BlacksheepCardigans
Songster
It's not so much that the comb affects fertility as that genes for lower fertility are inherited with the comb. Chickens have a bunch of traits that are known as pleiotropic, meaning they're inherited as a unit rather than singly. Rose comb birds inherit genes that markedly lower fertility.
There was an earlier question about the pea comb - it's not been studied as thoroughly as the rose comb. The stuff I read concluded that the pea comb did have some effect but not as bad a one as the rose comb. The pea comb was associated with lower growth rates in summer chicks like broilers; the researchers guessed that it was because the bird couldn't get rid of heat very well (since the face/comb/wattles are the main way chickens get rid of body heat), and with lower libido in males.
Walnut combs are (as you'd expect, since they're pea + rose) problematic as well, probably the most problematic of all, but again have not been studied much because they're a show comb, not a production comb. In fact, I strongly suspect that they wouldn't have studied rose combs like they did except that Wyandottes were being pushed as the Next Big Thing in production birds around 1900-1930. It was the large-scale farmers that got so frustrated that the research was seen to be vital. Most of the time researchers may know about the weird stuff - like the fact that the frizzle gene makes the bird's metabolism go wonky - but don't care that much, because nobody's trying to raise twenty thousand frizzled birds for maximum production.
I really do think it's worth considering which breeds "won," coming out of the golden age of poultry breeding at the end of the industrial revolution, and which are being raised now only as a curiosity or as an attempt to preserve genetics. The winners are all single combed. We managed to beat the Jungle Fowl out of the birds on almost every other front - we changed color, body type, seasonality, broodiness, feathering, growth rate, even temperament. But evidently you just can't mess with comb type too much unless you want consequences.
I don't personally have any axe to grind within the Wyandotte fancy. I am very happy when they hatch rose combed. I'm not going to chuck the single combed ones, though, and I do think that any breeder of any animal needs to look things in the face. If you're not getting any fertile eggs for months on end, something's up, and it's not just that the males are big. Cold hardy should mean producing through the cold, breeding through the cold, not just surviving through the cold.
There was an earlier question about the pea comb - it's not been studied as thoroughly as the rose comb. The stuff I read concluded that the pea comb did have some effect but not as bad a one as the rose comb. The pea comb was associated with lower growth rates in summer chicks like broilers; the researchers guessed that it was because the bird couldn't get rid of heat very well (since the face/comb/wattles are the main way chickens get rid of body heat), and with lower libido in males.
Walnut combs are (as you'd expect, since they're pea + rose) problematic as well, probably the most problematic of all, but again have not been studied much because they're a show comb, not a production comb. In fact, I strongly suspect that they wouldn't have studied rose combs like they did except that Wyandottes were being pushed as the Next Big Thing in production birds around 1900-1930. It was the large-scale farmers that got so frustrated that the research was seen to be vital. Most of the time researchers may know about the weird stuff - like the fact that the frizzle gene makes the bird's metabolism go wonky - but don't care that much, because nobody's trying to raise twenty thousand frizzled birds for maximum production.
I really do think it's worth considering which breeds "won," coming out of the golden age of poultry breeding at the end of the industrial revolution, and which are being raised now only as a curiosity or as an attempt to preserve genetics. The winners are all single combed. We managed to beat the Jungle Fowl out of the birds on almost every other front - we changed color, body type, seasonality, broodiness, feathering, growth rate, even temperament. But evidently you just can't mess with comb type too much unless you want consequences.
I don't personally have any axe to grind within the Wyandotte fancy. I am very happy when they hatch rose combed. I'm not going to chuck the single combed ones, though, and I do think that any breeder of any animal needs to look things in the face. If you're not getting any fertile eggs for months on end, something's up, and it's not just that the males are big. Cold hardy should mean producing through the cold, breeding through the cold, not just surviving through the cold.
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