Lavender patterned Isabel duckwing barred - lavender brown cuckoo barred - project and genetic dis

[ChicKat]

Here are some headshots -


nbb1



nbb2


nbb3

here he is again (above)- with the camera lens doing a slight distort on his beak and wattles -- what a comb from that angle...





nbb4





b5 -- now this is a cute chick -- and the middle photo shows that his back feather growth is slow. Seems that the males grow their feathers more slowly.... These are probably the 5 that CJWaldon identified a few posts back up there in this thread.... good eye -- when she said she saw 5 boys. I don't know if this one will be barred or not. These photos are about a week old.
The nbb2 etc is just for non-barred boy -- and so b5 is just going to be boy 5 for the moment.




Boys being boys -- someone has to be the look-out on top of the water dispenser doesn't he?




Then, these developing a little slower:




I'm thinking boy -- I'm thinking barred.....






Pretty sure this is a boy and barred...and one indicator too, is the slower feathering. Remember that that feather problem with the lavs the 'permanent pin feathers' affects only the males, right? -- These guys don't have THAT -- but some of their feathering takes longer then the other kids in the brooder.

Now, this little one is going through the scruffy phase for sure:






Definitely going to be barred, when he grows his feathers in -- and strongly barred, I think if he is showing this much barring this early. -- but..... did you catch that little crest he has? (I think it's he)


now this one:






This one is very large, very curious and somewhat assertive -- dunno....

close up of hackles -- barred? gender....hmmmm



girl

her hackles close-up barred...a little salmon on the front.
so bg1 (barred girl 1)


nbg1


non barred and crested, I think this one is going to be particularly pretty when she is grown. One thing about crests, the express more strongly on the female -- so going by the smaller comb and the crest -- I have high confidence that this is a girl.

Here's a close up of her neck hackles -- an indications of her coloration.





She definitely got her dad's barring gene, and she got his lav too. Earlier in the thread it was mentioned that barring expresses differently in different breeds of chicken. This chick is 'Maori Tattoo', and she may be heterozygous (non-matching genes) on her E-locus -- so I am really interested in how she will develop. What ever is the non-wildtype (e+) may be why her barring is so prominent.



It was hard to tell if she was barred or non-barred -- those back feathers look barred- but the neck hackles looked unbarrred. She went as one of a breeding trio to someone wo lives near here. The reason I think non-barred is because that one lav. chick also showed the appearance of barring on the back, then she grew up solid Isabel.

These are the chicks hatched 3/21, which makes them 5-weeks plus. For the most part gender is evident...except that one, and barring -- probably -- but some are TBD.

 

[ChicKat]

Orange and Green are both from you, Robinson x Isabella. The other three splits were from eggs laid here, so either Jim or whoever she was with before.

Okay, then we know Green can't be double barred because his mom didn't have a barring gene to give him. He must have one from Robinson -- and then express it very strongly as a baby.

12th picture from the top -- that chick has BIG eyes!! The last one of the Isabellas -- may have a little crest coming in too. That may be another really pretty chick.

I like the small neat crest on females -- But I think that the crest messes up the male comb. Alas.

 

[campingshaws]

Orange and Green are both from you, Robinson x Isabella. The other three splits were from eggs laid here, so either Jim or whoever she was with before.

Okay, then we know Green can't be double barred because his mom didn't have a barring gene to give him.  He must have one from Robinson -- and then express it very strongly as a baby. 

12th picture from the top -- that chick has BIG eyes!!  The last one of the Isabellas -- may have a little crest coming in too.  That may be another really pretty chick. 

I like the small neat crest on females --  But I think that the crest messes up the male comb.  Alas.  

Geez, I'm so silly. Yes, I knew that there was no barring from the female. I like them all quite a bit. They've started flying out when I open the brooder, but they sat very nicely for pics and a few fell asleep. It's hard to see but Light Pink is the biggest/heaviest and Teal is the smallest, daintiest little thing. I need to handle them more.

Lots of things to do!

This week I let Jim and the gems integrate with the flock. The isabels joined right in. Jim and Topaz are more interested in me than I expected.

 

[ChicKat]

This week I let Jim and the gems integrate with the flock. The isabels joined right in. Jim and Topaz are more interested in me than I expected.

