The "Ask Anything" to Nicalandia Thread

[Egg Snatcher]

Its highly likely that your white rooster is recessive white. When crossed to paint 50% of chicks will hatch black and 50% paint

Thanks! If my white hen is also recessive will I get all white chicks or will some be partridge?

 

[BobletFarmBirds]

Hey! How do blue buff Colombian genetics work? What does it take to get that color?
Same question with blue jubilee
Thank you!!

 

[NatJ]

Hey! How do blue buff Colombian genetics work? What does it take to get that color?
Same question with blue jubilee
Thank you!!

Blue Buff Columbian: same as Buff Columbian, plus the blue gene.
Buff Columbian includes gold (not silver), plus Columbian (obviously), likely on a base of Wheaten (E^Wh) or Partridge (e^b). There are some amount of modifiers to make the shade be buff rather than gold, red, dark brown, etc.

Blue Jubilee: the blue gene, plus whatever else makes Jubilee. Jubilee means different colors in different breeds. For example, Jubilee Cornish are quite different than Jubilee Orpingtons in both appearance and genetics.

Any time you work with the blue gene, it affects the black parts of the chicken. On a solid black chicken, this means it turns solid blue. On a Buff Columbian chicken, only the black areas are affected (tail, hackles, wing feathers).

Blue is incompletely dominant. One copy of the gene makes blue, two copies make splash, and no blue gene leaves the original black color. This means when you breed a blue chicken (one gene for blue, one for not-blue) to another blue chicken, some chicks will inherit the blue gene from both parents and will be splash. Other chicks will inherit the not-blue gene from both parents and will show black. About half the chicks will get the blue gene from one parent and the not-blue gene from the other parent and those will actually be blue. Breeding a splash parent (two copies of the blue gene) to a black parent (no blue gene) will give only blue chicks (one blue gene from the splash parent, one not-blue gene from the black parent.) And in all of this, the black/blue/splash is on the parts that would otherwise be black, such as the tail & hackle of a Buff Columbian chicken or all over a solid black chicken. So with Buff Columbian, you could breed a Blue Buff Columbian to another Blue Buff Columbian to get some normal (black) Buff Columbian, some Blue Buff Columbian, and some Splash Buff Columbian.

 

[BobletFarmBirds]

Blue Buff Columbian: same as Buff Columbian, plus the blue gene.
Buff Columbian includes gold (not silver), plus Columbian (obviously), likely on a base of Wheaten (E^Wh) or Partridge (e^b). There are some amount of modifiers to make the shade be buff rather than gold, red, dark brown, etc.

Blue Jubilee: the blue gene, plus whatever else makes Jubilee. Jubilee means different colors in different breeds. For example, Jubilee Cornish are quite different than Jubilee Orpingtons in both appearance and genetics.

Any time you work with the blue gene, it affects the black parts of the chicken. On a solid black chicken, this means it turns solid blue. On a Buff Columbian chicken, only the black areas are affected (tail, hackles, wing feathers).

Blue is incompletely dominant. One copy of the gene makes blue, two copies make splash, and no blue gene leaves the original black color. This means when you breed a blue chicken (one gene for blue, one for not-blue) to another blue chicken, some chicks will inherit the blue gene from both parents and will be splash. Other chicks will inherit the not-blue gene from both parents and will show black. About half the chicks will get the blue gene from one parent and the not-blue gene from the other parent and those will actually be blue. Breeding a splash parent (two copies of the blue gene) to a black parent (no blue gene) will give only blue chicks (one blue gene from the splash parent, one not-blue gene from the black parent.) And in all of this, the black/blue/splash is on the parts that would otherwise be black, such as the tail & hackle of a Buff Columbian chicken or all over a solid black chicken. So with Buff Columbian, you could breed a Blue Buff Columbian to another Blue Buff Columbian to get some normal (black) Buff Columbian, some Blue Buff Columbian, and some Splash Buff Columbian.

Thank you!! I appreciate the explanation.

I am talking Orpingtons. Im just getting started with chicks this year but have lots of plans.

If I wanted to introduce a different line for them for diversity, would it be safest to cross back to buff birds with the blue buff then clean up blue buff color from there?

Cross blue jubilee back to blue birds, or jubilee?

 

[NatJ]

If I wanted to introduce a different line for them for diversity, would it be safest to cross back to buff birds with the blue buff then clean up blue buff color from there?

That would probably work well for the Buff Columbian & Blue Buff Columbian.

I am talking Orpingtons....
Cross blue jubilee back to blue birds, or jubilee?

Crossing back to normal jubilee would work fine. Crossing to blue jubilee should work equally well. Crossing to a solid blue bird would not be a good choice, because you don't want to lose the jubilee pattern. (I wasn't quite sure which "blue" you meant to ask about.)

 

[cvamoca]

Can I ask a simple-ish question?
My Serama pair, male is here- I'd call him sort-of Brown red- his 1 son is the same, just minimal colour on hackles and saddle, the hens are black. I don't know their backgrounds- who bred them or how, I bought them as adults and haven't bred them, except one chick last year, a black pullet.
This one hen's 8 chicks- one appears to be mottled? Others have a bit of white on wings- while I think they'll eventually be black or brown red, is it possible that at least 1 here is mottled?
Attached are 7 of 8 chicks, the one with so much white is the one I'm hoping will stay mottled- those white feathers aren't going to turn black, are they? Seems like on a black bird that you want to be all black, it'll have a big ole white feather somewhere- a gorgeous black Silkie of mine is spoiled by a big white foot feather...

