leghorn x speckled sussex hypothetical......

[tadkerson]

Some will and some will not. Theoretically 50% will be carry dominant white and 50 will not carry dominant white. Even the ones that are dominant white could be white tailed reds or whites ( leaking black). It all depends on the number you hatch. You will get some variation in the color of offspring; black tailed reds, black tailed silvers, blacks leaking red and blacks leaking silver ( birchen and brown red looking).
You may get a black but it will be a female.

Tim

When I posted black I meant self black. In all of the research have read ( numerous manuscripts), hybrid females were often self black while the hybird males were almost never self black; the hybrid black males almost always leaked red or white. The female hormones extend black pigments while the lack of female hormones allows color to leak through the black in males. It all depends on how the genes segregate and are combined together in the BC1 generaton. I did not list all the possibilities- I forgot it is possible that there would be red pyle like males produced.


The leghorns I have worked with were extended black but leghorns may also be birchen at the E locus.

Tim

 

[nicalandia]

The leghorns I have worked with were extended black but leghorns may also be birchen at the E locus.

Tim

the ones I have worked with which were spent battery egg layers and not sold at hatcheries were based on ER birchen

 

[jbolt]

How does one acquire a spent battery layer?

 

[nicalandia]

How does one acquire a spent battery layer?

in Nicaragua you just go to the local meat market and get one(hundred of them) in the US there are some rescue organizations that take them and give them homes. https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...ke-your-spent-laying-hens-northern-california

 

[Ridgerunner]

When I posted black I meant self black. In all of the research have read ( numerous manuscripts), hybrid females were often self black while the hybird males were almost never self black; the hybrid black males almost always leaked red or white. The female hormones extend black pigments while the lack of female hormones allows color to leak through the black in males. It all depends on how the genes segregate and are combined together in the BC1 generaton. I did not list all the possibilities- I forgot it is possible that there would be red pyle like males produced.


The leghorns I have worked with were extended black but leghorns may also be birchen at the E locus.

Tim

Thank you for clearing that up. Now I understand what you meant. I’ll admit I was really confused there for a bit. I’ve crossed a red rooster over black hens and observed that. All the female offspring were solid black and all the males had red leakage. I would not consider mine a “controlled” experiment though.

I had no idea that the female hormones were what caused that.

 

[Ridgerunner]

What does 'melanized' mean? Wow and I just got good at horse color genes. This is even more complicated......lol any guesses on the dual purposeness of the F2 cross? I know they will be decent layers, just wondering if the 3ddoses of Sussex will make a decent broiler in a few months.....

I don’t know about horse color genetics, but to me, chicken color and pattern genetics are really complicated. You have some genes that are the basic dominant/recessive but you also have some that are partially dominant or incomplete dominant. With certain genes there are not just dominant/recessive but may be many different alleles possible. For example, at the e-locus, you might have Extended Black, Birchen, Duckwing, Partridge, or Wheaten. There are a lot of different modifiers that may or may not have an effect. Genes can have either no affect or a pretty strong effect depending on what else is there. You just saw one of the really confusing aspects. White leghorns may be Birchen based or Extended Black based. A lot of the time, even when you know breed you still don’t know for sure what you are dealing with.

One key difference with chickens and mammals is that the female chicken is the one that determines sex. That means the rooster has a pair of every gene but the hen only has one of the sex linked genes.

As I said I’m a rookie at this and it’s pretty obvious I make mistakes. The way I kind of look at it is that whatever is on the e-locus is the blank canvas you start with. These give you a basic color/pattern starting point. Take Birchen for example. The base canvas starts with a black bird but the female has a colored head and neck. The male has additional colored areas. What color is that other than black area? If silver is present, it’s silver. If gold is present, its light red or gold. If you have gold and Mahogany together, you’ll get dark red. If you get diluters, maybe you get a buff color. Melanizers turn other things black so you might get a solid black bird. The gold/silver is one of those sex linked genes so the hen cannot have the next one. She either has gold or silver, but it is possible the rooster could have one gold and one silver. Then you’ll get yellow.

It gets more fun. If you have two copies of dominant or recessive white, you might get a solid white bird. If you have one copy of dominant white, parts of the bird may be white but not all. If you only have one copy of recessive white, you won’t see any white. Recessive white is a real powerful gene but only if it pairs up. If you have a barred gene that black bird will be barred. But if you get a combined barred and two dominant or two recessive whites, you don’t see the barring. It’s still there and can be passed on to offspring, but the white masks it.

There are just so many possible combinations and interactions it’s hard to figure out what is going on, plus a lot of the time with real chickens you are not even sure of where you are starting, like the leghorn.

To your specific question on the broiler. The F1 cross will combine the genetics of the leghorn and SS. Which of those specific genetics get passed down to the F2 is random. If you hatch several eggs I’d expect you to get really random results. I’d also expect you to get a fair amount of random results in the F1. The parents’ genetics are probably not as pure as you might expect, especially on those types of traits but the majority of the F1’s should be somewhere between the two parents.

To improve your odds of getting where you want to go, hatch several chicks and breed the bigger ones to improve butcher size. Hatch chicks out of larger eggs to get chickens that lay larger eggs. Through selective breeding you can make noticeable improvements. Especially early on, the more chicks you hatch the more you have to select from so the faster you should achieve your goal.