Spiral Line Breeding and Genetics

[Amer]

Would it be possible to breed the Bantam Lav. males over the LF Lav. hen's, and then keep the resulting pullet's to breed back to the Bantam Lav. males to increase your genetic diversity? That way you wouldn't loose your color.

Trust me... it's no fun trying to fix oversized bantams. Doing that will probably just wreck the diversity all over again.

Keeping a healthy gene pool should solve problems, not cause more of them.

Breeders of bantam Buckeyes all over have been trying to reduce them by about ten ounces and it just isn't happening because of a tiny gene pool. Improving other traits that need improvement always causes size to be pushed back.
I'm just finding this out this year.

 

[Cyprus]

Trust me... it's no fun trying to fix oversized bantams. Doing that will probably just wreck the diversity all over again.

Keeping a healthy gene pool should solve problems, not cause more of them.

Breeders of bantam Buckeyes all over have been trying to reduce them by about ten ounces and it just isn't happening because of a tiny gene pool. Improving other traits that need improvement always causes size to be pushed back.
I'm just finding this out this year.

Unfortunately, you are right.

 

[nicalandia]

I'm not sure how this relates to my comment.

I was just bewildered by incorrect notion that when you cross parent A(with an specific feather Pattern) with Parent B(with a different feather pattern from parent A) you will "Never" be able to restore Parent A or Parent B specific phenotype, hence my reference to old outdated genetic theories, but thanks to Gregor Mendel we all know that is not true. However I understand that to most backyard breeders is a daunting task that may as well be impossible.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I don't know how people manage to work on perfecting many breeds/varieties unless they have a lot of help and an incredible infrastructure of breeding pens.
I also don't think I could expect to have any success with a single hen. I usually keep anywhere from 4 to 10 roosters and anywhere from 20 to 40 hens.
For about 10 years I've only had one variety of one breed and still have trouble working out the bugs.
The chicks are supposed to be mostly black with light down on the underbelly and front of neck. Dark slate legs and horn of ox beaks. I've never crossed them with anything else. In the last couple weeks I hatched about 70 chicks. About 6 looked like chipmunks with light tan beak and legs. Another 6 or so looked like ancona chicks, mostly white with patches of black and white legs. Obviously none of those will be used for breeding but I have to find out which hens are producing them. I have some breeding pens but I'm building 2 more small buildings with 3 breeding units each. I should be able to rotate hens and roosters between the buildings, hatch the eggs from each and then be able to definitively identify which hens(and possibly roosters) are producing the odd chicks.
This is not entirely unexpected since the breed was more of a landrace fowl of many colors (mostly black and partridge) till they were standardized into 4 varieties as late as 1980. So that is why I cringe when I hear about people crossing varieties expecting to get something that is repeatable.

 

[nicalandia]

So that is why I cringe when I hear about people crossing varieties expecting to get something that is repeatable.

I agree, but just pointing out that with the knowledge we have about the genetics inheritance of the genes required for most of the known patterns. Saying it´s not possible or impossible is really misleading.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I agree, but just pointing out that with the knowledge we have about the genetics inheritance of the genes required for most of the known patterns. Saying it´s not possible or impossible is really misleading.

I'm not disagreeing either. All things are possible. However, just speaking from experience, any little screwing around with what took decades or centuries to attain will create a setback.
I once traded some birds with a friend who claimed he had a pair producing extremely dark eggs. I gave him a pullet and a cockerel. Both had come from very dark eggs. I asked him to breed my pullet to his rooster and my cockerel to his hen. These birds were all the same color with all the consistently good characteristics of the breed. He then sent me two nice pullets, supposedly from those matings. I was very disappointed when I got the first eggs from those pullets. They were no darker than an orpington egg. In an interest of genetic diversity for vigor, I decided to use them thinking that mating them to my roosters would yield pullets that would lay darker eggs.
Generations later, that line never produced dark egg laying birds.
That and a one week mink massacre set me back years.

 

[NatJ]

I'm working with bantam Ameraucana. I currently have Wheaten (6F and 8M) and Lavender (1F, 4M).

So I was planning to start an intensive program to get through as many generations as I can as quickly as possible. Using all 4 stags to create not less than 4 lines with the Lav lady. Can you tell me what I will get if I breed my Lav stags over Wheaten ladies? Will this give me black splits or something else? Bred back to Lav... will I then get some Lav and some black, and will they be likely to have excess leakage?

Do you know if your 4 lavender males are unrelated? If they are full brothers, it won't help to swap them with the hen. Doing so will eat up a lot of time while waiting to clear out the previous male's sperm and not contribute to genetic diversity.

If you don't want to waste time--put one rooster with the hen for a few weeks, hatching every egg she lays. Then switch for another rooster, again hatching every egg she lays. No, you won't know exactly which rooster fathers which chick, but you will get as many chicks as possible, with at least some from each rooster.

Then you can divide the female chicks into four groups, and give one group to each male. Since you'll know within two choices who is the father of each new hen, you also know which two roosters are NOT her father, so you can put her with one of them.

If you want to do spiral mating, label your four groups somehow: 1,2,3,4 or A,B,C,D or red, blue, green, yellow or any other system that you can remember.

For a spiral mating system, every hen stays in the group where she hatched, and the group gets a new male from the group "before" it (so group B will keep it's own females, but get a new male from group A; a group B male will move to group C).

As for crossing with wheaten ameraucana--you could cross one or more of your lavender males to wheaten hens, cross the daughters back to a different lavender male (you'll get some birds with the lavender gene here), cross those daughters to yet another lavender male, etc. Just working with your current lavenders is probably an easier way to get good lavenders, but you could certainly try both ways.

 

[The Moonshiner]

If you want to put the time and effort in you can cross any patterns together then breed back to the originals.
It all depends on the patterns how hard it will be.
There's many that aren't nothing to do. Black Xs barred, black Xs lavender, silver duckwing Xs gold duckwing etc. etc.
Complicated patterns provide more of a challenge. For example buff crossed with other patterns can be a longer road.
It is far from impossible to do. You just need to know the genes involved and sometimes test breedings are needed to follow the recessive genes.

 

[Cyprus]

Okay, so I admit it is not impossible. But it sure would be a pain and a half.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Okay, so I admit it is not impossible. But it sure would be a pain and a half.

True and not something I want to spend my time on.