Silkie breeding, genetics & showing

[Sonoran Silkies]

got this cute little guy from a recent paint silkie hatch.. what is he?

Interesting?

 

[Adoravachick]

got this cute little guy from a recent paint silkie hatch.. what is he?

Unique color! Never seen anything like it. I have seen porcelains with buff markings like this, but with a lavender base, instead of white. A white base and out of a paint pen? hmm? Nature threw of nice curve ball. I like it.

 

[rufflemyfeather]

i like him too. can't wait to see how he looks in a few months.

 

[Fur N Feathers]

got this cute little guy from a recent paint silkie hatch.. what is he?

That cute baby should be named Valentine. It has a leaning heart on that wing! You should post him in the Silkies of a Different Color thread! Maybe someone there has seen the color before. I like it too.

 

[marquisella]

We are having NO luck with this chick! NOW it seems to have wry neck! Treating with poly-vi-sol, just started yesterday but it's pretty severe, it's head is turned almost all the way upside down and it can't stand. It's alert though, and I told her to hand feed and water it.

Update: it seems to be doing better and is trying to hold it's head straight, it is also eating food mashed with water very well.

Try to massage its neck while gently putting the head in a natural position. I had success with 2 chicks doing this without vitamins. The neck muscles are contracting and massaging them helps them to relax so they can go back to a normal position. I massaged their necks 2 or 3 times a day. It can't hurt.

 

[peepblessed]

Why 2 egg cartons? Do you cut the bottom of each carton?

I only cut the top one and that allows the egg to stand without touching the sides of the carton. When they pip, fluid can make it stick to the side.

 

[rufflemyfeather]

That cute baby should be named Valentine. It has a leaning heart on that wing! You should post him in the Silkies of a Different Color thread! Maybe someone there has seen the color before. I like it too.

Valentine it is! will do thanks.

 

[JacquiJ]

Ok, so this goes waaaaay back on this thread, but here is how to DNA sex chicks!

I am an avian biology major and do undergraduate research at the University of Georgia. We often use chickens for studies because they are able to make things like antibodies against a protein that we are trying to detect. We just simply collect the eggs where the antibodies end up. They are also the best to use for reproductive studies as they are VERY similar to humans, they ovulate every day, their ovary is open and not encased, and they do not need to maintain a pregnancy.

I have done several surgeries on laying hens and have been involved in several studies to help find cures for things like tetratrichamonas and coccidiosis. Recently we have been raising exotic chicks for some of the younger students to get used to handling them. Before we adopt them into new homes we use DNA sexing to determine who is male and female to make sure no one ends up with something they don't want. Some people have asked and here is how we do it.

We first needed to collect 4 feather bulbs from the chicks we were interested in testing. Basically, we pluck 4 feathers and use an exacto knife to remove the buld at the end (this is where all the DNA is). For this we used a frizzle cochin, a Naked Neck, and a silkie.


You then take the bulbs and add 20 micro liters of NaOH and incubate them for 20 minutes at 72 degrees C. This breaks down the feather bulb and relsease the DNA.


After they incubate, you add 180 microliters of Tris HCl.


Once you have done that, you need to prepare your gel for a PCR. You add primers, 6 microliters of the feather bulb solution, and taq polymerase to a tube. Then you laod your gel and you run the gel at 94deg C for 2 minutes, then 25 cycles of 94 deg C for 5 seconds, 54 deg C for 5 seconds, 72 deg C for 5 sec. Then it is run at 72 deg C for 5 minutes.

Here is me preparing the tubes to be loaded into the gel.


This is the gel running. You can see the blue lines in it. That is our DNA.

This is the final picture of the gel. You have to put it under a fluorescent light to see all the bands. It isn't entirely finished running, but we could see the results we needed at this point. The first lane (on the left) is the Ladder. This is just a standard that is used to show molecular weights and lets you know if your gel ran properly. The second band is the frizzle, the third is the naked neck (really hard to see), and the fourth is the silkie. Because each lane only has one band we know that all the chicks we tested are male.



Male chickens are homozygous with ZZ (unlike human males that have XY), thus why only one band for Z shows up. Female chickens are heterozygous with ZW (human females are XX), so if there had been a female chick two bands would have shown up: one for Z and one for W.

Hope you guys enjoyed this

 

[BarnGoddess01]

Ok, so this goes waaaaay back on this thread, but here is how to DNA sex chicks!

I am an avian biology major and do undergraduate research at the University of Georgia. We often use chickens for studies because they are able to make things like antibodies against a protein that we are trying to detect. We just simply collect the eggs where the antibodies end up. They are also the best to use for reproductive studies as they are VERY similar to humans, they ovulate every day, their ovary is open and not encased, and they do not need to maintain a pregnancy.

I have done several surgeries on laying hens and have been involved in several studies to help find cures for things like tetratrichamonas and coccidiosis. Recently we have been raising exotic chicks for some of the younger students to get used to handling them. Before we adopt them into new homes we use DNA sexing to determine who is male and female to make sure no one ends up with something they don't want. Some people have asked and here is how we do it.

We first needed to collect 4 feather bulbs from the chicks we were interested in testing. Basically, we pluck 4 feathers and use an exacto knife to remove the buld at the end (this is where all the DNA is). For this we used a frizzle cochin, a Naked Neck, and a silkie.


You then take the bulbs and add 20 micro liters of NaOH and incubate them for 20 minutes at 72 degrees C. This breaks down the feather bulb and relsease the DNA.


After they incubate, you add 180 microliters of Tris HCl.


Once you have done that, you need to prepare your gel for a PCR. You add primers, 6 microliters of the feather bulb solution, and taq polymerase to a tube. Then you laod your gel and you run the gel at 94deg C for 2 minutes, then 25 cycles of 94 deg C for 5 seconds, 54 deg C for 5 seconds, 72 deg C for 5 sec. Then it is run at 72 deg C for 5 minutes.

Here is me preparing the tubes to be loaded into the gel.


This is the gel running. You can see the blue lines in it. That is our DNA.

This is the final picture of the gel. You have to put it under a fluorescent light to see all the bands. It isn't entirely finished running, but we could see the results we needed at this point. The first lane (on the left) is the Ladder. This is just a standard that is used to show molecular weights and lets you know if your gel ran properly. The second band is the frizzle, the third is the naked neck (really hard to see), and the fourth is the silkie. Because each lane only has one band we know that all the chicks we tested are male.



Male chickens are homozygous with ZZ (unlike human males that have XY), thus why only one band for Z shows up. Female chickens are heterozygous with ZW (human females are XX), so if there had been a female chick two bands would have shown up: one for Z and one for W.

Hope you guys enjoyed this

This is VERY exciting!!! It will be great when you can tell us colour as well especially for genes like lavender and the silver/gold thing for those of us working with white. Will save a PILE of work and heartache down the road. And even better, the shank feathering genes so we can get that precisely nailed down as well.

 

[JacquiJ]

This is VERY exciting!!! It will be great when you can tell us colour as well especially for genes like lavender and the silver/gold thing for those of us working with white. Will save a PILE of work and heartache down the road. And even better, the shank feathering genes so we can get that precisely nailed down as well.

That can easily be done now actually!! The problem is that it isn't where the money is found so no one is willing to do it

. And those that are willing do not have the funds to do so.