Iowa Blues - Breed thread and discussion

[karimw]

Well today will be a bit of a photo bomb from me! Enjoy!
I will have some follow up pics and then some pics of the chicks I got from Dennis....

Remember this beautiful chick? You can see how his coloration is coming along......just over a month old now.









And this chick.....(the older pics of him were from last night when I woke him and his friends up)






Here's what the solid chocolate chick has developed into.......

Well, this explains it for me, now you see why I said I had SPs with a crow wing? I had lumped them in with the SPs because of the brown, but I guess chicks with ER can look like this without the black modifiers we are used to seeing.
Here is my dark hen. What do you think,could she be a Birchen?

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Referring to Emily's pics, I noticed that one of Glen's hens had a dark head and lighter colored breast and neck. Denny had a few of those in his flock as well. Keep in mind that the dark head is to be bred away from as the Standard calls for a white head. Emily, I see you have a pullet with the darker head and light colored body. Obviously we have some melanizers in action on the head (and very similar in situation to our birchens were we seem to be having a hard time removing that black, although Connie is getting close and I'm excited to see where her breeding pens take her).
We've got some more test breeding to do to see what these birds with the dark heads have to offer us from a genentic standpoint..........but my initial "gut" feeling is that the hens (especially any Silver Penciled or Dubbie hens) that are white in the neck and breast but have a black head are probably going to be of no use to us unless they excel in other traits like size, type, vigor, etc. The melanizers seem to be very strong and genetically dominant, and so even if a fantastically typed hen with a black head were to be used, most if not all of her offspring will carry that dark head. (At least from what I was seeing in the multiple generations from Glen and Denny's flocks). This seems to be a frustrating thing and Denny has been trying to eliminate it completely from his flock by breeding it out, but so far wasn't having a whole lot of success. But maybe in time we will find just that right color type of cockerel to push that black out.....time (and test breeding) will tell.

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Kari, what a fun hen!!!

Just thinking out loud here...but all the old accounts said all the chicks, while different colored as chicks, would look the same (or nearly the same as adults). Is it possible that both the silver penciled chicks and chocolate/chocolate-smoky black chicks will develop into nearly the same colored bird even though they are on a different E-locus? We may be on the right track here to solving that riddle. I was confused at how such different colored chicks that were clearly on different E-locuses were claimed to have been smiliarly colored as adults......but it seems to me that we finally have proof that this is happening.
To those of us who have been breeding these for awhile, they clearly have their differences and these differences may/may not be obvious to us. However, to those who had limited experience with the breed or weren't of the type who made note of slight differences, these birds could have appeared similar if not "identical" to them when they gave the accounts.......


Thoughts?

I would hang on to that hen Kari and see what you can do with here from a breeding perspective. I would like to see her crossed with cockerel that was chocolate or chocolate/smoky black (Esther and I call them mulberry as they have a purplish cast under the heat lamp light) as a baby.

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Kari-

I noticed when I was choring for you that you had a few birchen pullets that seemed to have an extended silver penciling on them. Not the typical lacing we were looking for in the standard, but more of a penciling like our silver penciled variety. I imagined in my mind that they would develop similar to that hen you just posted, but not quite as heavily penciled. Did you have any that ended up with more penciling on them than lacing? The reason I ask, is because I had a hatch of your eggs were all the birchen chicks had heavy chocolate coloring on their heads (I ended up moving them on to someone who was intersted in birchen Iowa Blues so I don't have them to watch). I'm speculating here, but I'm wondering if these ER based chicks with heavy choc. coloring on the head will develop with more penciling than lacing on them when they mature, making them look like they sit right between our birchen and silver penciled birds.....and maybe the choco chicks, will develop with even more penciling making them look similar to the silver penciled birds, only a darker "grey" color similar the hen in the above pics that Kari posted.

Thoughts?

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Kari and Connie- Do you remember when at the Mason City show one of the judges mentioned that our Brichen Standard represented a "Dark Grey" Standard and not really a "Birchen" Standard? I wasn't there to hear his comments on that, so you'll both have to elaborate on his comments. Anyway, I've seen some Dark Grey Dorkings at Glen's place, and the hens do look like this hen. In fact, quite a bit like this hen (in coloration, obviously not in type).
So, thinking out loud here again.......

What do we know so far? The original type Iowa Blue produced chicks that ranged from solid chocolate, to smokey grey, smokey blue, "mulberry", brown mottled, and pheasant. Setting aside the pheasant chicks, the rest of the chick down colors are developing into birds that all resemble each other and this would appear to be inline with the historical evidence. Anyway, maybe we've been a little off with our description and our Birchen Standard?
I agree with the judge that the Birchen Standard is written in a way that reflects the Dark Grey pattern more than the Birchen pattern (except our Birchen Standard does not make allowances for the stippling that is expressed on Dark Grey hens and in the hen in the above pic.). It would appear to be in line with the historical evidence of the Iowa Blue if our Birchen Standard did in fact allow for the stippling on then hens, and we called the standard Dark Grey instead of Birchen. This would allow us to gently transition our dark Birchen birds into the traditional Iowa Blue type (the darker colored birds being a Dark Grey) without rejecting the Birchen birds or their influence within the breed's genetic diversity.

This would also allow for the continuence of the chocolate chicks, the "mulberry" chicks, the smokey grey, smokey blue, and smokey black chicks as they develop into this Dark Grey color. If we keep the Birchen Standard as written, these chick colors that I just listed will not fit into either variety Standard and will leave us with two options. Either develop yet another Standard to include them, or dismiss them entirely.



I know that was a lot......thoughts?

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

This is Connie's really nice Birchen pullet that won at the Mason City show. She also expresses some grey stippling on her wings, especially her primaries. Connie was going to breed her to a Silver Penciled cockerel and I think while it would lighten the head in the offspring it will probably enhance the stipping on the offspring as well. I bring this up as Connie's pullet is the best Birchen pullet we have in the breed at this point and even she expresses the stippling. If Connie's pullet were just a shade or two lighter, she'd fall into the Dark Grey pattern easier than the Birchen I would think.............

Should we be breeding toward a Dark Grey instead of Birchen?

 

[Jake Levi]

Fascinating threads of thought. It expands on my own thoughts a lot. My bottom line is to keep pullets I have, and breed them to a SP rooster, whatever their colors. Different expressions of color will produce different results, but, if the rooster is SP then after a few crosses the flock will be SP. That will work for me.

Connies hen is the prettiest I have seen yet.

I have been offline for two days, a lot of running around, good to see such posts when I got back.

 

[mrandmrschicken]

Yes! If the SP is homozygous (meaning both genes are SP/SP) then all the chicks will be SP, but they will carry a SD recessive (SP/SD). If a SP/SD is crossed to a SD/SD then half the chicks will be SP in color and half will be SD in color.

Hope that wasn't too confusing!

I am getting it slowly Curt. I also need to flip back to this thread more! Has anyone here used a chicken calculator?

 

[ottbjumper06]

Well, it seems I lucked out! I went to take pics and there was just a hint of nail polish on the heads of the DB. My above pics are my crosses, so that's why they look different than the rest of them . Sorry about that, but I guess you got to see how they are coming along!

 

[ottbjumper06]

the nail polish is what I used to distinguish them when they were smaller.