The base you have is definitely there to work with. If you have patience and plenty of money for feed then the rest is super easy. First off with any project I always look for the shortest path of resistance. Example if I'm working with a clean legged shank dark egg layer I try to find the two birds with some similarities. This just makes the process easier and I can be a little impatient and I'd hate to have a throwback pop up down the road. So frustrating. But basically cross your lavender over your desired bird. Let's say Wheaten Marans. Your off spring is gonna be solid black in males and females and you'll even get some black with Mossiness of the wheaten in it. With the lavender gene you have to do a sibling mating to pull the lavender back out. Breed brother and sister together and you'll get a wide variety of colors. Thus being blacks, lavenders, wheaten and finally your Isabel. The first Isabel's will be sparse on the first mating and you have to hatch off a good bit to find the perfect chicks to work with. Like I said, always look for the shortest path of resistance and finding your best Isabel's as chicks will cut down on feed and perfection time. Now through my experience with the first Isabel's I did I have a couple Isabel's throw off a lavender so I did large flock matings so I'd not have to start back all over. Now this part could vary from project to project but the ratio for me was around 1 Isabel for every 25 chicks hatched give or take. Take your best Isabel's and cross them back into your wheaten Marans again and you'll notice something different happen. Now your gonna get solid wheaten Marans which will be split lavender. Let me back up a second. You can cross your Isabel's with male or female Wheatens or do both at he same time. It won't matter one bit when working with this gene. Even better if you had the space and money you could cross Isabel males into wheaten females and cross Wheaten males into Isabel females and the Wheatens be from two different lines or lineage. This makes them even stronger in my opinion. Ok now take your split lavender wheaten Marans and do another sibling mating. The offspring this time will only be wheaten Marans and Isabel wheaten Marans. This is basically the end of the process on establishing the Isabel. After this point it's up to you on perfection. Keep crossing the Isabel back into your Wheaten until you've established it's full traits.
I mean let's be honest here. No matter what the breed is you'll never ever be finished perfecting it. It's an endless cycle. There are standards and those guidelines do have to be followed but it's all about having fun and what matters to you.
I explained this process in simple terms as there are so many variables and correct pronunciations that wouldn't do nothing but confuse some first time people and steer them away from attempting to do it. But I hope I explained it as simple as possible and you got an idea of the process of doing your own Isabel project
The original lavender I used to cross was from Hinkjc's Lavender Orpington project. The Isabel is there now and you can cross this over into whatever you like now from Cream Legbars to Crele Orpingtons and do your own Isabel's. We finally have Isabel's everybody!