There's nothing quite like a friendly curious chicken!! -- The man who took the breeding trio - just wants Isabels, and pretty chickens and some eggs. He's 84, and an old cowboy/rancher - (among many other professions as people around here have had.) He said one little girl was so friendly that she just sat on his lap and nibbled/pecked his fingers. - He named her 'Little Pet'. Why? well because she is friendly like a little pet. (This is the same person who at one time raised meat chickens and ran 3 chicken houses of 50.000 birds each. 150.000 chickens. ) He's the person who's written up in the book Cowboy Stories of East Texas by John Lash - probably out of print now - but once read in the schools to show what it was like on an East TX ranch in the older days.

Barring - the chickens did that to us. Tricky little rascals. The barring gene with three choices for males -- and two for females makes the B-Locus asymmetrical. The other important genes with that trait are the S-Locus. Males have three options and females have only two.

Okay - here's an oddity:

Looks to me like the yolk on the left has two zygotes - Different twinning Than would occur from an egg with two yolks, if this were ever to have begun development both chicks would have had to get nourishment from the same yolk. Just the oddity of the day. ETA BTW - the two males that I called Twin I and Twin II aren't twins at all, just full brothers. same parents - but they looked very much alike. Twin II having I think the better type.

These eggs are not from project chickens

Meanwhile back to the project -

When I see glints of lemony yellow in the neck of this guy -- I think of what 1cock2hens said about getting some lemon and lavender going on -- and I think that lemon and cream are the same thing on the chicken calculator.... Now these guys have their color blown out by the harsh sun--but I'm thinking the Twin I and Twin II babies are going to have more color -- but it is hard to tell. These three are the only chicks I kept from Twin I.

Aside: (The juvenile chicks in the long sexing/barring post have some good saturation and they are Robinson babies just like my first (eldest) Isabel-barred Bart and Barbara. )

These are the C-line as Kikisgirls suggested. This boy is going to a town that the letter starts with C -- so he is C-boy. The two girls are barred. C-Iris and C-Crested.








Both these pullets look very similar - only the crest identifies them.
Here are some more headshots -- and Oh-- the cockerel is crested too in this batch -

ETA - above the non-crested pullet from this cohort. Following the crested - thanks to the incomplete dominant Cresting gene.





Cresting gene is incomplete dominant and so it will show when only one copy is present - but it will be smaller. As far as crests go I think 'less is more' - and think that the current CLs are becoming overly crested. Especially when compared with Punnett's 1947 original introduction.
These 'C' chicks were hatched 2/26 and 3/2

Here is a fairly recent shot of the oldest ones hatched 1/31



barred above unbarred below - breast color beginning to resemble cotton candy pink

Bart Robinson -- scrawny little dude. nice yellow on the legs. balancing on the wire edge of a puppy pen.





Out free ranging last night....Still babies -- but I like their nice long backs! And that shot had such low-light that you even see motion blurr in the top one. Bart is getting some nice colors -- More soon on the colors.

 

[cjwaldon]

 

[ChicKat]

At last - doubly (Doubly at last!!) -- this group is outdoors:




6 Males and 7 Females -- of the lavs that were kept. The two splits there are the ones raised by the broody -- both female and will go to a new home in a a bit. Yay, their first real dirt, their first real dust baths (other than wood flake dust baths in the brooder and Sweet PDZ which is a dust generator - ) --- No wonder they look so very happy. They are real chickens today.


The one I wouldn't commit on is a female - unless a drastic change occurs. LOL

This chick is larger than the others, and would run toward the door of a cage she was in and grab my finger with her beak. Not attack, just -- "I'm bored , get me outta here". or "how do you do and shake hands" (song from Disney Alice in Wonderland movie)

- Not your shrinking violet chicken - or would it be shrinking lavender.


The above are all Robinson babies -- just like the oldest 3 are. I'm going to count on that family for high productivity and longevity - At least two of those 5-remaining females will go into breeding program (from what I can tell now ) -- they can join Barbara-Robinson....and most likely will be paired with Silver Jackson -- if Silver is indeed a barred male.



So the ones photoed yesterday with the cage shadows and the blown out colors -- They were in the shade this afternoon -- got some pictures of them too (This is the C-line from Twin I):











Probably very difficult to see in that very last photo -- C-Boy's little crest has a lavender feather on each side of the peachy-colored feather that goes directly backwards. Nice use of the colors he has available. Twin's line will probably be the color source - going with Jack's daughters - which leaves Bart Robinson to be paired with all the Twin daughters. The Legbar son split male will be held in reserve for when the objective is to obtain a true gold crele as a color refresher.

