Iowa Blues - Breed thread and discussion

[karimw]

Oh, yeah, and the purpose of the rambling originally was to post "Yes, Curt, great post, I agree." LOL What ensued after that was...something...else.

Connie, you are right on about the influence of modifiers. They certainly make for a challenging puzzle! I have a serious mixed up soup of genes floating around my farm but of course that makes it fun
.
Ultimately I feel there is no singe genotype that should be isolated and developed to meet the standard. There are several ways to arrive at the bird described in the standard. We designed the SOP to be broad enough to include as many variations of the landrace as possible, but in some cases we had to choose from the variables that existed historically.(Slate vs Willow legs), and eliminate flaws that appeared to be common in the breed (Squirrel tail). I think this is the natural progression when having to seek recognition for a breed. You must be able to pick an Iowa Blue out of a lineup of similar looking breeds. That being said, The APA states a breed must produce true to type 50% of the time. For this reason, I would NOT cull based strictly on leg color, white on the earlobes, comb points, and other cosmetic problems while trying to build a flock of good breeders. If you don't have 50 birds to choose from like I do, select for consistent size and shape, and don't sweat the small stuff. You still should be able to produce some birds that fit the profile for showing.

 

[Hurley]

Precisely.

And, sometimes you lose, especially working with smaller numbers. I held back several roosters that I thought had the best size/shape but ended up with too many other undesirables in my mind to put over the ladies this year. I weighed my options and decided I would try to trade up in the rooster department vs. using one of my boys. I don't have a big area (yet) to raise up a bunch of boys to maturity, so that's one of the risks I take. I am really hoping to get going on getting an outbuilding built this year, which will give me the ability to raise up larger numbers at a time as well as form more breeding pens to work on certain traits.

What culling these roosters means to me in the short term is get a new flockmaster for this year, which also brings in some fresh blood for the first time in a few years.

 

[Wappoke]

@Wappoke Yes, we hatched a chestnut colored chick that is a pullet. We love the color of her and she is showing that slate gray color now. I am not sure how we managed to get this color from the four Iowa's we started with. Curious as to what the possible combination is in our flock creating that beautiful chestnut color. We want more of those The pullet photo top is what the chestnut chick on the left in the next photo looks like now. Her darker sister on the right photo is below the chick picture. Then I will post a photo of our flock. We want to get more of these chestnut chicks. I am thinking to use the rooster over this pullet. But which hen did we get this girl from?

Now photo of the parent flock. JB is on the far right:

Candy and other group members,

I went to the iowa blue web site and read the description of the males and females. In the description of the female it refers to penciling. I need to know if the penciling is the penciling in a silvered penciled wyandotte ( contour pencils) or the penciling found in a silver penciled campine (autosomal barring). The two secondary color patterns are not the same phenotype ( what the genes express in the plumage) and are expressed by different genotypes (genes in a bird). I also noted in the males description lacing was used to describe some of the feathers in the male phenotype. .

All in all, I believe you should seriously consider double pen mating. From the standard's descriptions of the males and females, it will require females to be produced from one pen and males in another pen, You will not be able to mate a standard male with a standard female and produce standard male and standard female offspring.

The reason for this is because lacing and penciling are produced by different gene combinations. Penciling is due to a different combination of genes than lacing and vice versa.

Please respond to this so I can properly advise the group. Others can respond also.


I will add more to this post later today

 

[Candy442]

Candy and other group members,

I went to the iowa blue web site and read the description of the males and females. In the description of the female it refers to penciling. I need to know if the penciling is the penciling in a silvered penciled wyandotte ( contour pencils) or the penciling found in a silver penciled campine (autosomal barring). The two secondary color patterns are not the same phenotype ( what the genes express in the plumage) and are expressed by different genotypes (genes in a bird). I also noted in the males description lacing was used to describe some of the feathers in the male phenotype. .

All in all, I believe you should seriously consider double pen mating. From the standard's descriptions of the males and females, it will require females to be produced from one pen and males in another pen, You will not be able to mate a standard male with a standard female and produce standard male and standard female offspring.

The reason for this is because lacing and penciling are produced by different gene combinations. Penciling is due to a different combination of genes than lacing and vice versa.

Please respond to this so I can properly advise the group. Others can respond also.


I will add more to this post later today

@Wappoke I will tag @karimw and @Hurley along with @IowaBlueCurt to assist with addressing the penciling vs lacing question. Thank you for lending the information!

 

[Wappoke]

this hen here has autosomal barring penciling

https://www.backyardchickens.com/content/type/61/id/7188280/width/500/height/1000/flags/LL

compare that with your hen

https://www.backyardchickens.com/content/type/61/id/7231219/width/350/height/700/flags/LL


Your hen and the rooster you have would be a good combination to start a male producing pen.

