Virgin Birth in Chickens

[centrarchid]

Anyone seen something on this?

 

[Yay Chicks!]

Like parthenogenesis?

 

[centrarchid]

Yes, as in parthenogenesis. Found brief reference to it in popular literature but no citation.

 

[lilhippiemomma]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48995742

Here's an article on it that I just happened to read this morning. Beware, it's mostly about snakes, though. If pics like that trigger you.

 

[centrarchid]

That is popular article I referred to.

 

[lilhippiemomma]

Ah! And here I thought that was a happy coicidence. Anyhow, I remember reading about in my biology class in high-school. Apparently its fairly common in turkeys. I hadn't known chickens could do it until I saw it in that article.

 

[centrarchid]

Ah! And here I thought that was a happy coicidence. Anyhow, I remember reading about in my biology class in high-school. Apparently its fairly common in turkeys. I hadn't known chickens could do it until I saw it in that article.

I would love to feed a few of my quality females something that would increase the production of parthenogenic eggs. It would delimit females in breeding program and make linebreeding more complete.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It's been a while since I read the atrticles on this. Here is one that might be useful.

http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/4hpoultry/t02_pageview/The_Tremendous_Turkey_10.htm

You'll remember that in fowl, duplicate DNA means males. That won't help you get hens. Fowl has to have a partial DNA to get a female and that won't happen. If you get a duplicate partial DNA you get a dead chick.

The article states that it is fairly common in turkeys and extremely rare in chickens. From other articles I've read, the hatch rate for chickens would be really lousy.

 

[centrarchid]

If hatch rate and viability would work, then that would be even better. Female to be linebreed to would be used to generate parthenogenic males. Those males would contain only DNA from her. When breed back to her, more offspring could be made with her approximate genetic content without introducing alleles from an outside line. That is goal, more like her without addition of outbred alleles.

 

[Poultry Friend]

You would get a family of almost complete inbred clones! More like lab mice then a flock of chickens.

The main issue with extreme inbreeding like that is you can find all kinds of recessive mutations that can cause illness.