For these guys though- Would be cool to have some non black.
It's been many years since I did genetics...from the old Classroom at the Coop days.
Thanks in advance!

 

[NatJ]

Can I ask a simple-ish question?
My Serama pair, male is here- I'd call him sort-of Brown red- his 1 son is the same, just minimal colour on hackles and saddle, the hens are black. I don't know their backgrounds- who bred them or how, I bought them as adults and haven't bred them, except one chick last year, a black pullet.
This one hen's 8 chicks- one appears to be mottled? Others have a bit of white on wings- while I think they'll eventually be black or brown red, is it possible that at least 1 here is mottled?
Attached are 7 of 8 chicks, the one with so much white is the one I'm hoping will stay mottled- those white feathers aren't going to turn black, are they? Seems like on a black bird that you want to be all black, it'll have a big ole white feather somewhere- a gorgeous black Silkie of mine is spoiled by a big white foot feather...

For these guys though- Would be cool to have some non black.
It's been many years since I did genetics...from the old Classroom at the Coop days.
Thanks in advance!

Mottling is caused by a recessive gene. If both parents carry the gene, yes it could appear in some of the chicks. So what you suspect (mottled chick from parents who do not show mottling) is very much possible in a genetic sense.

Given that you have Seramas, rather than some breed that is commonly selected to have pure colors, I am not surprised that some recessive gene would show up.

The chick with so much white does look mottled to me.

 

[cvamoca]

Mottling is caused by a recessive gene. If both parents carry the gene, yes it could appear in some of the chicks. So what you suspect (mottled chick from parents who do not show mottling) is very much possible in a genetic sense.

Given that you have Seramas, rather than some breed that is commonly selected to have pure colors, I am not surprised that some recessive gene would show up.

The chick with so much white does look mottled to me.

Thank you so much! This is SO exciting. I guess both sides carry mo?
So if I want more of these, then breeding back to sire or dam is the way to go? I can't find anymore in my province, I think they came from Ontario...I thought I found some, but what he showed me are OEG, not Serama.
When the males show that bit of colour on their male plumage areas (in canaries, we'd call that dimorphic as males have one plumage and females another in some colours like red or yellow mosaic)- is that the pattern gene at work? It's restricted to their necks and saddles in this case.
I'm getting older, feeds super expensive, so I'm thinking that more bantams and fewer largefowl would be helpful to me. I can see me working with Seramas for the next 20 years if I live so long. Love them, friendly, not cocky, they are fun birds who follow me around...
Here's Dad. Considering how new the breed is here in my province, I'm quite happy with this little family. They did have one chick come with them who had the creeper gene I think- super short legs- she only lived a year 1/2, the rest seem to be pretty healthy and long lived, though Thor got frost nipped this winter, Zeus here didn't. As I look at this hen's nails, I believe she's last year's daughter. She hid herself, and then showed up with these 8 kids. All eggs hatched, and all have survived to this point, so they appear to be pretty healthy as a family.
Brahmas used to be my favourite, but they live short lives. Zeus here's 6 I think, I've had him for 3 winters and he was the 4H project for the family I bought them from.

 

[NatJ]

Thank you so much! This is SO exciting. I guess both sides carry mo?

Yes, to get a mottled chick (mo), both parents would have to carry the gene.

So if I want more of these, then breeding back to sire or dam is the way to go?

Yes, breeding mottled birds back to their parents should work fine. That should give about 50% mottled birds and about 50% not-mottled birds that carry mottling.

Some of the siblings probably carrying mottling too. The ones that are showing bits of white are more likely to have it, although that is not a certainty. You could breed them to the mottled bird, or back to one of the parents, and have a good chance of getting some mottled birds that way too.

You should also be able to get more mottled birds the same way you got these: hatch lots of chicks from those parents, and pick out the ones that show mottling (expected rate: about 25% mottled, 50% carry mottling, 25% no mottling shown or carried.)

When the males show that bit of colour on their male plumage areas (in canaries, we'd call that dimorphic as males have one plumage and females another in some colours like red or yellow mosaic)- is that the pattern gene at work? It's restricted to their necks and saddles in this case.

Probably not the pattern gene. The wild junglefowl ancestors of chickens already are quite multi-colored and dimorphic. The pattern gene seems to organize the black and other colors, to create things like lacing (black edge on each feather) and spangling (black tip on each feather). The exact pattern depends on which other genes are also present (especially Ml, Co, Db, and variations of the E locus.)

Have you played with the chicken color genetics calculator? I find it helpful for modeling genes (change the genes in the boxes, watch the picture of the chicken change.) It can also be used to predict chick outcomes from various breedings.
http://kippenjungle.nl/chickencalculator.html
If you change the first dropdown box to E^R/E^R (birchen), the rooster picture looks a lot like yours, with no pattern gene needed.

 

[Egg Snatcher]

Mottling is caused by a recessive gene. If both parents carry the gene, yes it could appear in some of the chicks. So what you suspect (mottled chick from parents who do not show mottling) is very much possible in a genetic sense.

Given that you have Seramas, rather than some breed that is commonly selected to have pure colors, I am not surprised that some recessive gene would show up.

The chick with so much white does look mottled to me.

@NatJ, about this mottling gene, I am working one brown red Japanese bantams and I had my f1 chicks hatch out mottled. Brown red Japanese x white black tailed Japanese

Now they are not mottled. They look like this now.
Roos being black patterned yellow/golden*S -necked/birchen (plan on selling)

And my two hens being brown red

So when I breed my girls to my brown red roo will I have problems with mottling if both parents carry the mottled gene and would you know why the chicks hatched out mottled?
Thanks