Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[Hinotori]

You seem to have a good grasp on it.

Birds are different than dogs. There are other modifier genes for other colors as well.

Feather color genetics is insane. I only know a small amount and I had to learn that a bit at a time in order to remember it.


Horses have some weird things going on as well

 

[junebuggena]

So the father is a solid red (gold base) rooster with a black tail that is diluted to blue, due to one copy of the blue gene. He has no silver base since silver is dominant over gold and he is solid red.

The son has a combined (mixed) gold base and silver base which is expressed as mostly black and white feathering (silver base) with red (gold base) leakage on the wings.

A solid blue bird is a dilute of a solid black bird that is most often silver based but in mixed colors black can be gold based that is expressed as red leakage.

Blue genetics in any mixed color dilutes the black markings only to blue without diluting the other colors. It usually signifies a silver base but not always.

Do the harlequin genetics effect the background color without effecting the color of the markings? I have seen harlequin Great Danes with a black and white color pattern but is hair color different than feather color or is it the same?

You've done it! You've master the basics of chicken genetics.
No idea about duck colors. This may help you out a bit.
http://kippenjungle.nl/kruisingEend.html

 

[junebuggena]

I have read good reviews on these. If I did not already have so many Little Giant incubators this is what I would buy. We made a huge cabinet incubator to hatch duck eggs but then with my injury and surgery we have not even tested it yet. If the cabinet tests out well I may give up all my individual styrofoam incubators but I have actually done well with them since they are the only ones I have used all these years.

I think that people can do well with any incubator as long as you figure out what works and keep doing what works. I had the worst hatches ever when I tried to monitor heat and humidity according to what worked for others. I like the fact that my incubators don't have gages to measure anything because then I don't mess with what works. I use the worthless thermometer to get the temp stabilized when I first set up an incubator. If the hatch is too early I drop the temp slightly and if it is late I raise it slightly. Once the hatches are on schedule I leave them alone.

I never used to candle eggs, just throw out any that did not hatch, but now I use a candler to identify the clear eggs and quitters (more of an issue when I bought eggs and less of an issue with my own) to make space for more eggs. I think that my method of moving them from back to front as I move eggs to the hatching incubator counters any hot or cold spots in the incubators.

I use a separate incubator for hatching that is slightly cooler and slightly more humid (I dry incubate since this area has such high humidity compared to Colorado where I added water to the trays) but I don't go as high as most people recommend, even with ducklings that need more humidity than chicks. When I raised the humidity I had babies drown in the shell (misting duck eggs was the worst mistake ever) so I prefer to dry incubate and only add enough humidity to keep the membranes from shrink wrapping after pipping. The hatching process is so wet that it always increases the humidity naturally and I have even had eggs hatch fine without any increase in humidity for hatching. The hens get up less frequently close to hatching but they don't add humidity by artificial means.

Once you get good hatches don't listen to any advice, lol. I had 100% hatch rates until I tried following the directions I read online. Now I am back to leaving things alone unless the house heats up too much during the summer and cooks my eggs. I have to open the incubators frequently during hot days because I have lost hatches due to heat spikes. Lower temps will delay hatches but they are less fatal than high temps.

The Incuview is worth it just for the 1 year no hassle guarantee. Add in how stable it is and how easy it is to clean, and it is easily the best incubator on the market.

 

[vasher]

This model? http://incubatorwarehouse.com/incuview-egg-incubator.html

Fiddling with chicken genetics is one of the reasons I want to try hatching eggs. Though I do recall someone renting space in their giant industrial incubator, so that's an option. Is there a way to tell how much red leakage happens when a silver base is crossed with a gold base bird to produce heterozygous offspring? Is there always leakage?

I have only lavender birds right now, so they are extended "black", and will produce only black solid birds when crossed with most non-lavender thing, I think. Unless they might be split for other patterning.

 

[junebuggena]

This model? http://incubatorwarehouse.com/incuview-egg-incubator.html

Fiddling with chicken genetics is one of the reasons I want to try hatching eggs. Though I do recall someone renting space in their giant industrial incubator, so that's an option. Is there a way to tell how much red leakage happens when a silver base is crossed with a gold base bird to produce heterozygous offspring? Is there always leakage?

I have only lavender birds right now, so they are extended "black", and will produce only black solid birds when crossed with most non-lavender thing, I think. Unless they might be split for other patterning.

That's the one. You will love it.
Leakage can be highly unpredictable, and is a major pain to breed out of lines because the hens can carry it, but don't express it. Depending on the breed, all sorts of recessive genes can be hiding under extended black.