They carry the genes needed to make the lacing needed in the male. The female you have was chestnut as a chick because she inherited the dark brown gene from one of your hens. I do not believe the male carries the dark brown gene because he does not have any silver in his tail. Normally (not always) males that carry the dark brown gene and other gene combinations express nonblack in the tail feathers.

I believe your male to be birchen at the E locus, columbian restricted, silver at the sex linked silver locus, and also carries the pattern gene and a gene called melanotic. These are the genes needed to produce the lacing in the male standard.

The female also carries the genes needed for lacing- it is evident in her plumage.

The gene combinations need for lacing is more complex than the combination needed for autosomal barring. The best autosomal barring can be produced on birds that carry birchen (fayoumi) and the brown alleles plus the dark brown gene.

 

[Hurley]

Warning, I'm rambling again... But there are photos!



My take on what we know about the genetics in the breed so far...

E locus
ER (Black with non-black areas of head and hackle, black body with some stippling of color, red inhibitor used in leghorns - the base for our Charcoals and Birchens)
e+ or E, depending on your preference (changes red areas to black by black extension - the base E for our smokys)
eb (Partridge (aka brown) black restrictor/red extender, Females have non-salmon breast with stippling. Males are wild-type. - the base for our silvers)

Modifier genes
Combinations of the following found in the breed, different combos may be responsible for the variations in patterning we see in our birds:
Db (Incomplete dominant, restricts black extension, changes black down to brown, in males modifies red to orange-tan, expresses more strongly in males than females)
Pg (Dominant, allows for pattern changes in presence of Ml, the pattern gene with the Db and Co Columbian-like restrictors is believed to be responsible for autosomal barring.)
Co (Incompletely dominant, black restrictor/red extender, confining black to hackle and tail, thought to cause a gradient in color from head to tail, no effect on extended black, e+)
Ml (Dominant. Black intensifier, one of the genes in concert with Pg and other genes, is responsible for plumage patterns.)

Silver phenotype modifiers
S (Sliver - Sex-linked, dominant opposite s+ gold - Both are present in the lines, goal of breeding out the gold)
APh - Autosomal red, carried by most fowl, the base color on which Mahogany and some other genes express, inhibited by modifier gene APh^I.
APh^I - inhibitor of wild type red gene APh, could be considered a red "knock-out" gene, is autosomal, is a modifier, not allelic to APh, but epistatic, incomplete effect in heterozygous form on its inhibition of APh (autosomal red - wild type, base color on which Mahogany and others express)

Is "Gold Leakage" the result of gold underlying silver in the males? I certainly have seen more gold birchen females and gold toned males with age, but I've never seen an Iowa Blue lacking all silver influence, even in the early days of the poorly colored birchen birds... hmmm.

Is "Gold Leakage" the result of presence or lack of APh^I restricting red from the APh (aka AR/autosomal red) influence? In what I've read on APh, it's likely in all fowl extended down from jungle fowl. The Autosomal red effect is suspected to be due to an inhibitor gene, APh^I, rather than a straight up on/off autosomal "AR" gene. Could our "gold leakage

(I don't know the answer, but I suspect "gold leakage" for us is due to heterozygous APh^I effect.)

Legs and Skin
id+ (dark pigment on legs)
Y (white skin - resulting in the blue legs in combo with melanin - we do have both willow and slate legs in flocks currently)

No bl gene has popped up, but in some individuals melanin restriction is occurring resulting in a blue appearance of the distal feathers, especially with age - causitive gene(s) not yet defined/proven. Rooster below shows the original bluing of the Iowa Blues. He's not a blue (as in blue/black/splash or self blue, etc.), but is showing restriction of black on the distal ends of the feathers. Reportedly they got lighter/more blue with age. With that restriction of black, I am sure the hackler/saddle whiteness is intensified, as well.

This effect is one we're trying to recapture in the present day breed, but would sure be helpful if we understood the underlying pattern responsible for this appearance. The Iowa Blue never was a breed with a single genotype, containing a variance (likely due to the mixmashup of modifier pattern genes), but it is even more diverse now. In trying to get back the original appearance, we're exploring the genes we have in our flocks and are studying to get a better understanding of what we have to work with and to devise a plan to get to where we want to be. That goal varies somewhat breeder to breeder, but figuring out the genetics would benefit us all. . .





