What breed is this chicken?

[alicefelldown]

I found another picture from the owner, this time a roo:

and from the msg board I found it on, think it is a Black Cornish Cross.

I had a further surprise when my black Cornish cross roosters also displayed an attractive mahogany stripe along the medial edge (nearest the midline of the body) of the folded wing, the wing-bay.

Anyone have those?​

 

[greenfamilyfarms]

Looks like a Dark Cornish and Silver-Laced Wyandotte cross.

 

[WalkingWolf]

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Anyone have those?

I have Red/Dark Cornish Bantam Cross I am not sure yet what the chicks will be like. I sold a lot of eggs and did not hatch any until just recently. So far the chicks a couple days old look like dark Cornish. Probably will not see any difference until they get fully feathered. The Red Roo started out completely white and then he turned red when he feathered out.

At some point I will try crossing a Red with a White lace in a attempt to get a spangled.

I have some roundhead/Cornish crosses that are spectacular, but I need to take pics before I sell the remaining three I have left.

 

[cwhit590]

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That's what I think too.

Whatever he is...I love his colors!

 

[alicefelldown]

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Greenfamilyfarms appears to be right - i just slogged through 6 pages of a mad scientist intent on re-creating the 'Original Chicken'

These are all direct quotes from a evolutionist message board, if anyone wants the link please let me know!

My chicken theory, for those who may care to follow, is simply this: the domestic chicken is a straight out two-way two species hybrid between the Red Jungle Fowl and something else. Darwin thought no supposed alternate ancestor existed: "...we must look to the present metropolis of the genus (of the fowl), namely, to the south-eastern parts of Asia, for the discovery of species which were formerly domesticated, but are now unknown in the wild state; and the most experienced ornithologists do not considerable that such species will be discovered." (The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication, vol. 1, pg 250) But it did exist and is now extinct. If one looks at all the breeds of fowl worldwide as one large phenotypic library, one can, by rigorous analysis of the details of phenotype with the help of known transmission genetics, piece together with considerable accuracy a picture of a bird of astonishing appearance and habit. In form it would have most closely resembled the large hard feathered Asiatic Games such as one sees on Ganoi.com. It was a flightless island bound species closely related to the Red Jungle Fowl, but very different in appearance and of a predatory nature. It had a well developed color pattern unknown at the present time. Perhaps most astonishing of all is that it is quite possible to re-breed this extinct progenitor to a very reasonable degree of accuracy; this species which may have gone extinct nearly 10,000 years ago.

I do realize of course that I must sound either a madman or a fool to be making the boast of having discovered the extinct chicken; especially in this day and age when all the 'easy' things have been discovered and research is conducted with sophisticated tools by individuals with years of specialized training. Perhaps the most relevant question to ask is how did you do it. By studying phenotype, as I've said, after breaking it down into it's most elemental pieces, and here is where the breeding genetics, transmission genetics, makes a nice fit for study.

Gallus giganteus was domesticated some eight to ten thousand years ago, way back in prehistory. It inhabited, most likely, only one island in the Indian Ocean, possibly one of the Andaman group. It was destined for extinction, but, as luck would have it, was preserved by the first humans to reach the island. It would have had no fear of man, and was thus easily tamed.

It had a well developed color pattern which was predator driven; not a mammalian predator, as it was flightless, but more than likely another bird such as a hawk or gull. Hens were cryptically marked. Chicks had a rather colorful pattern of their own, quite different from the 'chipmunk' pattern of the Red Jungle Fowl chick, that served to distract and disrupt. disrupt.http://i521.photobucket.com/albums/w331/moregallus/CIMG0015-2.jpg[/img]

Now take a look at these birds.

These are three generations of one of my lines. The first bird, the white one, a Silkie X Pekin cross, doesn't seem quite natural, but for the next generation I bred her to this:

He is a Dark Cornish Bantam (Indian Game in UK) which, along with most if not all Asiatic Games, are known as "hard feathered" breeds. Compared to "soft feathered" breeds the feathers are usually smaller, but the defining characteristic is that hard feathers emerge from the skin at a lower angle compared with soft feathers and are held more tightly to the body. Hard feather appears to be a simple dominant trait.

I found my first clues to a second largely hidden color pattern in the chicken from a breed known as the Dark Cornish. I had raised them as a boy, my only exposure to the Oriental type of fowl until quite recently. The Cornish, or Indian Game as they are known in the UK, resemble, somewhat, their Indian Aseel parentage. They were developed as a game breed in the 1800's through crossing breeding with English games, though ended up being a meat breed; more specifically, used in terminal meat crosses.

[Cornish Bantams from Cackle Hatchery, http://www.cacklehatchery.com]

These are bantams and differ from the large fowl in subtle ways, but will serve to illustrate my main points. One, the Cornish have a dimorphic color pattern different from that of the Red Jungle Fowl. Two, the beetle-green sheen of the rooster (more blue in the bantam) might be considered showy and the patterned brown of the hen might be considered cryptic. Very rough, mind, but at least in the ballpark.