Speaking of Robinson: --





The neck hackles have a very nice faint barring. The color is a 'cream or straw' according to our Isabel PDF - right? And his wing triangle shows the duckwing demarcation, the reddish autosomal red on the shoulder patch and That wing-triangle -- I think it is pale -- ?? peach. What color IS that?
This quote from our Isabel(la) PDF at the beginning of the thread: "...........The wing bay is cream." So maybe it is cream. It's diluted from the brown/red of a normal brown leghorn. Remembering that the Wing bay is made up of the secondaries, and on this plumage pattern the secondaries are two-tone.....(I like wing triangle because it is easier to remember. What I like about Bart Robinson's wing in this shot is the distinct darker duckwing band -- even though it is barred and diluted. Taht is the dark feathers in the center of the photo -- The secondaries are below the duckwing bar at the bottom of the picture touching the bottom edge.

I will be asking your opinion on some more color questions later.
ETA - there are 4 eggs from Each Twin II and Jack going into lockdown - today's day 19 - Thanks to the info and advice you have put here -- my hatching rate DID improve. Of these eggs, some have zero aircell. I think that the chick's size outgrew the egg. Had that once before and to my surprise it was a 3/3 hatch. The chick had to 'internal pip' to the outside air and was totally successful in hatching itself. Turned out those were 3 splits. So perhaps these zero aircell chicks can hatch themselves. Then did I tell you I dropped an egg while candling and messed up the shell. So I put scotch tape on it. sealed from air, that's good -- may make it more difficult for the chick to get out. Then I think for that hatch -- I forgot to plug in the internal turner in that incubator. My spring breeding season may end with a whimper instead of a bang...but there are still 30 chicks out there in brooders (some are splits from the latest hatch) -- and that doesn't count any that could hatch from the 8 eggs.

The Easter hatchers are all snuggled together - the Jack babies are leg banded - two splits are still here with that group...and the 14 hatched on the 27th are just approaching 1-week old.

There are a lot of chicks here!

 

[Finnie]

I'm curious, do you know how many you hatched in total? Minus how many sold?

 

[ChicKat]

I'm curious, do you know how many you hatched in total? Minus how many sold?

I do have a spreadsheet -- 106 hatched in the project to date (8 of them in 2016)
57 chicks already gone to new homes or promised - Like little cockerel c-boy and four of the remaining splits to someone who wants them for egg layers.....The Easter hatch splits are still intermixed -- So there are at least 5 more that will go.

It's chicken math 106-62= 44....Some of those 44 that are females and non-barred will probably go out as started pullets.- The non-barred males will go as well.

 

[ChicKat]

Here are two color questions -- These have been inspired by 'the Moonshiner's' comments about customers who will want an Isabel that is silver-based - and inspired by that photo that 'CampingShaws' posted that just had me transfixed. - There is a lot of 'stuff' here. While in the dealership awaiting the install of a seatbelt clip for my vehicle and while double-digging the garden etc. all these ideas were floating around.

Q1. Do you think with Isabel-barred we are working with the same color-pallette that Porcelain d'Uccles present?

Picture from Tamara Staples photo book 'The Magnificent Chicken' - It's floating around this house someplace. Here are some more grabs from the internet:

Saturated to mostly 'straw' to mostly 'self-blue' to very light.

The hen in that last picture is very ultra light...And the first picture after the Tamara Staples photo is falry well saturated IMO.
Raising Isabels or not (or d'uccles or not) everyone's view is sought.

Q2. I was transfixed by this photo of CampingShaw's chick - I opened it in a new tab so it took up my whole 19x10.5 inch screen, and I left it up for days..... Here it is cropped a little and some numbers added in photoshop:

What would you (yes YOU!) call the various colors that the lines touch (two lines on either side of the number 3 are near the same color to my eye - or differentiate if that is what you see. - name any others you see...I'm so curious about how they appear to other people and how you see these colors:

1.__________________________________________________

2.__________________________________________________

3.__________________________________________________

whooo hoo! Should it be a contest? Like 'name that color'.

The rest of this post is some observations - and for those who don't like a lot of reading -- you can just skim the picts.

