huge aquarium.

I'm smacking myself for not asking for a couple of those rock crosses while I was there.

Will have to hit you up next Iowa trip or hit you up for the first cross back.

Candled your eggs this morning, all look like they are developing nice veins. Got the electronic thermostats installed now and have the styrofoam bator nice and steady with the eggs and just rewired the big incubator with the electronic thermostat. Think I've about got the fans adjusted to keep the whole incubator relatively the same temps. Two racks are now within 1/2 a degree of each other and warming up to temp.

My third thermostat we rigged in the big commercial cooler display case I picked up off craig's list. Man that thing would make a great incubator for chicken eggs, but it's our snake egg incubator. It's holding a beautiful 82 degrees and the first clutch was laid yesterday. Have about 28 clutches expected this year and hubby has 20 or so as well. That incubator will soon be full of egg boxes. I incubate those eggs on vermiculite or perlite in closed clear large deli boxes to keep the humidity up. Snake eggs don't need nearly the ventilation that chicken eggs do and obviously they never go hyperthermic. I'm great at incubating snake eggs. Hoping my chicken egg skills rise to the same level. LOL

 

[karimw]

I'm pleased with the appearance, birchens and silvers (and the wild types). Great lacing you are getting.

LOVE my trio, they're sweet. They're hanging out inside right now in a huge aquarium.

I'm smacking myself for not asking for a couple of those rock crosses while I was there.

Will have to hit you up next Iowa trip or hit you up for the first cross back.

Candled your eggs this morning, all look like they are developing nice veins. Got the electronic thermostats installed now and have the styrofoam bator nice and steady with the eggs and just rewired the big incubator with the electronic thermostat. Think I've about got the fans adjusted to keep the whole incubator relatively the same temps. Two racks are now within 1/2 a degree of each other and warming up to temp.

My third thermostat we rigged in the big commercial cooler display case I picked up off craig's list. Man that thing would make a great incubator for chicken eggs, but it's our snake egg incubator. It's holding a beautiful 82 degrees and the first clutch was laid yesterday. Have about 28 clutches expected this year and hubby has 20 or so as well. That incubator will soon be full of egg boxes. I incubate those eggs on vermiculite or perlite in closed clear large deli boxes to keep the humidity up. Snake eggs don't need nearly the ventilation that chicken eggs do and obviously they never go hyperthermic. I'm great at incubating snake eggs. Hoping my chicken egg skills rise to the same level. LOL

It will be interesting to see what they look like grown up. They are at a really awkward stage right now

I should have some to spare.

Good luck with your hatch! Sure can't complain about Rex's performance!

Snakes, hmmm? I love snakes, had a Burmese Python for a few years, until she got big enough to eat Grandma's cats. Not that she DID eat any cats, but she really was a good escape artist. I had to rehome her after the second time she went to sleep in Grandma's bed. Now who wouldn't appreciate a 15 ft snake curled up under the covers with you?

 

[Hurley]

LOL, yeah, those big snakes are hard to contain. Amazing amount of push generated against all edges/corners/tops of cages. My guys are pretty harmless. I've got corn snakes and we've done a ton of research into the genetics of those. Hubby publishes the Cornsnake Morph Guide and a Genetics for Herpers book. We're lucky in chickens, all but a couple known genes in corns are recessive. The dominants and co-dominants are so much easier to propagate! LOL