Laying ability passed on by ROO, true or false?

[dancingbear]

Quote:
Thanks, Chris, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. The posts I'd read said that the egg laying ability was one of the things that was passed by the opposite sex. But I can't find those posts, or remember who posted about that, so that I can ask them about it. Some genes are linked to sex, and egg laying ability may be one of them.

 

[Chicks_N_Horses]

I checked out some of my chicks this morning I have raised from my own birds. I saw that the hens pullets look like their dad and the roo chicks look like their dad..........

 

[cybercat]

Dancingbear I think what you are getting at is simular to dairy cows and goats. If you want to improve production always use sire and dam from great producing lines. What I do know is that studies like this have not been done on shickens in a long time if at all. BUT it goes without reason that if you use a rooster out of a steady laying hen, He will have the genes for laying abilty that is good. So he would be bred to another hen that is also laying good and the offspring should be better than the parents. But there is more to it than that as one needs to pick a body on hens that are made for egg laying. This will put you more in favor of the better egg laying abilty.

Here is a link to the ALBC that talks about improving pultry for egg laying. It refers to body type picking and is a good place to start.

http://www.albc-usa.org/documents/ALBCchicken_assessment-2.pdf

When doing selective breeding one must always pick the best parents of said trait to improve that trait.

 

[Baybrio]

Dancingbear, I've read that laying ability is passed by the roo over and over. I also can't find the research that confirms this. That said, since one rooster covers many hens you would always want to be extra picky on the traits the rooster carries.

I just somehow can't believe that if you take a poor laying hen, breed her to a rooster who is from a great laying hen, that you would always get great laying hens. If it were that simple wouldn't all breeds be great layers?

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:
I'm glad somebody besides me remembers reading that. Yes, I've seen it many times.

I don't think a rooster from a great layer guarantees great laying female offspring. But the offspring would probably lay better than the poor-production mother.

I'm working on meat breeds, mainly, so I don't really want to introduce the scrawny layer-type body into the mix. I'm not trying to produce super layers. I just want to improve the laying of the meat birds I'm working on, just a little. If a meat hen laid, say, 4 or 5 eggs a week, rather than 1 or 2 eggs a week, I'd consider that an improvement.

I'm not working on super-meat birds either, we already have Cornish X's and color rangers. They already fill a particular niche. I'm working on a good, easily sustainable, homestead bird, for the self-sufficiency folks, like myself. The goal is a reasonably good-size carcass, at a reasonably young age (like 12-16 weeks), that lay an acceptable number of eggs, and has a fair percentage of hens that will brood. And that you can let live to reproduce.

I don't think everything in the world needs to be the biggest, or fastest, or best producing. The extremes seem to lead into problems, further along the road.

 

[TimG]

Quote:
Even if not mainly passed by the roo, it makes sense to use a roo from a good layer to improve laying ability in the flock.

 

[TimG]

From Genetics of the Fowl (p 304):

Belief in Pearl's sex-linked L2 gene for high fecundity dominated the poultry-breeding scene for some years [Pearl's study was done in 1912], but the theory was finally disproved in an ingenious test by Punnett (1930). This study was important, not merely because it corrected an erroneous belief, but still more because it demonstrated a method of analyzing quantitative characters that had not previously been used by animal breeders. Punnett reasoned that, if high egg production depends upon a sex-linked gene, that gene should show linkage with other genes in the sex chromosome. Tests were arranged with males so bred as to contain

1) One sex chromosome from a good layer and carrying one or two dominant sex-linked genes; in this case, B (barring), S (silver), or both.

2) One sex chromosome from poor laying stock and carrying the recessive alleles b and s of the sex-linked genes in the other one.

These males were then backcrossed to females of a breed characterized by low fecundity and carrying the recessive alleles of the sex-linked genes. Silkies served for this purpose. The offspring were classified and tested under uniform conditions to determine their laying ability. Obviously, if high fecundity were sex linked, the silver and barred pullets should have proved better layers than the gold and non-barred ones. The results of three such test showed clearly that there was no such difference.

[table omitted]

Since the genes B and S, which were tested for linkage with any possible sex-linked gene for high fecundity, are about 45 crossover units apart in the sex chromosome, any such gene in that chromosome should have shown linkage with either one of the other, or with both. Because no such relationship was found, it seems improbably that any gene with major effects on laying ability exists in that chromosome, although there is still the possibility, as Punnett pointed out, that there might be one so remote from B and S that it could show no linkage with either of them.

Genetics of the Fowl was published in 1949, so there could well have been studies done since then that came to a different conclusion.​

 

[halo]

Finally, some documentation thru actual trials. Thank you for posting that.

 

[dancingbear]

Quote:

Thanks, that's helpful. (Anybody wanting to read the whole thing, scroll up to Tim's post)

This is what I'm looking for, studies, or links where I can find studies, or articles about studies.

Anybody know of anything more recent?

 

[Krys109uk]

I don't have time to go hunting right now....this is a imited preview of Poultry Breeding & Genetics (Crawford). Quite a lot of it is available; you might be able to find more recent studies there.

http://books.google.com/books?id=VM...i=I2GFSr6XLYjMlQTb7IX_CQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false