What exactly does duckwing mean?

[Sparklee]

In layman's terms what does a duckwing chicken look like?

What characteristics define that term duckwing?

Where did they come up with the name?

Are there other hobby names for duckwing? Or is duckwing a hobby name for it?

What about a gold duckwing?

And the females look different from the males?

Are they e+ locus? Is that wild type? Or wild type + What does the e mean and what does the plus mean?

With duckwing, are there also other features such as Pg or eb that always go along with duckwing or gold duckwing?

Sorry about any wrong terminiology. This is my first attempt at trying to learn about duckwing.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Duckwing is wildtype: e+ The plus sign designates a wildtype allele, that found in the red jungle fowl, the prototype "chicken." The e refers to the specific variation of the E gene; in htis case, it refers to the e+ allele, as compared with E, E^R, E^Wh or e^b alleles of the E gene.

Duckwing as a term indicates the triangular wing patch at the exterior tip of the wing. Many patterns are different on males than on females. For specific varieties, specific genes combinations are needed.

BBR is a duckwing pattern, as is goldEN duckwing and silver duckwing. (Gold duckwing would be BBR.)

 

[Sparklee]

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Why isn't it just e? Why does it need the +? I haven't ever seen the explanation on that. I don't get the + part. The other E allele designations seem to make sense on some level, but the +? They say that it means wildtype, but why can't wildtype just be e all by itself? Or is that + always the designation of wildtype with all the other alleles, too, like with c and i and etc? (which I also am working on getting a handle on.

Quote:
Excellent info. I actually understand the term BBR (sort of). I guess I just hit a wall because I don't know all the terms (golden duckwing = BBR) that sometimes mean close to the same thing.

So goldEN duckwing is the proper term instead of gold duckwing?

Thanks a lot for your help. I can read the books and web pages, but nothing substitutes for a conversation.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Gold is a bird pure for the gold gene. Golden is one copy of gold and one of silver. Silver is pure for the silver gene. Since silver/gold is a sex-linked gene, females can only be gold or silver, not golden.

The plus sign is used for the wildtype allele of all gene: s+ C+ b+ bl+ fr+ etc. Not just e+ It designates the allele (of each gene) that is present in the red jungle fowl.

 

[Sparklee]

Okay. That helps a lot. Thank you. I appreciate you sharing your expertise.

 

[Henk69]

In some species one tends to leave out the + sign.
That means eg for rabbits you have to remember that E is the wildtype, or for the other genes A,B,C,D. Fortunately most mutations were recessive.
But later they also found dominant mutations on those genes.
We, chicken breeders, have the luxury that we can use the + wildtype indicator. It can help a lot (readability) in genetic discussions.
When People accidently use a capital instead of a lowercase or if MS Word automatically does that.

Pigeon fanciers use a + sign alone for all the wildtype genes, leaving out the genesymbol, in this case E.