Marsbar x Araucana Possible Outcomes

[Tretinker]

Chicken breeding is a fascinating subject and I am hoping for help.

We have an Araucana hen sat on her sisters eggs that were fertilised by a Marsbar cockerel.
Said Cockerel is a cuckoo marans X cream legbar.

I have a few questions first up will all chicks be barred? I think because Charlie is double barred that all the chicks will be?

What comb should we expect, will they all have the same?

Also if we get any pullets what colour eggs could we expect.

We might hatch more eggs later on. Are there any genetics that would stop the chicks being barred? And if we were to keep a rooster from this breeding will these be triple barred?

Thank you for any advice, I have tried Google but didn't find anything useful.

 

[artbykarenehaley]

I would expect the eggs to be green or blue. You have the marans legbar combo in the roo, which would make an olive egg if he were female.
So he's got one brown and one blue egg gene.
The Ameracauna has two genes for blue, assuming her eggs are blue and she's a pure Ameracauna.
The brown gene and the blue gene are coexpressed as green eggs.
Some chicks will have two blue egg genes and some will have one blue and one brown egg gene. If your Ameracauna carries a brown egg gene you might end up with some brown egg layers.

I believe there won't be a triple barred, as a chicken can only carry a max of two barring genes. One from mom and one from dad.

Breeding this roo to a non barred hen will make chicks with one barring gene.

To breed out the barring, someone else can explain it. It's not hard but I'm out of time atm

 

[artbykarenehaley]

Apologies I wrote Ameracauna but you wrote aracana.

 

[Tretinker]

@artbykarenehaley that's great info thanks so the thorough reply!

The Araucana I believe is actually a hybrid so could carry a brown egg gene.

Can I check that these chicks will probably be black and white striped like a cuckoo marans?

This first chicks looks like it has a hint of brown to the fluff whereas dad looked almost exactly the same as a chick but there were no brown/red hues to the black down.

I've attached a picture of mum and chick, the eggs are hers (one might be) but her sisters who looks exactly the same.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

There are actually several brown egg genes, not just one. Another genetics person here on BYC estimates there to be around 12 genes for the expression of brown eggs. Your rooster should be heterozygous (meaning, carrying just one copy of the gene) for all of them that his Marans father carried since his Legbar mother shouldn't carry any of those genes (assuming you meant father x mother in his parent breeds as is standard). On the other hand, a pure Araucana hen should have none of those brown egg genes. It is possible that some of their daughters will lay blue, but very unlikely as they would have to inherit 0 of their father's unknown number of brown egg genes. Just for the sake of an example, let's say he has just 6 of these genes. Assuming that none of these genes are more likely to be inherited together, each one of them has an equal 50-50 shot of being passed on, so essentially a coin flip. There's about a 1.6% chance that he would pass on 0 out of 6 brown egg genes in this scenario. That percentage gets even smaller the more brown egg genes he has. So you can see from just that that it's not impossible, but pretty unlikely to get a pure blue egg layer from this crossing. I would instead expect his daughters with Araucanas to lay a spectrum of different shades of green, some perhaps blue-green, but not quite truly blue like their mothers' eggs.

It is correct, though, that there is no such thing as triple barring. As was pointed out, each bird inherits one version of each gene from both parents, a max of two. Since it's the male passing the gene on and both of his parents were barred, he will pass one copy of barring on to all of his offspring. The hens he is being bred to shouldn't have any copies of barring, meaning all offspring will have a total of one copy of barring.

Araucanas are a pure breed over there as they are here and in other parts of the world, unless you were meaning you think your hens specifically are Araucana hybrids? If that's the case, it's hard to predict much of anything in the offspring as they would be mixes of mixes and lots of heterozygous genes would be in play.

