Iowa Blues - Breed thread and discussion

[IowaBlueCurt]

Sorry Dan. When I was talking about mottling on the breast, I didn't mean the Mo gene, but rather, I was using the word to descripe a disoriented pattern on the breast. Poor choice of word on my part.

 

[karimw]

I agree with you Kari. In order to get the nice lacing on the breast and sides you'll have to select for the marbled chicks. From what I've been learning, if you select the solid brown chicks, you'll get autosomal barring to some degree. From a stippled to clear barring. But solid brown Iowa Blue chicks were/are suppose to have a stippled/laced breast and (as best I can tell) look like the hen of yours that I just posted above, with minimal barring (with the barring limited to the tail).

Anyway, although I've been relentless with all this chick down color, I am completely supportive of the direction our committee is moving down when it comes to the silver coloring on the hens. If that means we move away from any solid colored chicks and select for mottled/marbled brown chicks, then I'm all for it. I just wanted to bring the issue up to everyone involved with the breeding of these birds to make sure that if others felt the solid brown chicks were of particular interest in preserving, that we take care to do so before we lose them altogether.

Has anyone currently breeding Iowa Blues (besides Glenn Drowns) hatched a solid brown chick like the Fayoumi I posted earlier? I know Glenn has hatched a few and mentioned that if anyone were to obtain a hatch where ALL the chicks were solid brown, that he would personally drive to that person's farm an see the chicks for himself. He said it has been over a decade since he's seen a clutch where all the chicks were solid brown. Another interesting note, was Glenn, Phil Roe, and Lee Zook have all mentioned that the solid brown chicks were the desireable ones to breed for. So, for some reason, past breeders prefered the solid browns..............some food for thought as we proceed on.

Curt, I think you are several generations away from being able to select for solid brown chicks.

Right now we need to separate the brown from the black! Personally if they come out any color besides black, I'm happy.

 

[karimw]

Off topic, but got a nice big pullet egg from my Birchen quad from this fall/winter. Unfortunately Tyler "helped" momma by dumping all the eggs onto the floor, but the yolk was very pretty orange.

Looks like it's time to move that quad up to the big pen and move the old rooster out. The silver trio are starting to molt, too, and are looking great. They're still hanging out in the office here in their huge aquarium, happy as clams.

Sad news, too, lost the pretty hen today. Knew it was coming, she lost circulation to her whole right foot and wasn't looking good. Tried to baby her as much as I could, but it took its toll. Not sure how she managed it, but looked like she frost bit the leg or otherwise lost the circulation. No string or any wounds. Rest of her looked fine. So sad to see her go, but have some of her kids growing out.

Congrats on the pullet egg! Better luck with the next one. I have a lot of 4 legged helpers like that.

Sorry about your hen. I have those two with leg injuries I'm going to have to make a decision on. They are holding up a brooder I'm going to need, but I'm not sure they are in good enough shape to go into general population.

Eventually the Cochin will go broody and I can put her to work, but not sure about the SPR. Her sister is broody right now, but I didn't think that was common with SPRs.

 

[karimw]

The three chicks that I posted are huge compared to the birchens that hatched out alongside them. With the lightest colored chick being the largest of the hatch.

Yes, they are monsters! Mine are growing so fast they look naked in spots because their fluff is thinned out and they haven't got feathers sprouted there yet.

I need to get them out to coop soon or build a bigget brooder! Probably both.