 

[Duck Drover]

The blue dilute gene operates independently from base color genes. It only affects black pigment. For a good example of what I mean, look at Blue Laced Red Wyandottes. It's the same BBS gene affecting the black patterning, but the gold/red base color is unaffected. 

So blue to black in BBS makes blue (50% blues) but so does blue to blue (25% blues) or black to splash (100% blues). In order to keep the lacing on the blues I know that it is important to breed blues back to black since repeated blue to blue dilutes the blue (self-blue or lavender?) and you lose the darker lacing. I know blue is one copy and splash is two copies but what determines the amount of dilution in blues? Is it only the diluted blacks (black to blue and black to splash) that retain the lacing while the blue to blue or blue to splash loses the lacing?

We run all the colors together and I generally prefer a blue rooster over BBS hens but we have used splash roosters in our Silkie pen to create more splash hens before going back to a blue rooster. We can only keep the splash Orpington roosters now because they are grandfathered and we had already sold all the blue and black cockerels before the code changed. We sold all but our two favorite splash roosters and we had planned to just keep them short term and then go back to blue but then roosters were banned without any warning. When we start hatching we will have to separate the splash hens from the splash roosters unless I want dilute splash (which I don't) and want to risk inbreeding brother to sister (which I don't). We can still use these two boys upline with our older hens but I decided to also sell the young hens we had planned to keep to make sure we are not inbreeding brother to sister. The boys were supposed to go instead of the girls (after using them briefly before their sisters started laying) but now we have to use the splash roosters for their lifespan unless we can move to acreage.

I want to keep our blue offspring dark blue and not dilute them too much because the lacing is what makes the blues so beautiful and in demand. We can't keep anything we hatch anymore so I am stuck selling all the chicks and using the colors we have now instead of going back to a blue rooster as planned. I guess it does not matter because we will be hatching birds for others to enjoy instead of selecting our best to keep for future breeding but if there is a chance we can move the flock and continue to breed in the future I still want to think ahead. I like to have a mix of colors for myself but I also want to think about future hatches since the blues and splashes are always in more demand than the blacks. For now we need to make sure they are not going to be too dilute by using splash roosters instead of blue.

 

[junebuggena]

Blue to Black produces 50% Blue and 50% Black. Blue to Blue produces 50% Blue, 25% Black, and 25% Splash. Black to Splash will produce 100% Blue. Lavender is a completely different gene entirely.

 

[Duck Drover]

You seem to have a good grasp on it.

Birds are different than dogs. There are other modifier genes for other colors as well.

Feather color genetics is insane. I only know a small amount and I had to learn that a bit at a time in order to remember it.


Horses have some weird things going on as well

I did a crash study of BBS genetics after having mixed colors of Silkies and deciding to stick with just one color group. I think what I got out of the gold base and silver base information the first time I looked it up to understand the red leakage issue was to make sure my blacks were silver based and then stick with what I know is pure. I thought I had the blue genetics down but I missed the difference between blue being a modifier of black but not leakage in other colors. I know paints are black leakage on white birds but now I know blue does not leak, it just dilutes black coloring or leakage in mixed colored birds.

I bred Appaloosa horses for a time with my foster mother because she wanted a palomino Appaloosa with a blanket but after I got a leopard colt I decided to buy a palomino Appaloosa at a horse auction, lol. I also bred my Arab mare but not for color since Arabs are not a color breed. I raised spotted Nubian goats for many years and just bred for spots, not color. I also raised Suffolk sheep but they all look the same like the other goat breeds I had (except the Alpines which were more colorful). Color breeding is fascinating but also has so many variables that it is hard to get it right all the time.

I have such a headache today that I have spent the day on the couch getting nothing done. I had alcohol last night for the first time in a long time and it may have been a mistake!

 

[Duck Drover]

Blue to Black produces 50% Blue and 50% Black. Blue to Blue produces 50% Blue, 25% Black, and 25% Splash. Black to Splash will produce 100% Blue. Lavender is a completely different gene entirely. 

Oops, blue to blue is 50% blue not 25%. I have the chart memorized but typed it wrong. I know lavender is "self-blue" and I know it dilutes black but I don't know how it relates to blue specifically. My guess is that it pulls out the purple sheen in blacks instead of the green sheen that is the desired sheen color for blacks but I don't breed lavenders so I just focus on BBS. I did breed lavender gerbils before but at the time I thought they were just gray, lol.

So does blue to blue or splash to blue dilute blue more than black to blue or black to splash?

 

[Scram85]

[/IMG]Just spent 20 minutes digging out waterers andblazing a trail to my coops. It's a mess over here with the snow drifts.