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

[ChicKat]

This is really intresting! Will definitely save this page!

Yay! thanks for your interest.

 

[Kiki]

How many splits need a home?
For sure girls??

 

[ChicKat]

How many splits need a home?
For sure girls??

I could guess but I don't know for certain -- Later today I'll do a post about sexing and you can decide the degree of accuracy. At about 2-weeks, the little males DO seem to be showing a comb.

This bunch just got offered to someone yesterday, and he hasn't gotten back to me -- However if you are looking for some chicks

I'm setting as many eggs as I possibly CAN on Saturday to participate in the Easter hatch-along -- so there will be chicks around - and at 2-weeks pretty sure about their gender.....

 

[hhong3138]

Those are gorgeous! -- I did get 1 strawberry today from my bedraggled plants from last year. I think if I could just remember to give them some water it would make a difference. It did seem to suddenly get hot today didn't it. Wham....it's here.

I have tried grow strawberry, but couldn't keep them alive when summer heat hit (even with drip system). Really miss my NY garden, every spring we got baskets of strawberries!

Great news! 44 eggs are in lockdown. 3 to 4 have air cells on the point side. don't know how that happens. will update when they hatch with pictures.

 

[ChicKat]

I have tried grow strawberry, but couldn't keep them alive when summer heat hit (even with drip system). Really miss my NY garden, every spring we got baskets of strawberries!

Great news! 44 eggs are in lockdown. 3 to 4 have air cells on the point side. don't know how that happens. will update when they hatch with pictures.

That is so exciting! Wow.

Yes, I know what you mean about gardening. I lived in Ohio -- and could come home from work - go out in the back yard and get supper. Tomatoes filled those brown paper grocery store bags (remember them the large size) -- and everyone was bringing them to work to try to get rid of the over abundance. Never needed to water the garden because of ample rain. Seems like all you had to do there was stick something in the ground and it grew. Here it is a struggle for sure...fighting the heat and for the most part -- just let the garden go dormant in the summer - the opposite of up there.

Can't wait to see the babies you will get!

 

[ChicKat]

okay - autosexing.

If the Isabels would autosex -- I would probably think they are the best birds walking - because they are so pretty. However, I've been completely spoiled by Cream legbars -- a girl at hatch doesn't become a 'surprise' rooster once someone has taken it home and fallen in love with their chick..and I like that a lot.

Here is a pair of CL chicks representative of my stock:

The female has sharp V above the beak and chipmunk stripes over the abdomen that are very defined. The male has a white splotch on the top of his head, and his dorsal chipmunk stripes are diffused. If you look closely the female has fine light/white hairs inside the V but they don't distort the edge and the male has a slight V - but his splotch goes outside the dark area.

So -- with this hatch Split male X Isabel female -- I may have some indication of autosexing -- but since I haven't taken any of these to maturity -- I don't know for certain.

Take a look at this latest hatch - here are some picts from today:


Not the best lighting and angles, but you can see the dark V and the distinct chipmunk stripes on these two chicks -- I suspect that they are females.

Here are the same two - and a third chick added. This chick has less distinct dorsal stripes, his V doesn't extend uninterrupted all along the back, and there is a beginning of a head splotch that exits the dark dorsal stripes as the sides spill over outside the dorsal stripe. (Tell me why the always poop when you photo?)

Here is a shot of the two that were hatched by the broody. (She hatched 3, but one died, I suspect that either it fell out of the box she was in and just got completely chilled and died of hypothermia, or she stepped on it and broke the neck? don't know - because it seemed perfectly okay). Their wing feathers are covering the dorsal stripes all but the very bottom -- I think that they are both females. These are 'Jack's' babies BTW and very dark, which in this project would be desirable to keep the color and give the lavender diluters something to work on.

Okay -- now a look at the lavenders from Saturday/Sunday's hatch.

It's a little trickier - but you see the one facing the camera second from the right has a very distinct V, and the one on the far left sitting down has the strong dorsal stripe that has a darker color on both sides. Behind that chick standing up is one that has a more diffused dorsal stripe (but it is getting to be a subtle difference isn't it?) However, if that IS a male it only has a possibility of one barring gene from dad, because mom is Isabel.