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Take a look at this hen. What is the general concensus on this bird? Is this what we want to breed away from? If you look at her upper breast, you will see feathers that are solid white with a single black lace. From my study, it appears that this pattern (also found in Sebrights/Silver Laced Wyandotte, etc) is the result of Pg-eb-Co. Then there is the gradual blending of this black laced white feathering to a silver penciled pattern by the time we reach her abdomen. This abdominal silver penciled pattern being the result of Pg-eb. By the time we reach her tail, we see extensive barring throughout. It is birds like this that make be think we have Pg-eb-Db-Co-S action in place.
I totally agree with Connie that whatever we choose to include/preserve, it should be in homozygous form. I don't want to mess with hetero situations that result in double mating.
Here's some other discussion points to look into-

Look at this young male. For those who aren't familiar with this bird. It's one of the cockerels from Ransome Bolson who had the last remaining fertile flock of Iowa Blues. This male and females would be pure examples of the original stock. Notice the hackle on the male. There is little to no black markings in the hackle. Very unlike silver penciled cocks who do exhibit some black markings in the feather shaft. Also, take a look at his upper breast and the difference between the upper breast markings and the lower breast markings. Lower breast/abdomen is nicely laced, while the upper breast has a checkered, somewhat loose barring effect. What gene/genes would be causing this? To me it looks like Db would be in action with the white hackles. But what causes a presence of lacing and semi barring as seen on this cockerels breast and abdomen?

These birds are from Phil Roe and they are the product of the stock listed above without any outside blood. Now, I do not care for the look of the hen's coloring. But notice the presence of lacing AND barring on the same feathers! (her back and hackle area) The hen that is with the male shows a classic silver penciled and looks (as far as we can tell) to be devoid of any Db Co presence. The cock has a solid white hackle and back. Similar to the other cockerel that I posted. Can a solid white hackle be produced without the presence of Db? I was under the impression that Db had to be present in order to obtain the "silver mane" that all the old breeders refer to when discussing the male Iowa Blue.

Here are some pics of Fayoumis. The genetic combination of Fayoumi are Pg-E-Db-Co and obviously S. Notice that the barring is NOT distinct. From what I'm reading, Db is distrupted with in the presence of E. I do believe based on the Fayoumi that we CAN have both Co and Db in our birds without a pronounced or distinct barring. It does look like the birds in this picture do have some distinct barring on the legs and tiny amounts on the tail. Notice here the white hackles and the overall darkening of the body on the hen from head to tail. Similar again to our silver Iowa Blue hens. Also of note, in order for a chick to be solid brown it has to possess both Db and E. So, in light of that, some of our original birds must have had E in order for the brown chicks to be solid.

Overall, I don't think we have to be alarmed by the Db as we can work with modifiers to prevent it from expressing as a distint barring (as evidenced by the Fayoumi shown above). One can see how the breast on the Fayoumi hen looks speckled. And there were quite a few accounts of some of the hens having a speckled appearence.

All of this said. My question to the breeders. There are a couple of silver penciled types present. I believe those that carry the Db (and possibly Co) and those that don't carry it. See the pics below.


The bottom hen is quite laced on the chest with a fine penciling. (she does have some slight barring on her tail). The top hen has more of a "speckled" lacing (for lack of a better discription). To me the top hen looks like her breast is a combination of the Fayoumi hen with the finely laced bottom hen. Ok, to the question.......
So we want to preserve both silver types or just select one type? I am supportive of Standardizing the penciled breasted, mealy tailed type we've all come to agree on. But is there opposition to preserving this "quasi" penciled type like the hen in the top pic? Although I do not prefer the top hen to the bottom hen, I am interested in trying to produce a strain of Iowa Blue that would consistantly produce solid chocolate chicks and develop into a hen that looks like the top hen. If for no other reason than to keep those genes "alive" in the breed.
If we select for the type represented in the bottom picture of the finer penciled hen, (which I am in support of) then we will (by default) loose any solid brown chicks, and the resulting hens produced by such chicks.

It does seem funny to me that we would gladly embrace the birchen colored birds (which were not present in the original breed) but then willingly leave any Db or Co genes that were expressed in the original type.

Thoughts?

 

[Hurley]

I still have a problem with one thing, regarding the presence of Db in our guys.
In the birchen birds, when you put Db over birchen, you should get this...
(Imagine it as a silver bird for our purposes.)

