The Rhodebar thread!

[Ihilani Coffee]

I believe Rhodebars are better Autosexing breed than the Cram Legbars, and thats why heterozygous barred maels(single barred) will not show headspot and chipmunk stripes

Do you mean on the F1 chicks, or pure RB? Thanks for the clarification...still learning and so far just breeding RB (but looking at the HRIR improvement option).
Candi

 

[nicalandia]

Quote:
I mean Pure Rhodebars are better at autosexing than Cream Legbars as the cream legbars SOP calls for a distinctive headspot on females, while this is not the case with rhodebar females, but this only makes the F1 sexing even more difficult as F1 Males will not show a headspot when back cross to HRIR due to this.. the good news is that we can tell the e+/ey or e+/eWh chicks, kee them and keep improving the Rhodebar breed using HRIR stock

 

[melroseladi]

Quote:
Marvin is it a possibility in our F1's that they are being sexed by color? Chicks with darkest stripe and eye line being female and lighter stripe being male? I am seeing this in my older F1's but since I only have 8 it is hard to be sure if that is the case. I will be watching my younger F1's to see if that is the case with them as well.

 

[nicalandia]

Quote:
I just dont think its possible to sex them using color shade at all, because as you can see the Barring gene has NO effect on the wildtype chick down on females, and males and females on this cross both have only one copy of barring gene, so I would expect no difference in shade by gender.. the difference in shade should be attributed to other factors, like red enhancers and the different effect e+/eWh or e+/ey may have in the chick down.

 

[RedRidge]

Quote:
I just dont think its possible to sex them using color shade at all, because as you can see the Barring gene has NO effect on the wildtype chick down on females, and males and females on this cross both have only one copy of barring gene, so I would expect no difference in shade by gender.. the difference in shade should be attributed to other factors, like red enhancers and the different effect e+/eWh or e+/ey may have in the chick down.

Yeah I thought that was wishful thinking. It's going to be fascinating to watch them all evolve.

 

[nicalandia]

Quote:
another give away on his gender is the Crispier Barring, Pullets just dont have the same crisp barring as males, their barring is not well defined and blury.. why? must be hormonal..

 

[melroseladi]

Yeah I thought that was wishful thinking.
It's going to be fascinating to watch them all evolve.

Maybe wishful thinking but 3 out of 8 hatched out with dark stripes and appear to be female and 5 out of 8 hatched with lighter stripes and appear male, not to mention the males are mean little buggers. They peck the smaller ones and peck me every time I go to feed them, not just inquisitive pecks, hard battle type pecks, NOTHING like my HRIR or my RB roosters were at that age. I have only ever had 1 other batch of mixed birds that the cockerels made it to 10 weeks and some only 8 weeks before I sent them to freezer camp because they were so mean, drawing blood mean. Not much meat but I won't breed or keep roosters that are mean no matter how pretty they are.

Penny

 

[RedRidge]

Interesting... Will watch mine for that.
So. .. tail length for determining sex at a young age? You mentioned that earlier and I was curious about your observations... Please share

 

[melroseladi]

Interesting... Will watch mine for that.
So. .. tail length for determining sex at a young age? You mentioned that earlier and I was curious about your observations... Please share

Yes I have noticed that females (especially in fast feathering birds) tend to have a tail faster then the males and the tail will be longer at the same age (like everything else not 100%). Since I have to brood mine in my room I get to spend a lot of time observing them. While I do enjoy watching them I can't wait until I get the outdoor brooder finished. Almost there. I put the hardware cloth up over the ventilation openings. Have to put hardware cloth on the roof and hang some access doors.

Penny

 

[RedRidge]

Interesting... Will watch mine for that.

So. .. tail length for determining sex at a young age? You mentioned that earlier and I was curious about your observations... Please share

Yes I have noticed that females (especially in fast feathering birds) tend to have a tail faster then the males and the tail will be longer at the same age (like everything else not 100%). Since I have to brood mine in my room I get to spend a lot of time observing them. While I do enjoy watching them I can't wait until I get the outdoor brooder finished. Almost there. I put the hardware cloth up over the ventilation openings. Have to put hardware cloth on the roof and hang some access doors.

Penny

At how many weeks of age were you able to determine that tail growth might be sex related and not just growth rate related?