My Silver-Laced Australorp(ish) Project

[3KillerBs]

Pictures from your birds with that extended lacing.

Yes, please.

That isn't entirely true. I did produce two hens that had very faint, slight lacing in my F1 birds. She was produced from crossing a Silver-laced Orpington cock over Blue Orpington hen.

Interesting. It would be great to see that if it shows up.

You might look at Javas. They aren't laced, but I had really good luck with them in the Texas heat back in the mid-2000s.

I had two and still have one because I couldn't in good conscience sell a serial broody who bites to draw blood when defending her nest to a family with young children who were buying their first chickens.

She's a decent, healthy bird and a good flock citizen, but I like the Australorps better.

A good example of partial-ish lacing, but not one that should be used for breeding F2s.

Why not? Surely a bird who shows some lacing would be better to use than one with no lacing at all.

 

[NatJ]

If I understand the genetics correctly, the lacing won't show in the F1 but should show in the F2. Then I can breed the F2 back to the Australorps...

Not always. This little gal only had one laced parent, and while it is obvious, I think the lacing she shows here is pretty nice. Not perfect, but it at least would show a small hint of what a finished bird could be

Yes, crossing a laced chicken to another color/pattern can sometimes produce chicks with lacing or partial lacing.

But in this particular case, when crossing to black or blue Australorps, all F1 chicks are expected to show black or blue, possibly with some leakage, with no lacing except the kind that blues have. So what OP said was correct for their particular project, which is what they were talking about.

 

[ColtHandorf]

Interesting. It would be great to see that if it shows up.

I was pleasantly surprised as I didn't think I'd see any visual lacing in the first generation. But you can clearly see the silver shafting in some of the feathers that is not the scalloped "lacing" you get in Blue birds.

I had two and still have one because I couldn't in good conscience sell a serial broody who bites to draw blood when defending her nest to a family with young children who were buying their first chickens.

She's a decent, healthy bird and a good flock citizen, but I like the Australorps better.

I loved my White Javas. The Blacks were alright but kinda boring. I always wanted to breed some Blue Jersey Giants onto the Black Javas and re-create the Blue Java.

Why not? Surely a bird who shows some lacing would be better to use than one with no lacing at all.

Well yes, you would want to pick a bird that shows good lacing, but as an example, let's take one of your F2 cockerels to breed back to the SLW, you'll get something like 32 genetic combinations resulting in birds that are solid and birds that show incomplete lacing all the way to patterned, silver-lacing.

According to the calculator, you'd need to hatch 64 chicks to get one pullet and one cockerel that are laced correctly. After that, I'd have to fiddle fart with it to see but it would be easier to lock the pattern in with the correctly laced bird than it would be to use a partial laced F2 offspring.

I wish you could share the genetic results once you've plugged it into the calculator, and the screen goes on forever or I'd snip it.

But a son back to his mother and aunt looks like this:

Breeding an F2 pullet back to the F1 cockerel:

Looks to be the best way to get Blue Silver-lacing in as short as three generations.

Breeding the best Blue Silver-laced F3s together:

Shows that you've locked it in.

 

[Iluveggers]

Would a double silver laced Barnevelder work for your project? At least you would have straight combs.

 

[ColtHandorf]

Would a double silver laced Barnevelder work for your project? At least you would have straight combs.

The Wyandottes being used in the initial cross have straight combs.

 

[nicalandia]

....

I was pleasantly surprised as I didn't think I'd see any visual lacing in the first generation.

The reason you got such good lacing on the first try. It's because of the Orpington lacing is based Birchen so that hen(blue laced F1 you got) is E/ER(strong melanizer e alleles). Db/db+-Ml/Ml/-Pg/Pg- Co/co+

If you were to used a Laced Wyandotte instead. The hen would have a Pseudo birchen with lots of leakage(gold or silver) pattern with no lacing.

 

[nicalandia]

Also when using The Chicken Calculator to calculate the probabilities on the F2, just use the following formula.

eb/eb, Ml/Ml, Co/Co, s+/s+ for the laced pattern parent. I know, I know. We are missing Pg/Pg. But since there is a link between Ml and Pg, that means that for all intent and purposes they act like one(but The Chicken Calculator does not take this into account so it always assume they will segregate independently)

So can anyone with access to the calculator(I have it blocked from my working computer) do this calculation.

Laced parent: eb/eb, Ml/Ml, Co/Co, s+/s+

None lace parent: eb/eb, ml+/ml+, co+/co+, s+/s+

F1 x F1 should be eb/eb, Ml/ml+, Co/co+, s+/s+

See what is the percentage of the F2s that are eb/eb, Ml/Ml, Co/Co, s+/s+

Can someone do that and see what is the percentage? Realistically that should be percentage one can expect to get if they breed that amount.

@ColtHandorf

 

[DarJones]

Here is the picture of the slw hen shown earlier age roughly 3.5 to 4 months. https://www.selectedplants.com/miscan/slw.hen.jpg

And here she is today showing good lacing even some on the tail feathers. She should start laying in another month max. https://www.selectedplants.com/miscan/slw.hen.6mo.jpg

Here is an example of an older hen, this one is 3 years old. She shows some speckling and spotting on the lacing, especially near the tail, from one of the genes I am gradually breeding out. https://www.selectedplants.com/miscan/slw.hen.old.jpg

and here is a picture of another young hen showing fairly decent lacing. https://www.selectedplants.com/miscan/slw.hen1.jpg

I have about 20 developing chicks that will be good enough for further breeding work. Barring incident, I will gene test all of them to find homozygous blue egg layers. I expect about 65% to be homozygous!

 

[nicalandia]

Here is the picture of the slw hen shown earlier age roughly 3.5 to 4 months. https://www.selectedplants.com/miscan/slw.hen.jpg

I expect about 65% to be homozygous!

Thanks for sharing pictures.

65% Is quite the interesting number. Usually a O/o+ vs O/O yields something of 50% Heterozygous. Unless of course you are talking about multiple hatches with different breeding pens where most are homozygous Oocyan

 

[DarJones]

I gene tested the roosters so all 3 current roosters are homozygous for oocyanin. All of the hens lay blue eggs but otherwise are untested. Given that 1/4 of my roosters were homozygous for oocyanin, I expect a similar to better percentage of the hens are homozygous, especially since all are known to lay blue eggs. So if 1/2 of my hens are homozygous for blue egg, mating with known homozygous roosters, I would expect 75% of the progeny to be homozygous. If 25% of the hens are homozygous, then I expect 5/8 of the progeny to be homozygous. That is 62.5% chance so I rounded it up to 65%. If I am very lucky, it will be closer to 75%. If not, worst case should be 62.5%.

I will DNA test the best of this round of chicks to find enough homozygous hens to produce roosters for the next breeding generation. From that point forward, it is trivial to select for the remaining traits, Rose comb, SLW colors, medium to large body size, SLW feather type, slow feathering, etc. I am also selecting for egg size. I have one hen that lays 70 gram eggs which are in the jumbo range.