Silver Laced Barnevelder Chicks/Hatching Eggs?

[tls_ranch]

Quote:
To make Silver double-laced Barnevelders, I was told that you should use a silver penciled rock or silver penciled wyandotte and cross it with a very good strain of Barnevelders. The Silver Laced wyandottes carry the columbian gene (messes up the lacing) and that will be hard to breed out with working with the silvers. With blue-laced you can keep crossing back with pure barnevelders to get better type, lacing, egg color and get rid of wrong genes like columbian. Eventually you could even keep the whole flock together as Black, Blue, Splash once the "blues" are up to breed standard. With the Silvers it's harder to get back to the right type, lacing, breed standard, etc because you can't back cross to a "gold" true Barnevelder with out adding gold and red leakage back in. You have to keep breeding the first "hybrid" offspring back together. It's also harder to introduce new blood and it would be a good idea to start with several pens of breeders. If I've gotten any of this wrong, hopefully a genetics expert will jump in and correct me

Trisha

 

[mountainvieworchards]

Here is a pullet from my large fowl silver double laced Barnevelder Project. She is just starting to show lacing and will hopefully have nice lacing in her adult plumage. She is about 12 weeks. I have four such pullets, and also some silver blues. I have one male silver split from a different pair that I will breed on my 2013 pullets to start working on my silver.

I have been breeding back to gold double laced Barnevelders for several years to fix the type. There is still red leakage in these pullets and it may take some doing to get rid of that.

Andy

 

[Sterkfarm]

Is there any reason I can't use dark brahmas instead of pencilled rocks? Is the 'penciling' the same, or not? Does anybody know? I'd like to give this a try as well...I have the barnies but now am having a hard time finding the silver gene bird. If anyone has a thought on this I'd love to hear about it. Way to go, Andy. This is a tough project! I'm in Canada...too bad, otherwise we could work together to get some nice lines going.

 

[big medicine]

The color pattern would be the same using dark Brahma instead of silver penciled rocks. But you complicate things considerably with feather legs and pea combs.

 

[Sterkfarm]

Feather legs! That's right; I forgot Brahmas have feathered legs. It's not a breed I have ever owned so I was unaware that was a breed trait. That would be very hard to get rid of. And penciled any things are impossible to find. Gah.

 

[mountainvieworchards]

I used blue Plymouth rocks to provide the silver gene. My original project was to get blue double laced and the silver gene came as a bonus. Starting over I would get a silver penciled Plymouth rock.

 

[mountainvieworchards]

 

[Sterkfarm]

Funny you should say that...I just got word someone is doing a similar BL project nearby and wants to hand over her white laced culls to me (!!!) I'll have to work on improving the quality of the silver in the lacing I guess, since type is pretty solid. Still think silver penciled rocks? And boy are they hard to find up here. Btw is that one of your parent stock? Nice lacing. I'm impressed.

 

[mountainvieworchards]

That is one of my pullets from this summer. She is 7/8 Barnevelder and about 16 to 18 wks in that pic

 

[Sterkfarm]

Here is what my foundation birds look like. A close up of the lacing, and what appears to be silver leakage (?)

Mountainview, what direction would you take these guys in? The type is all/mostly there (to my uneducated eye).it's just the feather pattern/coloration now.
I'm really interested to hear your thoughts!