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draye said:
@alohachickens
I didn't know you were interested in maintaining a blue egg gene.

I have one NN hen hen that lays a green egg.
So far I haven't gotten one with a single comb to lay a green egg though. I seem to lose it on the 3/4 cross getting my NN's.

Here she is. I'm not sure if she's a silver or not:

She may carry the mottling gene: her daddy was the Salmon NN rooster that carried mottling gene.

Right now she's in with:

He's a nephew of hers. Out of a half sister that laid a brown egg. He sports a pea comb, trying to see if I can get more green egg layers.

If I can get some of her daughters that lay green then maybe I can cross them to Mr. Bo Spangles and carry that on.
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I'd be interested in adding the gene, but doing so in a way that won't absolutely *destroy* my other progress is the problem.

I can't use anything with a pea comb or slate legs, as I found that by the time I bred out the pea comb and slate legs, I also bred out the blue egg gene. Those two traits (pea comb and slate legs) seem too "tied" to the Ameraucana blue egg gene and I wasn't able to break them apart in my early attempts. If some day you get single combs and yellow legs AND blue eggs, give me a holler!

So far it seems like if I want blue eggs with single combs and yellow legs, the Legbar is my best choice, but I'll have to remove the barring, add size, and remove crests. Which is a TON of work - but seems possible unlike the slate legs (for example) that lingered for generations here.

My perfect, ideal blue egg layer would be something like a NHR that lays blue eggs. If I had room to mess with projects, I'd tackle it scientifically, and use German NHR to remove barring and crests, and add size to the Legbar, and then mix the not-barred / not crested blue egg layers to Alohas. The NHR seems to be a nice "base" that lets the Aloha spots through pretty easily while improving size and type.
 
I'll talk about my blue eggers later-

Slate legs are the worst when yellow legs are the goal because slate requires the dominant white skin plus lacking the Id gene(clears slate to white, clears green to yellow).

It is very unlikely to hit on single combed colored eggers if it is linked with the pea comb gene. They are located close to each other so they 'inherit' together all the time. They separate something like only once in 200+ birds, can't remember the exact numbers but the other problem is, it could happen in a cockerel and you would never know unless you majorly lucked out and kept him for breeding.... and then again lucked out by keeping the 'right' pullets... So yes, single comb is far far better for your project than any pea combed bird...

There is no linkage between slate legs and pea comb/O gene. It was just coincidence in your case.

The Legbar would introduce another potential problem- they are supposed to be e+(wild type red duckwing). It's recessive to wheaten so if you don't like it, it would be a somewhat difficult one to remove. The barring and crest are easy to get rid of- do a sex linked legbar cross and keep the non barred daughters and the barring is gone forever.. the crest is dominant but most of the time you can recognize the presence of it even on many day olds(the comb can have tells) so it can be relatively easy to get rid of but it does take a couple generations and a good number of birds- you already know it can get annoying how a perfectly colored bird happens to have the crest also... grr.. lol

If white ear lobes bother you... definitely go for legbars with less or no white in their lobes. It's a polygenic trait with both dominant and recessive genes and has the habit of surprising you by popping all of a sudden a couple generations down.
 
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alohachickens said:
By the way, I haven't been posting much on here, because I've been raising chicks and at this point the feathers aren't fully in on them, so it's just a waiting game to see how they turn out.

I have been hatching like CRAZY and the 'bator is popping as we speak with a large batch of probably 60 or more chicks today. That's in addition to the 50 in my horse trailer, and about 40 in a pen outside. We've had a freakishly warm winter and I'm taking advantage of the mid 80's we've had all February to raise lots of chicks. Normally it's in the 70's and the chicks would be a bit chilly out there. This is more like late March or April weather . . .
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Will any of these be for sale? Im looking at starting a small backyard flock and like the aloha chickens.
 
While in the shower this morning, I had a thought which leads to a question. Sommer, on my side project, you stated that 1 in 8 (or thereabouts) would be red mottled. I got to thinking about the other seven. Would you expect them to be dark at hatch? I guess what I'm thinking is that if the 1 in 8 are the only ones that are red at hatch, it would make it really easy to hatch as many as the hens will lay and sell off any black chicks at hatch. So I'm curious what your expectation would be on that.

Oh - and by the way....I haven't had a single white egg yet this year. Yep, those slacker Exchequer Leghorns have not come out of winter egg hibernation even now
hmm.png
Fortunately their daughters are doing better - thank goodness or I'd still be waiting to even set up a breeding pen and start collecting eggs. As it is, two weeks today until hatch day!!!
 
Never mind - I think I answered my own question. The other 7 won't necessarily be black. I'm thinking some will be red but not mottled, while some will be red mottled and the others will be blackish. Is that right? If so, I can still reduce the number I need to raise by only keeping the reddish birds. I'll have to grow them out to find out if they're mottled but at least that's better than having to grow all of them out.
 
HEChicken said:
Never mind - I think I answered my own question. The other 7 won't necessarily be black. I'm thinking some will be red but not mottled, while some will be red mottled and the others will be blackish. Is that right? If so, I can still reduce the number I need to raise by only keeping the reddish birds. I'll have to grow them out to find out if they're mottled but at least that's better than having to grow all of them out.
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They will probably be "degrees" in between. My Exchequer crosses were lots of shades of birch brown.

But, it should be easy to spot the brighter red ones fairly early on. Anything that is obviously very, very dark could be culled earlier. The odds of getting a bright, lighter red chick with the white mottling are going to be very low. We'll just have to wait and see the chicks! I can't wait for them to hatch. Will be see bright red poofballs and super dark poofys? Or will they be all kinds of shades of brown, black, and red?!? I really don't know!

I can't wait to see the chicks and see what kind of variety you see in the colors at hatch! Maybe after the first batch, you will get an idea of what to look for in the future batches, so you can cull the "not-red" ones early?
 

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