For grins, I'll post this little chart of patterns expected with some combos of Pg and Ml alone (PpMm, PpMM, PPMm, and PPMM), just showing the expected influences of just these two genes and the resulting effects of their incomplete dominances.
(Pg/Pg thickens the outer lace more than Pg/pg+, Ml/Ml allows the black lace to extend up the margins more than Ml/ml+)





For our guys, though, we've got the inverse where the lacing is white, not black. This is distorted as well by the influence of co and db, a bunch of modifiers fighting themselves, fighting between penciling and barring and the result is shattered and varies typically falls somewhere in between. The juveniles tend towards a barred appearance, the adult hens more a shattered penciled appearance. The hackles trend towards white lacing and the laced hackles/penciled body is often found in the same individual. What do you make of the genetics of that?

Below are some random feathers from the coop - bottom photo is juvenile plumage/barred, next to is a feather from an adult male chest, above that is the barred going to penciled look that gives that shattered apperance, and the last blurred top photo is an abdominal feather blending to fluff. I also see feathers with more white with parallel black spots running the length, more typical of colombian influence.



I want to put together some feather profiles showing wing, tail, body feathers, but want to gather feathers from a really good representative bird. I have put this off while working on improving my flock, but really want to get this done at some point. In the meantime, I snapped some photos today for further grins, mostly to give us some patterns to look at, ranging from more defined penciling to not. I zoomed in some hackle and body areas for better visualization of the feathers individually. The rooster is 3/4 Iowa Blue from my Iowacana project, but he has a nice pattern to look at.



A variety of hen appearances for grins. I tried to find the biggest variance in pattern, so here are a young birchen, a pullet with more brown/stippled appearance, and a more defined penciled pullet.





Nice slate legs, laced white laced hackle (with white shafts), penciled breast showing some barred influence, and shattered penciling beginning to stipple by the wings.




Two of the most defined penciling in my girls. Photos on the sides are half hackle, half breast.




My favorite girl, so she gets 2 photos.






Iowacana male (3/4 IB/1/4 Ameraucana) - bearded, but with straight comb, like his pattern, though. F1 cross pullet in front of him. Will work him back over pea combed hens to work towards my "Iowacana" look I have pictured. He's got lovely hackles and saddle feathers for discussion, though. He's a silver.



Male with a nice blue/green sheen to his wings. He is young, about 8 months old, so isn't fully filled out yet.






The thing is, at least in my world, I'm not looking to turn them in to perfectly penciled or barred or laced. I want to retain that shattered pattern - more defined up front, blurring out behind, clean up the brown, and get the black restriction back in that sees the feathers blue out at the tips.

 

[Hurley]

this hen here has autosomal barring penciling

https://www.backyardchickens.com/content/type/61/id/7188280/width/500/height/1000/flags/LL

compare that with your hen

https://www.backyardchickens.com/content/type/61/id/7231219/width/350/height/700/flags/LL


Your hen and the rooster you have would be a good combination to start a male producing pen.

They carry the genes needed to make the lacing needed in the male. The female you have was chestnut as a chick because she inherited the dark brown gene from one of your hens. I do not believe the male carries the dark brown gene because he does not have any silver in his tail. Normally (not always) males that carry the dark brown gene and other gene combinations express nonblack in the tail feathers.

I believe your male to be birchen at the E locus, columbian restricted, silver at the sex linked silver locus, and also carries the pattern gene and a gene called melanotic. These are the genes needed to produce the lacing in the male standard.

The female also carries the genes needed for lacing- it is evident in her plumage.

The gene combinations need for lacing is more complex than the combination needed for autosomal barring. The best autosomal barring can be produced on birds that carry birchen (fayoumi) and the brown alleles plus the dark brown gene.

This barred bird looks quite a lot like our juvenile plumage.

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

"This effect is one we're trying to recapture in the present day breed, but would sure be helpful if we understood the underlying pattern responsible for this appearance. The Iowa Blue never was a breed with a single genotype, containing a variance (likely due to the mix-mash-up of modifier pattern genes), but it is even more diverse now. In trying to get back the original appearance, we're exploring the genes we have in our flocks and are studying to get a better understanding of what we have to work with and to devise a plan to get to where we want to be. That goal varies somewhat breeder to breeder, but figuring out the genetics would benefit us all. .

The thing is, at least in my world, I'm not looking to turn them in to perfectly penciled or barred or laced. I want to retain that shattered pattern - more defined up front, blurring out behind, clean up the brown, and get the black restriction back in that sees the feathers blue out at the tips."

BINGO Connie. And lots of good discussion by everyone. A few initial things that stick out to me -

1) As Connie shared in the quote above, the desired coloration isn't a 'set' coloration as currently defined in the standard breeds. We aren't looking for straight autosomal barring, or straight penciling. The appearance is what would be imagined if both patterns were competing for the ability to express themselves. Already that complicated the genetic understandings. Naturally, that leads to the possibility that the desired coloration is a hetero on the e locus. Hopefully this isn't the case, but presently we don't know. What has made this project so difficult is that the Iowa Blue doesn't express their genes the way one would expect a "textbook" example to express.

