Large Fowl Crele Project...

[Sock Puppet]

Out of curiosity, how would this rooster hold up colorwise? Would he have been considered a duckwing?

I dont own him anymore, wish I would have kept him.

 

[RAREROO]

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Thanks but those another example of "shows any color other than black, let's call it crele".... those cochins are either gold birchens or leaky blacks- blacks that are lacking all the genes to help make them solid black. Look at the hen, she is plainly a cuckoo. Black and white.. the rooster has more color.. but then look at a birchen. One quick way to tell if a rooster is really crele or not is by looking at the wing triangle. Cochin rooster lacks the wing triangle(crowwing). True creles always have the duckwing patch(triangular area of brown).. look at the brown area on wing of the rooster and overall color of hen posted by blackred.. she's not cuckoo colored. Those are true crele, without question at all.

Also, there are crele named breeds like the brahmas and probably cochins to that are Barred Partridge, which would be very similar to crele, but they roos would still lack the triangle, and the hens would lack the Salmon colored breasts, and thus would not but true crele either, but simply barred partridge.

 

[Goose and Fig]

Could you use a wheaten Ameraucana as opposed to a wellie? I have plenty roos of both breeds- free for the taking!

 

[Rowemblis]

Hi
I have thought about making a standard heavy breed crele chicken my self mostly for the beauty of the color, color sexability of the chicks as well as for eggs and meat,
I was going to order chicks this year to start that project, but until I have more room I can't. this is what I was planing on doing. Now im not a geneticist by any means, but I love experimenting.

So, I was going to breed welsummer females to Dominique Males (Dominiques because they have the cuckoo pattern, same barred pattern as Crele OEG's ) I was thinking male Dominiques because I've read they have (as well as other pure barred varieties) 2 barred genes ware as females only have 1 barred gene. Because of this barred genetic make up, I've read that male barred birds are homozygous (dominant) for the barred pattern.
From the resulting chicks I've read, to take your best looking females from the welsummer/dominique cross, and breed them back to their father or another dominique.

I don't know if this is the best way to go about breeding a crele pattern chicken, but that is just my best guess, and what I have read about.
Good luck to you.

 

[Sock Puppet]

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Sounds interesting. Im going to have to do more research into it.

 

[Kev]

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Do cross only once. Dominique as the rooster is ok because this way all of the cross chicks will be cuckoo- in fact leaky cuckoos, like the "crele cochin" on eggbid- come out cuckoo but at maturity the will get off color on the neck and saddles on roosters, and some brown lacing on front of neck and breast.

The easiest next step for creles is actually to breed back the cross chicks to pure welsumer. If you use a male over a welsumer, you will get birds with barring in both sexes.. if you use a female with a welsumer rooster, only the sons will be barred.. it's a sex linked dominant.

Should get a few birds close to crele coloring from this, if you are lucky and hit on a rooster and hen with good crele coloring(will have to hunt for birds lacking various genes from the dominique.. if dominique have Columbian, there will be barred birds lacking the black breast etc), you can just breed them together to get homozygous barred males. Then you're set... Can outcross back to a welsumer for new blood, or to improve on the color- there may be hidden genes in the dominique that mess with the crele pattern..

Breeding back to a domininque is a waste of time if crele is the goal.. that will just bring back more non-desirable color related genes.

BTW welsumers are not exactly pure red duckwing. The roosters are supposed to have a brown and black speckled breasts from a gene, can't remember what gene it is.. maybe Mahogany? However solid black breasted roosters exist and those would be best for being as close to crele type.. however the speckle breast roosters will still work for the general look, those will have a brown, black and white patterned breasts. I've done this with welsumers, and I did think the roosters were very beautiful.

 

[Kev]

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Yes.. the resulting roosters would look very crele-like, however the hens would still look wheaten, with varying hints of barring. Some hens show a couple bars in the hackle and tail or there is no obvious bars but the tail is slightly diluted. It can get hard to tell which hens have the barring....

One more thing- barred wheaten chicks won't be sexable like pure crele chicks are, so if being able to reasonably sex the chicks is important, wheatens are not the best for the plan.

 

[Kev]

Quote:
Thanks but those another example of "shows any color other than black, let's call it crele".... those cochins are either gold birchens or leaky blacks- blacks that are lacking all the genes to help make them solid black. Look at the hen, she is plainly a cuckoo. Black and white.. the rooster has more color.. but then look at a birchen. One quick way to tell if a rooster is really crele or not is by looking at the wing triangle. Cochin rooster lacks the wing triangle(crowwing). True creles always have the duckwing patch(triangular area of brown).. look at the brown area on wing of the rooster and overall color of hen posted by blackred.. she's not cuckoo colored. Those are true crele, without question at all.

Also, there are crele named breeds like the brahmas and probably cochins to that are Barred Partridge, which would be very similar to crele, but they roos would still lack the triangle, and the hens would lack the Salmon colored breasts, and thus would not but true crele either, but simply barred partridge.

Yeah, thats the other useful hint, if the breed does not have red duckwings and someone is selling "crele" in that breed... chances are it's something like you said.. barred partridge.. my experience with barred partridges is they tend to come out "dark" but did not do much work with this so don't know if that's typical for barred partridges or not.

 

[Crunchie]

Ok, ok. Dumb question.

How do you get bbr/red duckwing in a breed that doesn't have it? Can you "make" it or would you have to cross to another breed that does have it?

 

[Kev]

Usually have to introduce it.. the gene for the duckwing base is not even present at all in some breeds. Seems many breeds are mostly or entirely on wheaten, partridge(eb, brown) or birchen.

If partridge is an accepted color in a breed, you can use them to get "crele-ish looking" birds. They will not look identical to crele OEG & OEGB.. but will do a passable job of looking like one. My own experience with barred partridges were birds that were darker than creles, not as bright & the barring usually was worse or not so well defined. I have no idea if that applies to partridges in general or it was something about my line..