Thirdly, some of the Cornish chicks show hints of a pattern quite different from the 'chipmunk' pattern of the Red Jungle Fowl chicks and black-breasted red breeds. More on this later...

My first thought, back in 1985, was what if you replaced the gold allele of the RJF with the silver allele. Silver has the unique effect of changing the red in the BBR pattern to white without altering the pattern at all.

[Silver Duckwing Old English Game Bantams from Cackle Hatchery, http://www.cacklehatchery.com ]

The 'wing-bay' of the Cornish is brown. Might not the silver allele give you a black cock with a white wing-bay? That would be quite showy; what you'd expect in a kind of pheasant. You might also expect that the silver would make the saddle and hackle feathers white as well, but maybe not. With a little selection, this proved to be exactly the case. The white in the neck and back was easily eliminated in two generations and I had the beginnings of my color model.

I had a further surprise when my black Cornish cross roosters also displayed an attractive mahogany stripe along the medial edge (nearest the midline of the body) of the folded wing, the wing-bay.

Well, that seemed kind of like a no-brainer, but the hens would be a different story. A cryptic pattern is often quite detailed and intricate. Just look at a common sparrow.

She, the hen, does have a black head and neck. That much was clear. And most likely wing barring was there as well.

I had the idea then that the striking lacing of the Silver Laced Wyandotte might play a part in my color model.

[SLW Hen, Cackle Hatchery, Lebanon, MO, http://www.cacklehatchery.com]

Lacing and barring together. This is not what most patterned breed standards call for; they like uniformity all over. But the wild patterns are usually not uniform all over. In pheasants, lacing is common in the breast and barring in the wings and often in the tail as well.

I intended to breed the SLW into my Cornish pattern when I re-started my project and which I have done by including that little bantam SLW rooster among my five founder birds in June of 2007.

To continue, I bred my little Wyandotte to a Cornish colored hen who was only part Cornish. My reasoning was to combine the Silver allele, which I was convinced belonged to the ancestral flightless Jungle Fowl, Gallus giganteus, and Lacing, which I highly suspected, with the dark pattern of the Cornish.

Here's the female Dark Cornish again for reference:

The Cornish is considered to be double-laced while the Wyandotte is single-laced. But this is variable in the Cornish in that, to quote Dr. Carefoot, "As with pencilling the double-laced pattern also adjusts to feather size. Top class large Indian Games (Cornish) have been known to have but a single lace at the throat and yet have triple lacing near the cushion (lower back?) and on the lower breast." In this particular bantam (above) the lacing resembles the lacing of the SLW and does not appear to be double-laced at all.

In crossing the Wyandotte, this is what I got in the next generation:

You can see the tendency to color in the lower breast, wing, and back. Keep in mind, the hen, being the hemizygous sex, can only be pure for either Silver or Gold. She is pure Silver.

Here's her brother:

The lacing is less obvious then in the hen, and he lacks the mahogany band on the white wing bay, the folded wing.

Next generation I got this fellow whom you've already seen:

The mahogany border is back and, interestingly, a colorful pattern on the lower flank where the feathers would normally be covered by the wings.

Remember, the Gallus giganteus type of fowl carried it's wings over it's back, not down along the sides.

Here's the gen 3 hen:

Black head and neck, silver-laced, some color over the body...

At this point I expected to get, in the next generation, silver females that would be difficult to distinguish from their gold sisters. Keep in mind my rooster was only heterozygous silver, so that half his daughters would come gold and half his sons heterozygous silver, not pure. It was the mahogany color I expected would play a role and it did.

Here is a poor picture of a silver daughter that, if I didn't know better, would be taken for gold:

Her eye looks funny because she is blinking her "third eyelid", the nictitating membrane. They don't like the camera flash.

Here is a less melanistic sister, also silver:

The lacing is there, but you can see how she is approaching the "black-breasted silver" of the little Old English Game bantam hen with "salmon" on the breast and white in the neck.
[URL='http://i521.photobucket.com/albums/w331/moregallus/silver_duckwing_OEG_Bantam_Hen.jpg<br><br>But']http://i521.photobucket.com/albums/w331/moregallus/silver_duckwing_OEG_Bantam_Hen.jpg

But[/URL] the one that got my attention was this pretty girl whose mother was not of the Cornish line as were the previous two:
[IMG]http://i521.photobucket.com/albums/w331/moregallus/CIMG0203.jpg

The overall color is sandy with some red in the wing, but notice how the small upper breast feathers remain white and without the double lacing of the feathers farther down. This white laced upper breast contrasts very well with the black head and neck and stands out as, at once, a disruptive pattern that is also countershaded. Sitting on a nest, the white chest would counter shadow, while the sandy ground color with black lacing should prove cryptic.