 

[Tretinker]

There are actually several brown egg genes, not just one. Another genetics person here on BYC estimates there to be around 12 genes for the expression of brown eggs. Your rooster should be heterozygous (meaning, carrying just one copy of the gene) for all of them that his Marans father carried since his Legbar mother shouldn't carry any of those genes (assuming you meant father x mother in his parent breeds as is standard). On the other hand, a pure Araucana hen should have none of those brown egg genes. It is possible that some of their daughters will lay blue, but very unlikely as they would have to inherit 0 of their father's unknown number of brown egg genes. Just for the sake of an example, let's say he has just 6 of these genes. Assuming that none of these genes are more likely to be inherited together, each one of them has an equal 50-50 shot of being passed on, so essentially a coin flip. There's about a 1.6% chance that he would pass on 0 out of 6 brown egg genes in this scenario. That percentage gets even smaller the more brown egg genes he has. So you can see from just that that it's not impossible, but pretty unlikely to get a pure blue egg layer from this crossing. I would instead expect his daughters with Araucanas to lay a spectrum of different shades of green, some perhaps blue-green, but not quite truly blue like their mothers' eggs.

It is correct, though, that there is no such thing as triple barring. As was pointed out, each bird inherits one version of each gene from both parents, a max of two. Since it's the male passing the gene on and both of his parents were barred, he will pass one copy of barring on to all of his offspring. The hens he is being bred to shouldn't have any copies of barring, meaning all offspring will have a total of one copy of barring.

Araucanas are a pure breed over there as they are here and in other parts of the world, unless you were meaning you think your hens specifically are Araucana hybrids? If that's the case, it's hard to predict much of anything in the offspring as they would be mixes of mixes and lots of heterozygous genes would be in play.

Amazing thank you!

For some reason I thought a double barring would be one gene not two copies of a single so I was confused there but if the have a single copy of barring does anything overlap barring in terms of what could show, or are they all likely to be similar to the cuckoo Marans like their dad?

Speaking to my husband I've got this wrong, Marshmallow and her sister Noodles are Araucana it's the other white girls that are hybrids (Araucana/Leghorn) not sure why I got them mixed up because Marshmallow clearly looks like an Araucana! I don't think any of the other girls eggs are under Marshmallow but they are very similar. I'm 90% sure it's the Araucanas eggs.

It's fascinating though, we will cross him with our pure Marans in the spring and see what comes out of those. I'd like to try him to with another olive egger but the Marsbars we have were hard enough to get hold of!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Nope, double barring literally means they have two barring genes. It's a sexlinked gene, so only males can be double barred, while females can only ever be single-factor barred. This is why, in pure breeds with the barring gene, the male's barring is usually wider than the female's and makes him look lighter. Barring shows over everything except for pure white as far as I'm aware, and even some white chickens can show what's called 'ghost barring' if they carry the barring gene.

If the chicks are from pure Araucana mothers, then what I said about egg colors should turn out to be about right. As for combs, I believe your Araucanas over there also have pea combs like ours here, so the offspring should inherit a pea comb gene from their mothers and not from their father, giving them what will look essentially like a taller pea comb. For plumage, what variety are your Araucanas? All of the chicks will be barred, but beyond that will depend on the genes that their mothers are contributing.

Interesting that olive-eggers are so hard to find over there. It feels like everyone's got their own version of them to sell over here! Good luck finding some of them for your crosses!

 

[Tretinker]

Oh I'm not sure on variety! Ours are white but it's more of an almost grey/white not a white like leghorns.
They have big beards and pompoms on their heads and they are insanely broody! I had no idea when I got them how broody they are. Almost as soon as they started laying the both wanted to sit but Noodles is not commited like Marshmallow who is glued to her eggs

Olive eggers a so difficult for me to find, hens in general aren't available near me and I have to travel but the olive eggers are almost nowhere to be seen or £40+. I have had some breeders look at me with contempt and even suggesting a less than pure breed being desirable!

Thank you so much for explaining the barring. I will have to see if I can see the difference in my boy and girl Marsbars maybe he's a little lighter.

 

[Tretinker]

Sadly only one hatched. The other 3 were fully formed but didn't make it out of the shells.

We did check the shells/chicks and one was yellow/white which I hadn't been expecting.

Gutted that we only have the one but hopefully mama will take good care of Uno