Here's another view of the same chicks -- and the center two are really perfectly positioned to compare their dorsal stripe activity. So for those I would guess --> Girl, Boy, Girl Girl, ETA Boy (although she is out of the picture for the most part. ) - see looking at this picure, it almost looks like a head splotch on the far left chick, and it almost looks like the dorsal stripe has a break at the back of the neck. So this one - I wouldn't be sure. Remember, it's still one generation early to achieve true autosexing. Even then it will be something like 25% barred females and 25% double factor males. Still and all - they will all be lavender, and the other males will be single barred while that remaining 25% of females will be Isabel with no barring.

Here are the brooder babies that I kept from the hatches 2/26 and 3/2

Youngest one - three weeks old today -- suspect female --


Female -- may develop a small crest



Definitely this one is a little male - these last two are a week older. I'm sure I collected eggs from that week and incubated, then from the next week and put them in the incubator so the eggs wouldn't be over a week old.
Here are the three oldest ones from this project -- pictured as chicks way back at the beginning of this thread - today they look like this:

These were hatched 1/31


Close up of the female on the right - showing the pattern on her head that looks barred.

Close up of the female on the left - showing her hackles as they develop

Close up of the little male's head. His neck hackles do show barring.

And to complete the circle on autosexing here is a baby picture of the female that is barred, which is what had given me hope all-along that she would turn out to be barred.



She has a very distinct V and she had good dorsal 'chipmunk' stripes (if chipmunks can be lavender) -- and in the picture by the waterer, you can kind of see that she has a little frosted down in the top of her V.

ETA: Note, not all Cream Legbar females will show that light frosted area in the center of their dark V. Many CL that I have hatched grow to have barring in their tail and lacked the light center of the V - is there a difference in expression of barring - I don't know -- it was never tracked. At one time if I recall correctly it was considered desirable to have that light area on female heads, but some were fearful that it would make females and males indistinguishable at hatch.

 

[Finnie]

Excellent detailed descriptions! You know, I always knew Cream Legbars were auto sexing, and how to tell them apart, but I never knew it had to do with their double or single factor barring. I guess I thought there was some other "auto sexing" gene that was responsible for the chick down differences between males and females. After all, Welsummers are said to be auto sexing, and I don't think of them as having bars.

The more I learn on this thread, the more I understand of chicken genetics in general!

 

[Kiki]

okay - autosexing.

If the Isabels would autosex -- I would probably think they are the best birds walking - because they are so pretty. However, I've been completely spoiled by Cream legbars -- a girl at hatch doesn't become a 'surprise' rooster once someone has taken it home and fallen in love with their chick..and I like that a lot.

Here is a pair of CL chicks representative of my stock:

The female has sharp V above the beak and chipmunk stripes over the abdomen that are very defined. The male has a white splotch on the top of his head, and his dorsal chipmunk stripes are diffused. If you look closely the female has fine light/white hairs inside the V but they don't distort the edge and the male has a slight V - but his splotch goes outside the dark area.

So -- with this hatch Split male X Isabel female -- I may have some indication of autosexing -- but since I haven't taken any of these to maturity -- I don't know for certain.

Take a look at this latest hatch - here are some picts from today:


Not the best lighting and angles, but you can see the dark V and the distinct chipmunk stripes on these two chicks -- I suspect that they are females.

Here are the same two - and a third chick added. This chick has less distinct dorsal stripes, his V doesn't extend uninterrupted all along the back, and there is a beginning of a head splotch that exits the dark dorsal stripes as the sides spill over outside the dorsal stripe. (Tell me why the always poop when you photo?)

So.......how many of the non white dot heads do you have?

 

[ChicKat]

So.......how many of the non white dot heads do you have?

I'll give it a count tomorrow -- you mean how many suspected females?

 

[ChicKat]

Excellent detailed descriptions! You know, I always knew Cream Legbars were auto sexing, and how to tell them apart, but I never knew it had to do with their double or single factor barring. I guess I thought there was some other "auto sexing" gene that was responsible for the chick down differences between males and females. After all, Welsummers are said to be auto sexing, and I don't think of them as having bars.

The more I learn on this thread, the more I understand of chicken genetics in general

Thanks Finnie,

Here's what I think Punnett's original formula for the autosexing was -- duckwing + barring = dorsal stripes (chipmunk) and head spots (from the barring gene).

WelBars were an autosexing breed Punnett developed crossing Welsummers and barred rocks I think -- Welsummers would probably not be more autosexing than any other duckwing from what I understand.