Show Off Your Games!

[Rocky64]

These are examples of birds with what I understand in English is called Porcupine: These are Indonesian birds the Red one is a game cock. In Indonesia the name translates as "Iron Feather". Basically the feathers are mutated into hard spiny quills... I was thinking it was partial dominate but I found some info that it is autosomal recessive (pc). Obviously these birds would need to be protected from cold... but they are so weird looking.

They sure are weird looking, but kinda cool.

 

[Regular Guy]

I can see that back breeding might help you to determine some recessive genes in a line or make sure co-dominate genes are all present in a high %, but then it seems like some testing out crossing would need to be done if you where unsure about certain genetics as well to try and get those to express to confirm a genetic question. I am still slogging through all the genetic stuff out on the net, so that is probably confusing me a bit. I can see the value in the various inbreeding schemes... especially for line purity reasons. I do wonder at some adds too.

I read someone did extreme inbreeding with Leghorns for 12 years and the birds developed the porcupine feather mutation, so there is a magic inbred line when the mutations start appearing in flocks. I tried to find photos of that line of birds but could not. The flock ended up in the hands of the US Gov. Poultry research folks and I am unsure if they still are maintaining it as that was a long while back.

After reading up on hens in general I am thinking breeding of hens should not be rushed.

I was thinking more along these lines...Let's say you aquired an hen that had produced exceptional cocks and along with her you recieved her half brother. Say the Hen was 3/4 YL Hatch and 1/4 Brown Red and her half brother was 3/4 YL Hatch and 1/4 Kelso. You also would like to stay with the 3/4 Hatch and 1/4 Brown Red blood (or maybe within 1/32nd of it). Using this half brother/sister pair, how could you acheive that? Maybe you would like to start TWO lines for crossing?

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

I was thinking more along these lines...Let's say you aquired an hen that had produced exceptional cocks and along with her you recieved her half brother. Say the Hen was 3/4 YL Hatch and 1/4 Brown Red and her half brother was 3/4 YL Hatch and 1/4 Kelso. You also would like to stay with the 3/4 Hatch and 1/4 Brown Red blood (or maybe within 1/32nd of it). Using this half brother/sister pair, how could you acheive that? Maybe you would like to start TWO lines for crossing?

Okay I'll take a stab, this is what I would do: breed the brother and sister that would maintain 3/4 YL Hatch, but would result in 1/8 Brown Red & 1/8 Kelso in each chick... then you would need to Back breed the Cocks to their Mother, that would bump the next gen out of her to 3/4 YLH, 1/16 K, the rest BR. You would need to breed back one more time to get to 3/4 YLH, 1/32 K, rest BR Cock & Hen Chicks.

Now the problem is how to use the best Hen Chicks from the 1st gen & 2nd gen.... I would choose the the hens that most resemble their mother and only keep those (phenotyping in the hopes the genes fall in place). I would wait to breed the 1st gene best Hens to second gen Cocks that would create a 3/4 YLH, 3/16 K, rest BR. The original 2nd Gen Hens would be bred to best original 3rd Gen Cocks out of the original Hen... so those would be only 3/32 K, This would give me three breeding groups within 3 years, the 2 higher % Kelso groups Cocks could be back crossed the 4th year on the original Hen to lower the Kelso closer to the 3rd gen Group 1 birds or Cocks in group 1 could be crossed with these Hens... cross these lines and stabilize type. This will require heavy culling and comparison between birds. The big thing will be tracking %s in each Hen and Stag... so you know how much Kelso is present because the goal is to keep the Kelso % low as close to nil as possible. Record keeping will be a must for sure.

Any how that is sort of how I would plan it out... but in the end it is all about what sort of birds you get in each gen.

 

[JShubin]

I was thinking more along these lines...Let's say you aquired an hen that had produced exceptional cocks and along with her you recieved her half brother. Say the Hen was 3/4 YL Hatch and 1/4 Brown Red and her half brother was 3/4 YL Hatch and 1/4 Kelso. You also would like to stay with the 3/4 Hatch and 1/4 Brown Red blood (or maybe within 1/32nd of it). Using this half brother/sister pair, how could you acheive that? Maybe you would like to start TWO lines for crossing?

That is a pretty specific scenario... I am sure someone might have a good reason for wanting something this specific.. me personally I wouldn't worry so much about trying to produce/maintaining exact gene ratios. I wouldn't want my fixation with gene ratios clouding my judgment when selecting viable broodfowl. Also I would be worried about what happens after your reach this goal... now you have a yard full of nearly identical and slightly inbred fowl.

If I did want that specific ratio, I would be more inclined to import another full or 1/2 brown red hen or cock. And recreate the 3/4 hatch x 1/4 brown red ratio using new blood. And keep two families for the sake of genetic diversity.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

I think that would be easier... and I agree ratio could over shadow performance/traits you want & must be considered.

I was also thinking chicken math might kick in...

 

[JShubin]

I failed chicken math, despite doing well in calculus.

 

[Bushmansbliss]

anyone raise all white or all black game birds...?

 

[Bushmansbliss]

I had to put my pit pic after seseems the others. Heres a few different whites and a bearded black game pulley.

 

[Bushmansbliss]

And one more.

 

[Regular Guy]

Alright you now have at least one clutch off the granson bred back to the original hen and what if at the same time you had bred the broodcock to his daughters and grandaughters? Now you have to lines nearly identical to the original pair and you should have plenty of viable offspring for picking through, no need to go elsewhere. Remeber the reason you did this to begin with was because you are setting a family like the original pair (The hen was a known producer of excellent stags, not all hens are, and hopefully her half brother was an exceptional cock).and you also have plenty of aunts, uncles and cousins of varying percentages so you probably have plenty of culls and hopefully plenty of good ones like the original pair. If you are importing fowl and crossing them...aren't you basically just creating half and quarter bred hybrids and if you get a good one, it's gone when that chickens dies...and what to do next...you aren't fixing any traits that way right?