The "Ask Anything" to Nicalandia Thread

Cool!

I know it's still a mystery what the CX "recipe" is, but I wonder if this could help us get closer to finally figuring it out?
They say CX is a 4-way cross.
Since white skin is dominant, all my LegO's have white skin. But Cx have yellow, so both hybrids that make them must have yellow skin.
Would fast growth carry through to the F2 generation? Doubtful, right? So the F1 hybrid parents must be purely fast growing / large sized, respectively.

Therefore, the recipe must involve the 2 mystery breeds being paired as:
Cornish X Mystery 1 (large sized)
Rock X Mystery 2 (fast growing)
And both breeds with yellow skin.

Err... right?
It's not really a mystery. You just can't buy them. None of them are pure "breeds" in the sense that you mean.

At a certain point, people tried crossing breeds of chickens in various combinations (including Cornish x Rock). Some of the results were so good that they started breeding specific flocks to be the parents of hybrid meat birds.

Over time, they strongly selected for ones that produced the best offspring. They bred for all-white, and they bred out the pea comb from the original Cornish because that gene also causes the skin to be a bit different along the center of the breast, which made the carcass less attractive.

By now, the 4-way cross involves:
Cross two lines to get females that lay lots of eggs. They have hybrid vigor, good egg production to produce lots of eggs for hatching, large eggs so the chicks will be large at hatch, genes for fast growth and lots of meat, sometimes dwarfism so the females will eat less and have fewer size-related health problems. These females have enough genes for fast growth and good size that they need to be raised on a special restricted diet, deliberately stunting their growth (especially muscle growth), to keep the alive and healthy for long enough to be useful as egg producers. They still need restricted feed while laying, which calls for careful balancing: enough to lay but not enough to get oversized.

Cross the other two lines to get males that will mate with those females. The males would also have hybrid vigor, don't need genes for good egg production, but are probably even more extreme than the hens for growing big and fast, so they really need a restricted diet to keep them alive, healthy enough, and small enough to mate successfully. The mating is very important, because the whole point is to produce eggs that hatch, and artificial insemination would be so labor intensive that it's not cost-effective. There would be no dwarfism in the male line, so all the chicks have the dominant trait for not-dwarf.

Crossing those females with those males gives the Cornish Cross chicks that are sold to all of us, or commercially raised for meat.

The "how" is not a secret, but they do not sell the breeding stock. This means that anyone wanting to raise their own can either start from scratch (original pure breeds), or start breeding from Cornish Cross chicks that were meant to be raised for meat. Either way would take so many years that it is not practical for someone else to become a competitor to the current big companies. Some people have tried breeding their own line from Cornish Cross chicks they bought, with various levels of success. Those chicks should have all the right genes to re-create the 4 grandparent lines, but it would take quite a few generations of selective breeding to sort them back into useful true-breeding lines, and most folks are not willing to put in enough time and resources to do that. And of course they require special management at all stages, to keep them from growing to their genetic potential and dying before breeding age.

As an example of how not-secret it is, here's a .pdf on raising the grandparent stock for the Cobb-Vantress line:
https://www.cobb-vantress.com/asset...8454/3450c490-bbd7-11e6-bd5d-55bb08833e29.pdf

The methods are no secret. It's just that you can't buy the birds unless you're a farmer with the right kind of contract with the company, doing things they way they say.
 
@nicalandia, came across this funky rooster while on YouTube. What is he showing? Pied, or something else? Cream all over, except his legs, & lower breasts.
Screenshot_20230206-231512_YouTube.jpg
Screenshot_20230206-231514_YouTube.jpg
 
Hey, sorry but can you guys remind me what the ratio of mottled is from a Split X Mottled pairing?
I was expecting black split to mottled from both black hens, but two of these popped out in the last hour!
It should be 50/50.

Mottled parent has two copies of the mottling gene, and gives one to every chick.
Split parent has one copy of the mottling gene, one copy of not-mottled. So half of their chicks get the mottling gene, the other half get not-mottled.

That makes half of chicks being mottled, and the other half being split (have one copy of the mottling gene, but don't show it because it is recessive.)
 
It should be 50/50.

Mottled parent has two copies of the mottling gene, and gives one to every chick.
Split parent has one copy of the mottling gene, one copy of not-mottled. So half of their chicks get the mottling gene, the other half get not-mottled.

That makes half of chicks being mottled, and the other half being split (have one copy of the mottling gene, but don't show it because it is recessive.)

Thank you! <3

I didn't even realize Satin and Blackie were split! :wee


There's a third now. Both of Blackies are a bit darker.
 
Let's say you wanted to create a line of Black Marans using Black Copper Marans as a base, because the latter could be more easily found with dark egg color. I vaguely remember that the Blacks are based on Silver, but not the Black Coppers. So I'm assuming that to best start this, one could use one Black roo over several Black Copper hens, since this would give daughters without the Gold gene. But what other differences lie between Black Copper and Black? Which Black Copper genes would have to be left behind to make solid Black? I'd assume that once a new black roo would be bred, he would be bred back to Black Copper hens to repeat the process, so that an ever-increasing proportion of the Black Copper line with dark egg genes would accumulate, but replacing the Black Copper feather color with solid black. What would be the signs to look for (i.e. color leakage) in splits?

I think Black Copper are based on the Birchen gene, while Blacks should be based on Extended Black. That should mostly explain why the Blacks are BLACK while the Black Coppers have the copper color too.

For actual blacks, without leakage, I would not expect gold vs. silver to make a big difference.

Can you find Cuckoo Marans with a good dark egg color? If yes, then they should be the easiest to work with: all you need is to get rid of the white barring by crossing to a Black Marans.

@nicalandia can you check what I just said?
 
I think Black Copper are based on the Birchen gene, while Blacks should be based on Extended Black. That should mostly explain why the Blacks are BLACK while the Black Coppers have the copper color too.

For actual blacks, without leakage, I would not expect gold vs. silver to make a big difference.

Can you find Cuckoo Marans with a good dark egg color? If yes, then they should be the easiest to work with: all you need is to get rid of the white barring by crossing to a Black Marans.

@nicalandia can you check what I just said?
Yes, Birchen in Copper Black vs Extended Black in Black, but also Gold in Copper Black vs Silver in Black. I think that was the piece I couldn't remember the other day. From what I do remember, being Silver made for more "correct" iridescence. I think there's the addition of a gene that changes the gold to copper, but I don't think that would be able to modify anything on a silver base, so I guess it wouldn't matter. Gold vs Silver is sex-linked, right? So that must have been the reason a Black male over Black Copper female was the recommended route. And from what I've read, the darkest eggs are currently to be found among some Black Copper lines -- not all, but the best of them beat the best of any other colors.

This was just a mental exercise -- I have no plans for them anytime soon. I kinda wanted to tuck this away for "maybe.....someday."

:)
 

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