We haven't seen anything like this, and we've got these Silver and Birchen birds coming out of the same lines with tons of Birchens produced. Db shouldn't just select to show on the eb birds and not the ER. Kari, in your now heavily laced Birchens, are you seeing anything like this?

I think it will be very hard to know the exact phenotype without test crosses to specific known genotypes, to be honest. I'm not against Db or Co, just trying to figure out what the combo is to get us to birds that reliably express type. Otherwise we're flying blind and picking "good looking birds" that are of different genotypes, which when bred together go on to produce a cluster of different genotypes and phenotypes, keeping us where we are, which is a breed with a large degree of variation.

These are very similar in appearance to the original photos in degree of white -something we definitely need to breed towards. These are over the base E+. If you put the same look over eb and Pg, what do you get? An Iowa Blue? Right now I think we have a mix of different modifiers in our birds that are giving us conflicting results. Most certainly E+ is there in some, as evidenced by Kari's birds. When you combine E+/eb in a bird, it can also skew the effects of the modifiers on the birds to some extent, from what I've read.



In thinking about the roughly 4 down patterns on the chicks produced (tons of birchens, tons of brown striped/mottled, a few yellows, rarely the solid brown), what do we know so far?

The black chicks go on to be Birchens. We suspect the darker chicks go on to less lacing while the higher yellow go on to more lacing, but we are currently tagging and studying.
The brown chicks go on to be Silvers. We get some variety in these, including disorganized barring in the juveniles, going on to laced/pencilled breast patterns at least in the hens.
The yellow chicks go on to be salmon breasted, indicating they are E+ birds.
The solid brown chicks...??? I don't have any anymore. To my recollection they ended up looking like the rest, but that was a batch I lost and so have no followup.

Has anyone recently bred a solid brown IB chick?

If we get some, we should grow them out and watch them.


Great discussion, lots of things to watch in this season!

I may try to make some photos like the SOP showing the different feathers this year. Definitely need to get some photos for discussion.

Really hoping I get more Silvers from the eggs incubating. Checked last night, have 28 developing nicely currently.

 

[karimw]

Really hoping I get more Silvers from the eggs incubating. Checked last night, have 28 developing nicely currently.

 

[WVDan44]

Sorry Dan. When I was talking about mottling on the breast, I didn't mean the Mo gene, but rather, I was using the word to descripe a disoriented pattern on the breast. Poor choice of word on my part.

Oh good! That partially straightens it out for me. I refer to notes I'm keeping when I see different statements on here that I want to understand more fully. So is this a result of a modifier(s) causing a wide variety of effects on pattern or is it all still unclear at this point?

I hope you all know how much I appreciate your putting up with me asking questions when I'm confused or hung up on an issue, or questions that you all have long past resolved.
I'm trying to catch up!

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Quote:
Dan-

It seems to me at present that it is still up in the air.

Here is what we know is present in the birds-

Pg / (eb and E) / S

Here's what we're trying to figure out (we're currently discussing the effects of these genes and if they exist at all in the birds)-

Db / Co

As far as modifiers go........they may be the reason we're experiencing some confusion as to what is being expressed in the down/plumage color. For example-
A Pg-eb-Db-Co with the right modifiers could look very similar to a Pg-eb (with modifiers effecting the quality of lacing). While the two may appear similar phenotypically, they would be vastly different genotypcally and therefore would be a root of many complications. We're trying to figure out what exactly we have going on in the vairous birds who are showing pattern differences and then trying to figure out what we want to breed for. But before we can decide what to breed for, we have to figure out what exactly we have.

If you have any thoughts or opinions on the matter, be sure to voice them as they could be intrumental in helping us to understand what is taking place in the numerous colors we are experiencing.

 

[WVDan44]

Hi IB Curt,

I just finished reading the latest of the thread up to this point. I did see that you also posed the question about modifiers creating a variety of effects on pattern. This is becoming an exacerbating, hair pulling deal with me trying to understand the sp patterns without having breeding birds to work with!