*****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Inspired by the photo that 'Campingshaws' posted and the comments that 'the Moonshiner' made - added some years of working with Cream Legbars -- here are some thoughts on 'color' - I'd be interested in your views should you care to share them. The term 'cream' when referencing chickens BTW is somewhat 'loaded' for people who were working with Cream Legbars back in 2013. Several friends of mine abandoned raising Cream Legbars when people told them the birds that they had paid a lot of money for back in those days were not CLs - it was kind of an unfortunate situation -- it began in UK, some guy there was telling everyone that only his CLs were real -- and there was some Paciffic North West guy that loved to beat people over the head and put down their chickens. IMO not a way to have multiple people enthusiastic about colors. Just an observation if you look at the picture of the child with the horse, you see the forehead has a white 'star' and the rest of the coat is cream. Cream isn't quite white.
-- so saying 'cream' for some of us is 'thin ice' LOL

A). Regarding genes that dilute the colors:

Saw this on the internet:
"The most rare and wonderful color of the horse, isabella or cream" A Youtube video

and this:
http://theriflebird.com/animals/21-horses-with-the-most-beautiful-rare-colors-in-the-world/
Perlino


Perlino horses have cream coats, pink skin, and blue eyes. They are also known as pseudo-albino or cream horses. Their color can vary of a range from very pale off white to a pale coffee color.

Here's another one:



https://www.google.com/imgres?imgur...hWjJ5oKHZqAAik4rAIQMwhEKEIwQg&iact=mrc&uact=8

If the graphic above got distorted it says 'with double cream' and then names them left to right:
cremello ,Perlino, Smokey Cream.
Here are a couple of others:
https://www.thedodo.com/beautiful-golden-horses-1442440440.html




".....Well, firstly, this horse is real, a stunning specimen of a breed called Akhal-Teke. The horse's ethereal, almost metallic glow actually comes from a unique hair structure, Horse Nation writes, that actually bends, yes bends, light."
From the article...and back to Isabel:
"As spectacular as the non-golden variety can be, there's something irresistibly regal about a golden horse. Perhaps, it's the lingering influence of one of history's most notorious horse hoarders, Queen Isabella of Spain — a monarch who banned commoners from owning gold horses."
.....
http://www.akhal-teke.org/horse-color.html


Cremello

Cremellos (or "isabellas" in Europe) and Perlinos are found quite commonly in the Akhal-Teke. The glow to the coat of these blue-eyed wonders is so strong that it is visible even in a darkened barn.

Hairs
The Akhal-Teke typically has a marvelous metallic glow to his coat. This is caused by the structure of the hair; the opaque core is reduced in size and in some areas may be absent altogether. The transparent part of the hair (the medulla) takes up this space, and acts like a light-pipe, bending light through one side of the hair and refracting it out the other side, often with a golden cast.
......
Royal Hanoveran Creams - plate - the following link takes you to an 1875 colored engraving of a horse from Queen Victoria's Stud.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgur...hUkJpoKHRMlATU4yAEQMwhgKF4wXg&iact=mrc&uact=8

Sometimes the hackles in the neck of Isabel (and sometimes my Cream Legbar males too, ) have an almost metallic appearance. The saddle feathers even more so.
This makes me ask if some of the dilution doesn't work on the light refraction the same way the horse hairs are altered by the Ahkel - Teke.
Here is the tie-in: The light horses trace to Queen Isabel (or Isabella) of Spain. She guarded them for her own use, and awarded some in gratitude to Hanover - From Hanover they were imported to the UK.

Isabel, Isabella and Isabeline are names for the powerfully diluted colors -
---
B). The concern for getting the saturation too diluted and the bird's plumage too light:
Porcelain d'uccle

When you think of Porcelain D'Uccles -- you appreciate the delicacy of the color. As long as the color and pattern are NOT lost, I think we will achieve our aims with our project birds' plumage colors.


Lots there, I realize -- but to summarize the points I think are important:

• The dilute gene needs an underlying coloration to give a glow - in those metallic-looking horses it has actually changed the structure of the hair shaft. To a degree, I think it changes the feathers too and they refract light in a different way in the hackles and saddles of the males...and THAT'S why Isabels have a subtle glow that you have to see in person. (There are silver metallic horses too BTW)
• The experts in the other animals (and chicken breed) accept a range of coloration and saturation
• The name Isabel came from Queen Isabel (Isabella) who knew?

 

[Kiki]

Ill be back with my opinion tomorrow.

Long day...gotta rest then re read then put my thinking cap on before I post anything.