Small-combed Bielefelder Project

[LittleDinosaur]

Update: My F1s have hatched! This is Biele Roo x Barred Hen.

Autosexing appears to have been successful! I'm looking forwards to seeing how they grow.

 

[LittleDinosaur]

Some more pictures of the F1s. I ended up with 2 cockerels and 1 pullet.

 

[LittleDinosaur]

Update on the F1s. Sadly, one of the cockerels was killed by a dog. The remaining cockerel has developed a single comb, so he is now excluded from breeding of F2s. The pullet is growing beyond expectations. She has a nice pea comb, excellent barring, no muffs and is huge. She is much larger than both of her brothers, nearly double in size. I'm incredibly curious why the boys are so slow in development? They are 2 months old now.

 

[LittleDinosaur]

Update again. Nearing 4 months old now. The pullet has outgrown all the purebred Bielefelder hens, both same age and older than herself. Her feathers are a bit roughed up here from cockerels trying to get at her, but her shape is better than I thought it would be for an F1 pullet. I have selected my best purebred cockerel from this year's batch to breed her with for F2.

 

[allamerican401]

Great thread! I'm looking at playing around with my bielefelder & bjg roos over bielefelder, bjg, slw, & dominique hens to try and make something interesting with a rose comb and autosexing.

 

[gunslinger33]

@LittleDinosaur you mentioned crossing a Biel with a partridge. I crossed my Biel roo over a partridge rock hen. The pullet is still young (hatched in March) she is a super sweet girl , lays a dark egg. Egg is tiny right now. None the less she reminds you of a Welsummer hen , no barring

 

[LittleDinosaur]

@LittleDinosaur you mentioned crossing a Biel with a partridge. I crossed my Biel roo over a partridge rock hen. The pullet is still young (hatched in March) she is a super sweet girl , lays a dark egg. Egg is tiny right now. None the less she reminds you of a Welsummer hen , no barring

I crossed my Biele with a Barred Rock mix, not Partridge Rock mix. Even so, they are wonderful birds to cross. The mixes have all been super sweet.

 

[LittleDinosaur]

UPDATE: To those interested, that F1 hen is in fact confirmed today to be an F1 cockerel...About a week ago I noticed some of its tail feathers growing longer and then BAM! she is now a he. So, I will be breeding him to a purebred hen come springtime.

I was confused as to why the autosexing ultimately failed, so I took my questions to a poultry colour genetics forum. There, I was informed about even more colouring genes I needed to consider. Bielefelders are double barred, but not on a black base. Cocks have 2 copies of the barred gene and 2 copies of duckwing; hens 1 copy of barred and 2 copies of duckwing. Barred Rock cocks are 2 copies of barred and 2 copies of black; hens are 1 copy of barred and 2 copies of black. With my original hen being a cross of BR and EE, I only know she has 1 copy of barred and 1 copy of black, she might have a copy duckwing, birchin or partridge, too. If she does, then some of her offspring will get the black and some will get the other, so it makes it very difficult to try to sex the chicks.

However! This does not mean the project will fail, just a bit more complicated. I shall breed this roo back to a pure hen and select for both duckwing and small-comb. I will probably also re-breed his parents to get more F1s to choose from and allow myself further lines for crossing in the future.

 

[HomesteadNowhere]

Looks like you haven't been on the forum in a while. Just found this thread and hoping you come back to update! Looks really interesting and is very helpful for my own breeding project ideas.

 

[papoisback07]

Hello,

I currently raise purebred Bielefelders in the Adirondacks of Upstate NY. This is the first and only breed of single-combed rooster I've ever worked with (I have single-combed hens, but their combs are super small). It gets really cold here and so far have had terrible luck with frostbite on all of my roosters regardless of what I do. So, with that said, I am starting a breeding project with the goal of producing a small comb Bielefelder while retaining auto-sexing and other SOP.

My understanding of genetics is very basic, but I'm doing as much reading as I can to understand. My current theory of how to do this is to cross a Bielefelder rooster (double barred e+) with a pea-combed barred hen I have, and then doing the same with another set so I have 2 unrelated lines going. F1s will have 50/50 small-comb / single-comb, so I will breed small-comb F1s to create 75/25 small-comb / single-comb F2s and then continue selecting to breed small-combed F3s and F4s in an attempt to wipe out the recessive single-comb gene. This is all assuming that the Bielefelder over a barred hen will still produce auto-sexing chicks.

I'm looking for any and all input on whether this is a sound theory.

Thanks!

Do you still breed them I lost my flock over winter interested in re starting my flock.