Jubilee project - Mr Speckles chicks - 2 1/2 wks old

[Buster]

Wow! They are looking great with the red coming in like that.

 

[hinkjc]

Thanks everyone for your comments. I am curious if we would be better off going back to Mr Speckles or crossing the sibling that show red and mottling? Any thoughts on that?

I am thinking Mr Speckles is a risk to pulling us further away from orpington type, however to set the color we may need to continue using him.

Selecting two good type offspring might help us achieve color and type.

I fully expect this to be a work in progress for several years.

I also have mottled pullets I considered putting onto Mr. Speckles to see if that would help us get to the mille pattern faster. These girls are orpington type and should contribute well to the project. Any thoughts on the outcome of that cross. I am thinking it would be 50/50 mottled and mille fleur offspring.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Buster]

Jody, in all my questioning around about the Jubilee project I was doing, the general consensus was to cross the offspring to bring out the speckled (mille fleur) pattern more.

I am going to go through my inbox and see if I can find the PMs that I received when asking about it. I'll forward them to you.

 

[BamaChicken]

Your doing a great job. I would cross offspring and double the genes.

 

[Krys109uk]

Hello,
I'm doing a variant Jubilee project, in that I'm making the line dividing the red feather & the while speckle, blue in colour rather than black. I didn't use speckled sussex mostly because all the speckled sussex I got, had the wrong gene at the e-locus. It is not easy finding good stock in a country this large.
If I understand this correctly you have bred blacks which each carry a mottling gene with a speckled Sussex male? Are the black parent stock which are each carrying the mottling gene homozygous E/E or are they heterozygous E & something else? If so do you know what?

 

[hinkjc]

Krys, your project sounds like fun. I bet the birds will be beautiful!

I am not really sure what is in these black parents. We know they carry the mottling based on offspring hatched from them. When breeding black to black, we got black and mottled chicks. I didn't see any other colors and don't really know all the genetic terminology. It is a matter of trial and error for me.

Based on the current hatch result (which should have yielded only black and mottled chicks - no red at this point), what would you guess to be in those hens? I was thinking wheaton, but really not sure. I do know that the line has occasional red leakage in the cockerels, but does not show in the hens. Although that is pretty common in most black lines, I just don't know what it means.

I'm still researching for this project and plan to do a lot of hatching to hopefully figure it all out.

 

[speckledhen]

What cuties! Love the open wing pic, Jody!

 

[The Chicken Lady]

These guys are really cool! I'll enjoy seeing the pictures as they grow!

 

[katrinag]

I just love the last pic.

 

[Krys109uk]

Hello Jodie,
There are a few causes of leakage that I know of & probably more besides

................... The black parent sock is probably E/E or E/ER....I can think of other possibilities but they're not important at present.
A couple more questions.....
First, did you do a reciprocal cross i.e. a big typey black orp male carrying the mottling gene onto Speckled Sussex hens? That would be a good idea.
Second, though it probably isn't that important, can you describe the colour of the chick down of the speckled Sussex at hatch?
Best wishes
Krys