2) Per reading the discussion surrounding the game male and female I posted, it was suggested that maybe dun was involved there and that they might be dun silver, however the geneticists working on those birds I posted stated that based on various breeding crosses it was determined they were Er Db Pg S with modifiers restricting the melanizers. Per their discussion dun was ruled out.

3) Now, looking at the game male his breast is not where we were wanting to go. Understand that he's not the perfect example of where we desire to go, but gave the first proof nearly two years ago when I found this info that it was possible to restrict the melanizers on a birchen base (something that was argued to be previously impossible).

4) Our historical accounts stated that the males had silver manes and saddles (which is confirmed by the pictures) the females were 'penciled' but not with clear defined penciling, and not with clear autosomal penciling, some of the feathers looked blue but didn't contain the blue gene, the areas that did have black had a blue sheen, and the chicks that hatched out chestnut grew up to meet the desired hackle, saddle look on the males and the females came out with the desired coloration. Initially we thought that the eb Iowa Blues were the ticket, however things weren't quite lining up with that; the males have black in the hackle and saddle, they don't have feathers which look blue, and the chicks are mottled. Based on our years of breeding and observing the thousands of chicks we've all hatched and raised up, the only birds which seem to match the historical accounts and the goal we're trying to reach for would be the undermelanized birchens.

5) Wappoke - Based on your genetic understanding, how would you 'build' a bird to look like Herman other than what I have described? Is there something we're missing here considering dun was ruled out?

6) Chestnut chicks - I agree with Connie, I'm seeing a lot of chicks called chestnut, but not seeing many that I would describe as genuine. Silver chicks can look similar to our chestnuts in that they can lack most mottling and stripping in the down if selected for that, however when I've seen them side by side, they lack the deep, vibrant, luster of the chestnut.

7) I agree with Wappoke regarding the current Standard. I expressed some concern during the revision that the Standard as written would create the necessity of double mating, as did Trish at the time. I agree with Kari that we tried to make the Standard as broad as possible to allow for variation until we were able to learn more about the genes involved and what modifiers we were needing to get the desired coloration. Our Standard may not yet reflect exactly what we're going for. This isn't a bad thing as many breeds have seen multiple revisions on their Standards until they got everything to 'lock in'. I don't yet know if lacing on the males breast for even spangling is what we need. If the breast on the male was restricted to look blue then we really don't need a pattern on the breast other than a blue coloration - potentially. The Standard doesn't currently allow for the weakening of the black pigment on the male's tail or breast to look blue, and his hackle, saddle, and back isn't called to be solid silvery white. Because we're trying to breed the desired coloration on eb may be why we haven't been able to produce a good male. None of us have. We've been able to get our females extremely close on eb, but our males are nowhere to be seen. If we were to try to build them on Er with restricted melanizers I believe we'd get the males that look like Herman (they wouldn't fit the Standard as currently written), and the females would no doubt follow suit as the female game that I posted in the article shows.

8) I want to reiterate what Connie shared - our genes today contain much more than they originally did making it difficult to sort things out at times.

 

[Hurley]

I would say that it is very likely the standard will be revised again, which is fine. It is a good start, a better revision than the first attempt, and we are getting closer. I personally am delighted, as I look back over the last 4 years, at the sheer volume of new information brought to light (big shout out to our resident IB bloodhound and investigator - Curt). I think back to the time prior to this when all of the information discussed were the same 3 or 4 paragraphs regurgitated page to page to page with dark birchen birds. Wow, what a ride it has been so far and so many changes. The breed is in much better shape than the handful of slender, squirrely, black birds populating the breed 5 years ago, and we still have a long way to go. I find breeds that are completely cookie cutter impressions of each other somewhat boring - where do you go from there? I greatly enjoy the "work in progress" aspect of the breed and have written and rewritten my own goals as we have progressed.

I do love the openness of the Iowa Blue community and the willingness to discuss the issues. We may not always see the topic from the same view, but that just broadens our knowledge base and stimulates further investigation and discussion.

I am hoping in the next phase we'll start to see some indication that the factors restricting birchen are still alive and well in the breed, as well as looking forward to further refinement of what we do have. The birds are looking better in shape as a whole and not the rag tag versions they once were.

 

[karimw]

Well, I certain have the birds to test this out. I have a Charcoal rooster I can put over birchen and charcoal hens. Want me to set up a pen? The type probably won't be good. Would anyone else be willing to hatch some?