Partridge -best way to improve pencilling?

[walkswithdog]

I have production partridge rocks. A few have decent pencilling, most are not great, one is speckled. If I'm trying to improve that and not entirely lose size, comb etc. What are my options in breeds for improvement?

Does a lacing breed improve it or another type of pencilled breed or something like the barnvelder double laced partridge or? Cornish? A show p. cochin could work but very hard to get. And then there'd be feather feets.

I think I know that golds, so gold laced or gold pencilled would help better than going into the silvers.

I'm already going over the color boundaries with good barreds and soon enough good delawares for size, etc. So color challenges I'm already facing. But I'd like to see about bringing in a PR pencilling improver if I can as well.

Any thoughts appreciated.

 

[Krys109uk]

I'm doing the same with my partridge orpingtons. The pencilling is lovely on some & less good on others.

I shouldn't have thought out-crossing to laced or double laced breeds would be the best outcross. Those patterns will tend to inherit pattern gene & melanotic together because the loci for those genes are pretty close together on the same chromosome. And then the single lacing has those two together & also columbian which is not wanted in partridge pattern.

Do they have Silver Pencilled Rocks? Nice quality birds would make a good outcross. Or what about partridge or silver pencilled wyandottes....(do they have them in this country(US)?) I'd have thought any of those could work as an outcross.

 

[blackdotte]

Adding Double Laced will add Melanotic which will not improve your Partridge Pencilling, Single Laced will also add Columbian which will really foul up your Pencilling.
Partridge Wyandottes would be the cross of choice, as long as the birds selected had good pencilling.
Genome for Partridge is eb/eb Pg/Pg
Double Laced is eb/eb or Wheaten eWh/eWh Pg/Pg Ml/Ml
Single Laced is eb/eb Pg/Pg Ml/Ml Co/Co
David

 

[cybercat]

Well one of the breeds used to creat the partirdge rock was single comb Partridge Wyandotte. So you might try to find a show one in that breed.

 

[walkswithdog]

Thank you all I knew there were all KINDS of booby trap genes in that question.

Partridge Wyandottes it is, thanks... I'll get to looking.

 

[iajewel]

Why do you have to go to another breed? Why don't you just use better Partridge?

 

[walkswithdog]

Better partridge rocks are very, very, hard to come across. Show quality fowl fairly rare, and as of last year I had one, one reply to 27 calls, emails and letters looking for someone in the variety and breed willing to part with stock. Last year fertility was in the TANK, of the seven main flocks of show partridge over the last decade, they were sold and combined and culled to two main flocks.

Again fertility sucked and they had significantly more male chicks than female and in many cases had culled what might have been breeding quality males and even show males very heavily as of last fall.

I'm hitting shows again this year and hope to find someone holding a small flock but the odds aren't great. And I can probably get a trio out of one fellow with a solidly SQ Partridge flock but it will cost just about 150.00 to get them and get them here. We tried to do a deal last year but I couldn't get transport for them to here and couldn't afford shipping.

SQ partridge birds in Wyandotte or Rock aren't easy to find. Heritage quality partridge, there's one flock in Oregon, they're still building and so far they aren't selling.
But the more sources I find for proper type and color, the better my chances.

I found one place claiming to have SQ PR eggs for sale but they won't show me pictures of their breeding stock. Why not? So I haven't purchased eggs from them yet. (Watch, their male is neon orange headed or something like purple legs and fangs.)

Good, truly good PR's are actually hard to find. Birds that meet the standard in form, in comb, in color, in tail set. If I wanted a seven pointed, squirrel tailed, orange headed partridge rock that topped out at six pounds, I'd be in business, because they're everywhere.

I'm shooting for rocks that lay like Good Barreds, with the heft and breadth that they've been keeping in good Barreds and the show Whites. I am pushing toward the impossible but the further I go that way the better a legacy I leave my daughter.

So I look for color where I can get it. And any other option might work better than the ones I've tried so far.
Production birds rarely produce good hen pencilling, fair yes, or weak often, but good... not as often. It means going through a LOT of production chicks, and paying to grow them out to see - minimum of five months.

So I have a challenge, I enjoy it, but it is an ongoing project rather than a simple matter of buying birds. Well, if I constantly had 150.00 for birds it would get done a lot faster.

Eggs, practice and homework and patience. One year at a time.

 

[Henk69]

The problem in your partridges is that they are not pure for Pg (Pg/Pg).
When Pg is missing you get speckling/peppering/stippling.
So try to get it pure and keep track which roosters (and hens) throw the stippled kind (pg+/pg+).
Keep the best pencilled hens of course.
Impure cockerels (Pg/pg+) may have a blacker breast than pure cockerels.

 

[cybercat]

unfortunatly almost all of are cockeral are in- pure now days. Hatchery stock most likely was bred with white leghorns to get better egg production. It shows in the males with white feathers right in the tail and before. This is a major DQ in the breed as is stated in the SOP that no white at all is allowed in the PR.

Walkswithdog one other area you could get good blood you might look into is a Bantam Partirgde rock. You should have better luck finding a breeder of them since bantam are much more popular. You could always AI a bantam to the LG fowl and take the best and breed up in size. I know a few breeds that did this to get back some LG fowl since only bantams were around anymore.

 

[walkswithdog]

Thank YOU ALL!!! Okay, that makes sense. Thank God there are no white feathers here. Partridge Rock Bantam makes good sense as a source and far less complicated. I just NEVER think of Bantam as a solution.

I've only one hen with stipling and one with incomplete lacing so it's not as bad as the first two batches of chicks - all of which I sold or ate. (Roughly 75 chicks to get to this flock of ten.)

I'm hoping like heck to get some HQ or SQ partridge eggs this year but I am pretty sure I can find some SQ Partridge in Bantam.

Whatever it takes. NO matter how many coops I have to build. LOL. One more excuse for another coop is always welcome. We just won't tell Laura I said so.

Every now and then she says HOW MANY Chickens? I say nevermind. Thank the good lord she never is still enough around the property to count.