Jungle Fowl

[RobG7aChattTN]

wow sounds like a expensive project. i would probably use leghorns or birds that produce lots of eggs to insure a higher number of eggs and possibly fertile eggs at that.

Cream Legbars lay a lot of eggs (and they are blue). I have a Leghorn hen too but she is white and I'm not sure that I want to battle those white genes to try and get some Green Junglefowl color.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

Chickens are vulnerable to loss of fertility through inbreeding so that could be a cause of reduced fertility over the generations. Do as much flock mating as possible with as many roosters and hens as you can.
The Saipan Junglefowl are Indian Game in appearance so that might indicate a compatibility with varius.

I could keep that as a backup plan but I'll try with some of the breeds that I already have first. Looks like the Saipan aren't great layers, aren't too cold hardy, have specialty diets and can be aggressive. If I KNEW that they were compatable I'd certainly start with them. I don't even want to use Red Junglefowl which are most commonly used because they are so far from what I want which is a bird that is completely in nature like the laid back dual purpose breeds but with some Green Junglefowl color.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

Centrarchid - what I found with my hybrid pheasants was a population of 1st backcross birds that had very poor egg production, fertility, embryo survival, and hatchability. Our facilities and labor (a large pheasant production facility hatching over 100,000 ringnecks per year) had smaller breeder pens for small lots of breeders, but very little for individual breeding tests. I was pretty pessimistic about the chicks I got from my first backcross flock mating (all the hens with all the cocks), but I put them in a pen that fit them. I forget how many there were since this was many years ago, but it was a nice number. I was absolutely amazed that this flock of hybrids produced very well. Egg production was good, fertility was good, and hatch ability was good. If I had been able to flock mate again, I think the results would still have been as good or better.
I think that this approach will give you a nucleus stock of good fertility and then you could proceed as you recommend. Flock mating allows each hen to be serviced by a number of roosters and when the most compatible sperm fertilizes her egg, that egg will hatch. In the case of incompatibility you will get infertility or else death during incubation. In the next generation of flock mating the same thing will happen and will fix the compatibility of the genes in your flock.
My process was: 1- Reeves cock x Ringneck hens. Off spring were 2 large hybrid roosters and 1 puny, no breeding hen. 2 - 2 F1 roosters x 7 or 8 Ringneck hens. A good number of chicks were produced, but I cannot remember the results on fertility or hatchability. 3 - 1st Backcross offspring all mated together. Flock mated. Results were very poor egg production and very poor hatchability. 4 - the offspring from 3 were mated together in a flock. Results were excellent in terms of egg production, hatchability, and survival. I was amazed. End of experiment due to moving to Australia.
This could have been the time to start selecting for colour or whatever, but I would have preferred to make another flock mating to further fix genetic compatibility and fertility before making individual matings.

That's all VERY encouraging! All I want is to get the genes in there and have fertility and then I can "look for" birds to selectively breed for color later.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

I am dealing explicitly with fertility issues in a hybrid population. To fix a given individual is mated to several so we can identify high fertility individuals each generation. We also look for individuals that give consistent fertility regardless to whom they are mated. Inbreeding ultimately will be part of fix as it will be needed to mate individuals that have similar arrangements of genes across chromosomes. Meiosis in the hybrids initially mess things up as crossing over causes many individuals to have abnormal copy numbers for some genes and that can harm fertility or cause death.

Thanks for the info! What hybrids are you making?

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

I wouldn't worry too much about lack of fertility in backcrosses. It is possible that some F1 hens are fertile (Gray, A.P., 1958) so I believe that the backcross hens ((Gallus varius X Gallus gallus) rooster X Gallus gallus hens) will be fairly fertile. It might not even be necessary to have large numbers of birds to achieve/find fertile hens. The roosters should be fertile anyway.
Check out "Bekisar" on Wikipedia, and other articles that you can find if you Google "Gallus varius hybrids". I don't believe anyone has made a systematic attempt to produce fertile hens that carry 25% G.varius genes.
I think the problem is that people want a bird that looks just like the F1 hybrid male and once you backcross to G. gallus you will lose a lot of those plumage characteristics. Once you get a fertile population of 25% or 12.5% varius blood, you will have to breed them together and look for the colours etc. that you want.
There is a breed called the "Saipan Junglefowl" that is from a South Pacific island (Saipan), and they may have some varius blood already. Try some of those hens - preferably with a color you like, or close to it. There is also a theory that the Araucana breed of chicken is descended from varius because they have the blue egg gene. Varius also has that so that breed may be a good candidate for crossing.
Then there is the possibility that these fertile backcross hens could be backcrossed to the pure varius rooster. They might be more compatible and produce fertile offspring right away. (????)
A problem is that repeated mating together of hybrids often results in a loss of fertility over time. That is why flock mating is good; because the more fertile and compatible birds will produce more offspring (if you incubate all the eggs produced from the flock). Natural selection for fertility
Many things to try.

