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Hey Tim,
You seem to know a lot more than I do about chicken genetics! I
wasn't trying for the barring gene, just the mottling, but the barring popped out of the Banty hen's lines. Figured I could breed that out when I could? Not that it's terrible, just makes the mottling harder to see.
Kona and Ginger looked terribly boring as chicks. I didn't think they were mottled. They were mostly dark blackish brown, with light bellies. Ginger had a slightly reddish head, but it wasn't bright orange as a chick, like a dark rust color. I was absolutely shocked when she started to get that incredible color! It was pretty late before it showed!
Those two looked nothing like the fancy "tuxedo" markings on the Exchequer chicks.
Now I know to be patient, and try to grow out even more of the "boring" looking chicks. Even if I don't really have room . . . find a home for them at a neighbors, a friend's, somewhere, because a hidden "jewel" like that may be lurking in there!
One of my goals is to produce a red/white "checkered" chicken that would look a lot like this mutt on Feathersite, seen here:
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGA/Colombia/BRKCriolla.html
Look at "La Pecosa" the hen seen 6th from the top.
I'd like to create a really bright red/white mottled with little or no black, just like her but with a regular upright comb.
I'm going to hatch out some New Hampshire Reds, because they have a brighter body color than the RIR's. (It's important to me to make these as different looking from Speckled Sussex as I can.)
But, I've also seen some RIR X Buff Orp crosses, that end up a brilliant orangey color, with absolutely no black. (Would also be good layers, I imagine.) So I also just bought some Buff Orp eggs from quality stock with really bright, deep golden buff color.
My thought is to cross the brownish/orangeish mottled hens with a NHR roo, and cross the Buff Orp hens with the orangey mottled rooster, and backcross the two lines to aid in genetic diversity.
Then maybe add some high-producing RIR to the mottled stock at the end to bump up a final shot of egg production? Would that work?
Do you know if I crossed two "solid" looking chicks, with mottling on one parent's side, would any of the chicks display mottling themselves? Or do I need to cross a mottled looking one with a solid one with mottled background, in order to get the mottling to appear? (Basically, can recessive mottling show up, even if
neither parent displays it, if two of the "grandchickens" were mottled?)
The other goal is to get blue/white mottled, but I don't want to get a lot of Splash in there as it would be impossible to tell if they were mottled, so I'll be avoiding a lot of blue-to-blue crosses.
I was thinking of taking the 3/4 Exchequer roo to some blue orp and blue birchen Marans (eggs are on the way for these breeds) and keeping some blue stock from those, that hopefully will carry the Mottled gene. Later bring in some Black Austrolorp for size and eggs? (Or go the other way and work on basically black mottled Austrolorp crosses, then add blue tones.)
My biggest problem is lack of space - I'm in an urban backyard! I wish I had an acre or two of land, with about five good sized pens, then I could really do something.
But, I'm hoping with neighbors and friends to help, I can maybe expand on this project. I'll have free eggs to share to hatchaholics when I finally hatch enough out here - will need some help to make this work since I don't have the room to house more than maybe 25 chickens total?
Hoping that once I have enough mottled hens that reach adulthood, enough to get some quantity of eggs to share, I can (hopefully) find a few folks who might want to specialize on getting one particular color - like buff/white, blue/white, bigger black/white, etc. Then I could try and get eggs back from those folks in the future, and by sharing the eggs, everybody could make faster progress.
But first I just need to get a LOT more mottled hens! I had a bumper crop of mostly black and white roos this year, lol. So that's my first goal - more girls in general. Especially ones that do not show pure black and white, since the black and white is so dominant over all the other colors. Got five chicks hatched and a full incubator of 40 eggs in right now.
With the kind of luck I had last spring, that means I'll probably end up with 30 extra roos. (snort.) Free roosters for everybody in Arizona! Ha ha ha!!!
And the coolest hen so far, the orangey girl, she hasn't started laying yet. Neither has the little mottled banty, she's still on strike. Maybe this spring, I hope?
Sommer