Show off your Delawares! *PIC HEAVY*

[Laney]

Hmmm Maybe someone should send me some Eggs from this line and I'll see what I get as far as any Columbian coloring and horn colored beaks. I'll take good care of them I promise!

What's happening with the Columbian showing up is that one of the Hens is missing a barring gene, or has a heterozygous barring gene. From what I have been able to read on the Coloring Genes.. it is a combination of the S (silver) gene, with the Co (columbian)columbian gene that gives the base color. Removing the wild type and adding the white/silver while allowing the black back in. Then you add in the B (barring gene) to get the barring, this will create an all over barring pattern, but because the base color is white/silver it won't show up on most of the body, except where there is black.

Now.... I'm thinking one of Cyn's Hens has a B/b+......or some such combination. If a Hen and a Rooster were to both have a B/b+ then 25% of the offspring would have a Columbian look with the b+/b+ gene combination which would make barring a recessive or not happen at all I'm not sure on that part yet.

Laney

 

[speckledhen]

Well, there you go. And I understand not a word of it, LOL. The problem with genes is that you don't know what the bird is carrying until you hatch offspring, and then, you have to decide which parent is the one carrying whatever gene is expressed. Takes alot of breeding.

Laney, I have to get eggs for so many folks the end of Feb/early March. If you want some eggs, you are one of the folks on my mental "short list".

 

[joletabey]

Laney. . . . goddess of genetics. . .

thank you- I am genetically challenged, and you make it sound so simple!

 

[Laney]

Well you've bred Ike to a few different girls, so you know he has at least the B/b+. But it is possible that he does not have the fully dominant barring combo... B/B. Hens should not have the fully dominant combo, or I should say can not in a sex linked barring breed. So all the hens will be a B/b+. The need in the end if you are shooting for perfection is for a roo with perfect type and perfect genes. I wish us all luck in finding that bird.

Laney

 

[speckledhen]

Delawares are a complicated bird to breed due to the fact that the males and the females are quite different, especially in their tail barring. I'm so happy to see so many of you really learning about the breed and wanting to cull for type so that we not only have lots more Delawares out there, but really great examples of the breed! Does my heart good.

 

[jeremy]

Quote:
The words of a true enthusiast, hopefully one day we might all have birds as spectacular as yours Cynthia!

 

[speckledhen]

Thanks, Jeremy! One thing I also want to point out is that, at some point, you have to grab hold of your best ones and start breeding. I went through two hatches and rejected 15 cockerels to get to Isaac. I did keep one cockerel from the first batch, Kira's half brother, however, though he had very distinct tail barring and nice leg color, his comb was odd without really good points, he was more slender than Ike and his temperament, which started out good, as he became mature, became aggressive, so he had to go.

Isaac outshone all the others, though in his bunch, there were a couple of pretty goodlooking boys. Now, if I had rejected Isaac over a couple of his minor flaws, I would not been able to get started on getting nice Dels out to folks. Yes, I could improve on a couple of my hens a bit, but gotta get going at some point. I wanted a really great rooster, more so than great hens. And what a hen lacks, he will make up for most of the time; case in point, Gracie. It's entirely possible that Isaac will produce sons who outshine their sire.

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

Morning all. Freezing here!! 23 degrees (uugghhh, water bowls frozen AGAIN). I normally love winter time as summer and the heat take a toll on me. Maybe I'm just gettin' old, but I've had enough cold and wet for a while!!!

I am 19 hours into day 21 of my first hatch of 2010 and I FINALLY have a few pips. One of L'il Bits eggs and 2 BBS rocks. I guess the temp on this new bator probably needs to be tweaked up about 1/2 a degree.

Kathy - BTW, I am hatching in the sportsman and my humidity from day 18 to today has been 68-69% and steady. Room humidity is kinda low due to the furnace running (35% +/-). The wicking pad in mine jumped the humidity up about 18 pts

I'll let Pepper and his girls out in a little while and get some pix. Gotta see what L'il Bits beak color is. My mine tells me its no longer got any black on it....but, CRS runs strong in my family

Hope everyone has a great Monday. I will be AWOL here Wed-Fri. Flying to Vegas Wed earl AM for interview, on to Southern Cal Wed nite for an interview with the owner on Thurs, then back to Vegas Thurs nite, on to Atlanta Fri. Please pray that things go well and that an offer will be forthcoming shortly after I return...too many Springtime project need doin' and I gotta have a way to support my "addictions".

Y'all have a great day...pix later

 

[speckledhen]

Ok, seriousbill chimed in on the solid-looking boy Kathy posted and I'm glad she did since we are using this thread for education:

I've had one like that, and they are not really solid. But, the barring is so faint, you have to hold them in the light to see it in the tail (also if you look closely at the pic, you'll see spotting around the hackles, so that's the barring gene expressing). There is no possible way they could be solid genetically speaking, since all of my males carry two barring genes and so does your male (and all of the females are obviously barred, one barring gene, that is,--so these are NOT heterozygous for the barring gene--as I'm sure some would like to say). So, it's just bad, over-heavy barring, and he's a cull. I think Sand Hill does have Col. Rock in the lines, and it could be that influence partly, but again, these males do have two barring genes, they just don't express it well, and it shows faintly... Anyway, the usual explanation for a bird like that is that he's only got one copy of the barring gene, but in this case that is simply not possible. So, it's a poorly expressed barring gene.​

 

[popcornpuppy]

That's good info to have. We need some one to explain genetics in layman's terms LOL