I had read that about the Auracana but when I looked at Pictures of Green Junglefowl eggs the pictures I saw weren't blue.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

Hybrid games will have superior temperament in tight confinement. They will also introduce responsiveness to taming efforts. I am advising based on a great deal of experience involving a breed and the production of interspecies hybrid where at least one is wild.

But would there be an advantage of using game chickens over other breeds of domestic chicken? I can think of several disadvantages like low egg production and aggressiveness.

 

[centrarchid]

But would there be an advantage of using game chickens over other breeds of domestic chicken? I can think of several disadvantages like low egg production and aggressiveness.

Aggression in F1's I have made low as in consistent with what you see in the non-game breed the crosses is made from. They also are not game. I assume the gameness operates through multiple alleles and most are recessive since backcrossing one or even two times to game side does not restore gameness. Using game on the female side you can get a good 120 eggs per female when animals in their first season of lay. Incubator and brooder capacity for most folks will prove limiting before egg number. I would certainly employ multiple hens for this effort which further negates need to high egg output per hen. Hens in good health can produce a good dozen eggs daily especially when primed by conditioning.

Leghorns produce more eggs but I doubt will have the calm-natured blood needed for a hybrid that is easy to handle.

 

[centrarchid]

Thanks for the info! What hybrids are you making?

Sunfishes. Some are classical as in everyone recognizes them as different species involving bluegill and redear. The more intensive project involves "subspecies" of bluegill that I am very confident will eventually be elevated to full species.

Subspecies are Northern Bluegill, Coppernose Bluegill (may actually be more than one in its own right), and Handpaint Bluegill. Another subspecies may have occurred in southern Texas and northern Mexico but is it likely wiped out by overstocking with the other subspecies. Texas very bad about that. Females have been a lot of fun when it comes to fertility as we get a lot that either do not produce eggs or produce broods with very high levels of cretinism.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

Sunfishes. Some are classical as in everyone recognizes them as different species involving bluegill and redear. The more intensive project involves "subspecies" of bluegill that I am very confident will eventually be elevated to full species.

Subspecies are Northern Bluegill, Coppernose Bluegill (may actually be more than one in its own right), and Handpaint Bluegill. Another subspecies may have occurred in southern Texas and northern Mexico but is it likely wiped out by overstocking with the other subspecies. Texas very bad about that. Females have been a lot of fun when it comes to fertility as we get a lot that either do not produce eggs or produce broods with very high levels of cretinism.

I've wondered why no one has attempted to create purely ornamental sunfish. There are so many pretty species you'd think there would be a lot of potential there. My neighbor stocked his pond with Groegia Giants. They never got very big but the pond (a few acres in size) is choked with them. My kids don't even enjoy fishing there because it's just too easy.

 

[centrarchid]

I've wondered why no one has attempted to create purely ornamental sunfish. There are so many pretty species you'd think there would be a lot of potential there. My neighbor stocked his pond with Groegia Giants. They never got very big but the pond (a few acres in size) is choked with them. My kids don't even enjoy fishing there because it's just too easy.

This much like what we see with birds. Natives as a general rule are not as exciting as exotics. You also have the issue precendence since once a species dominates a supply chain, it hard for new ones to be brough in, especially when care requirements differ markedly. Then comes the issue of increasingly limited legality. MAny states do not allow import of natives across state lines. Some, like mine do not allow the take from the state.

Georgia Giants have yet to impress me. They are not consistent between lots. All appear to have Coppernose Bluegill as a parent, most likely father, although some look to have a Green Sunfish parent while others look to have a Warmouth parent. The latter are the ones I see in pictures showing monsters although I am not able to make the Warmouth hybrid do all that well. I am wandering if the monsters are not polypoid somehow. A few years ago we tried to compare Georgia GIants to our industry standard hybrid Bluegill (female green by male Northern Bluegill) but found straight Northern Bluegill outperformed both.