Here's another shot of her:

According to Dr. Carefoot, the lacing, pencilling, and autosomal barring, are caused by one and the same gene, the "pattern" gene. There is also supposedly a gene allelic to extended black, "brown down", which has to be present with the Columbian gene to eliminate the stippled back and salmon breast of the black breasted wild type pattern. I only include this because the chicks in my Wyandotte line do appear to exhibit this dark brown down about half the time.

My original Cornish male had a very strong darkening gene Dr. Carefoot calls "Melanotic". I read somewhere he considers the Dark Cornish pattern to be a "melanized" black breasted red which is probably true for my bantam, though I'm not so sure about the standard sized birds I used to have.

Melanotic and pattern genes together are the cause of the Cornish heavy double lacing, while Columbian and the pattern gene plus silver express as the more uniform single lacing with clear white centers.

It gets quite confusing, does it not? I have a difficult time making sense of it. I'll try, from this point, to simply state what I know.

My original Cornish, as I said, possessed a strong melanizing factor. It affected his down coat as a chick so that, even though chipmunk (wild-type) patterned, the black stood out around his white belly like a little tuxedo outfit.

Something like this in his grandchick:

I had hoped to work out the second "wild type" for the Gallus giganteus first and then go back and make crosses with the Red Jungle Fowl to properly sort out the two color complexes, one from the other. You can imagine the confusion of forms expressed by the hybrid, the chicken, even if it turns out to be relatively few factors by which they truly differ.

The melanotic gene of my Cornish founder bird has caused some pretty dark birds in my Silkie line. I call it that because, even though the founder hen, one of the original five, was only half Silkie (and half Cochin Bantam or Pekin), I was selecting for Silkie traits; crest, beard and muffs, shank feathering, and fibromelanosis (pigmented face).

Here's what my gen 3 breeder hen looks like:

Here's her sister:

I know, she looks black, but see the red centers to her feathers and the 'white' shanks? Dr. This darkening gene is used to breed black bantam varieties with yellow or white shanks. Extended black is different. It 'covers' everything else colorwise, is epistatic to other colors and/or patterns, and blackens the shanks. My founder hen carried this type of black. Here you can see a black wing feather. Being heterozygous dominant, I was able to weed it out in one generation.

I am sure of barring in the female of the Gallus giganteus species. This excellent female of my Wyandotte line, in which I select predominantly for color, shows it very weakly.

Here is her other side where it barely shows at all,

I'm predicting now that I will find this barring in one more generation.

This bird, also in my Wyandotte line (Wyandotte X Cornish colored hen) surprised me with this very distinct barring.

Her other wing shows how the barring and pencilling (concentric lines within the feather) are related/interchangeable. Dr. Carefoot has a whole lot to say about that.

He believes, and I'm sure he's right, that the pencilling gene, his pattern gene, is changed to autosomal barring in the presence of "Dark Brown Columbian", a zonal restriction not unlike the Columbian I've already illustrated except that black is removed from the neck and appears only in the wings (covered or hidden) and tail.

Here is a picture of my male that most closely approximates what I have been looking for.

He is silver and laced. Although heavily melanistic, the wing bay, the exposed secondary feathers of the wing, remains a clear white. The mahogany edging of the wing bay appears part of a natural pattern...

although the lacing is quite reduced.

Other males of the same line show far more white approximating the black breasted silver pattern...

The lacing is not apparent in the wing bow, the front of the wing. The mahogany wing border is barely showing.

Here's another silver male of the Cornish line...

No lacing here at all.

The first male shows heavy lacing with narrow centers on the wing bow here...

I feel he's running too much to black. I'm not sure of the final outcome, but suspect more color, brighter lacing perhaps. Remember the male is supposed to be flashy and colorful.

I have long believed a form of hen feathering existed in Gallus giganteus. At least as far as the back hackle or saddle feathers are concerned since they were covered over by the wings and would not be seen. I rejected the common hen feathering trait because it allows male-type plumage in the neutered cock, though now I'm not so sure. The trait has variable expression and is common in some of the Asiatic Games. The big question is, will it inhibit expression of male color or not.

This hen, 3rd generation, is in the ballpark as far as female pattern in GG.

I expected there to be more mahogany color, the color bordering the wing in the young male, masking the white of the 'Silver' gene (for cryptic coloring), and I'm very happy to relate that I've found in in gen 4 females.

Below is a bird I've bred, 4th generation, which shows the color pattern of the male Gallus giganteus.

This beautiful young bird is not GG. He's merely expressing the color pattern which was a most interesting problem to solve.​

 

[cwhit590]

Well I guess that answers our question...

Those birds are BEAUTIFUL.

 

[catdaddyfro]

Good grief its too late this evening for all that, I'll have to start tomorrow with a new brain to soak some of that stuff up.

DEEEP!
neat looking birds though, interesting.