Poultry Breeds of Spanish Ancestry

[PetRock]

Debi posted some pictures of her flock of Pita Pintas on the Northern CA Thread:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/25/california-northern/53740#post_13852171

look for post 53745

I'll post them here, too!

 

[ronott1]

Beautiful birds, Ron! I think that your boy is bigger than Zorro. I haven't weighed him but need to put that on my list to get done. How do you weigh your birds?

He is too heavy for the kitchen scale so we used the digital bathroom scale. My DD held him and the we subtracted her weight.

Pepe looks bigger than Zorro but it is hard to tell by pictures. He also has an anti crow collar on under neck feathers(Hackle).

He is very sweet tempered too.

 

[Lacy Blues]

Thank you Debi. I don't remember if you've been on here before. I know Hangtown Farms in CA has been but I don't specifically remember PetRock, which doesn't mean a thing actually. Some days... I'm just brain dead. If you have, welcome back as I haven't seen you in a while and if you haven't, welcome to the thread! We need to keep this thing alive.

 

[PetRock]

While we are on the subject of Pita Pintas, I have hatched over 100 PP chicks this year. I have shared the wealth with 4 other people who plan on breeding them. That makes 7 of us with breeding flocks that I know of.

With so many chicks to observe, I have seen a few things pop up that are not wanted. All of my original flock (Zorro and his 7 ladies) have yellow legs and all of the chicks in the first few hatches developed yellow legs. But now I have some chicks that are keeping the pinkish white legs and beaks that they had at hatch. I know not to breed this white legged ones but how do I determine which of my flock is passing this on? Should I "retire" Zorro after this year and replace him with one of his sons?

I've also had a few other defects that have cropped up. I had one cockerel born with no tail. I also noticed that there is one pullet who has blueish grey eyes instead of the orangeish color that they are supposed to be. Ron, have you had any hatch with any issues like this?

 

[PetRock]

He is too heavy for the kitchen scale so we used the digital bathroom scale. My DD held him and the we subtracted her weight.

Pepe looks bigger than Zorro but it is hard to tell by pictures. He also has an anti crow collar on under neck feathers(Hackle).

He is very sweet tempered too.

Zorro will be a year old on Aug 30. He is still a nice boy even though he has been at the farm with minimal human contact for several months now. He comes running when I approach with the red bucket and has no problem with me picking up his girls or him. I sure miss having him here in town!

 

[PetRock]

Thank you Debi. I don't remember if you've been on here before. I know Hangtown Farms in CA has been but I don't specifically remember PetRock, which doesn't mean a thing actually. Some days... I'm just brain dead. If you have, welcome back as I haven't seen you in a while and if you haven't, welcome to the thread! We need to keep this thing alive.

I've been subscribed to this thread for a while but not posted before. Thank you for the welcome!

 

[ronott1]

While we are on the subject of Pita Pintas, I have hatched over 100 PP chicks this year. I have shared the wealth with 4 other people who plan on breeding them. That makes 7 of us with breeding flocks that I know of.

With so many chicks to observe, I have seen a few things pop up that are not wanted. All of my original flock (Zorro and his 7 ladies) have yellow legs and all of the chicks in the first few hatches developed yellow legs. But now I have some chicks that are keeping the pinkish white legs and beaks that they had at hatch. I know not to breed this white legged ones but how do I determine which of my flock is passing this on? Should I "retire" Zorro after this year and replace him with one of his sons?

I've also had a few other defects that have cropped up. I had one cockerel born with no tail. I also noticed that there is one pullet who has blueish grey eyes instead of the orangeish color that they are supposed to be. Ron, have you had any hatch with any issues like this?

The first hatch last year had Cockerels with yellow legs but two pullets with white legs. so far this year they have all had yellow legs. I have not been able to hatch a lot of them though.

Next season we need to breed from our best and share eggs or chicks to keep the gene pool healthy. We can also improve them faster that way. It is nice having a group with them here.

I shared chicks with one person this year and she will likely want more now.

 

[gjensen]

White legs is dominant over yellow, so I am not sure what is happening there. If you breed the offspring with white legs with a yellow legged bird, you should get all white legs. It is easier to get rid of a dominant trait than it is a recessive, so you should be able to deal with that pretty easily.
Regardless, it is evidence of an outcross that has not been seen all the way through. Some of them look like they have something else in them. Unless the breed in the State of it's origin never bred precisely true.

Eye color changes with maturity, so make sure you wait long enough.

Are you guys breeding to the Standard from Spain?

They are nice looking birds.

 

[ronott1]

White legs is dominant over yellow, so I am not sure what is happening there. If you breed the offspring with white legs with a yellow legged bird, you should get all white legs. It is easier to get rid of a dominant trait than it is a recessive, so you should be able to deal with that pretty easily.
Regardless, it is evidence of an outcross that has not been seen all the way through. Some of them look like they have something else in them. Unless the breed in the State of it's origin never bred precisely true.

Eye color changes with maturity, so make sure you wait long enough.

Are you guys breeding to the Standard from Spain?

They are nice looking birds.

Hi George!

Recent work on leg shank genetics has shown that it is on a simple dominance and recessive trait of one gene. It is 3 to 5 genes for yellow leg vs white leg color.

The old books that many rely on have a lot of wrong information in them.



I looks like white is dominant but that other pigment genes can cover the white.

Also, if you have a parent that is Ww and another parent that is Ww, you will have 25% that will get ww and have yellow shanks from two white shank parents.

 

[PetRock]

White legs is dominant over yellow, so I am not sure what is happening there. If you breed the offspring with white legs with a yellow legged bird, you should get all white legs. It is easier to get rid of a dominant trait than it is a recessive, so you should be able to deal with that pretty easily.
Regardless, it is evidence of an outcross that has not been seen all the way through. Some of them look like they have something else in them. Unless the breed in the State of it's origin never bred precisely true.

Eye color changes with maturity, so make sure you wait long enough.

Are you guys breeding to the Standard from Spain?

They are nice looking birds.

I thought that too but every one of my original flock has yellow legs and beaks. About 1/6 of the chicks in the last few hatches have kept their pinkish legs and all the rest have developed yellow legs. Out of over 100 chicks, the blue eyed one is the first one that has had that color of eyes. She is over 7 weeks old now so it will be interesting to see if they change to orange or stay off colored. The following link is to an article written in Spanish which I can't read unfortunately. If you look at photo 8, you can see 2 young PPs with different colored legs. That's exactly what my youngsters look like. Most have yellow and a few have legs the color of the bird on the right. You can also see that its beak is not yellow. Does anyone on this thread speak Spanish? I'm curious to know if they talk about leg color in this article.

http://migallinero.webcindario.com/LA PITA PINTA 1995- 2003.pdf

We are breeding to the standard from Spain or at least trying to.