What would the breeding plan look like to introduce lacing into solid/self Orpingtons?

[Chickensaurus Rex]

That's my basic question: Assuming you have both male and female red Orpingtons...what would the breeding steps look like to introduce lacing into the line? Blue lacing would be my personal ideal. When I use the calculator it's clear that lacing is not simple inheritance however which is most of my breeding experience (Used to breed rats).

The chicken calculator is...challenging to use & a LOT of "what if" pictures don't seem to exist when I cross a red self with a blue laced red. I assume I'd have to bring in non-orp genetics like a blue laced red Wyandotte to even start. After that though it's not super clear what to do. & the lack of pictures makes it more muddy.

The eventual goal would be quite simply blue laced red Orpingtons of entirely Orpington type & personality. They'd be for my personal enjoyment. I used to breed rats so selection for productivity, type, disease resistance, longevity, & personality are very straight forward to me. It's just the colors that are unexpectedly challenging! I want to have a full plan on paper before I even think about building another coop+run for this idea.

 

[NatJ]

I think some laced Orpingtons do exist. You might be able to save a lot of effort by starting with them.

The chicken calculator is...challenging to use

Since you have been using the calculator, I will try to refer to the genes by the abbreviation and/or name that the calculator uses.

You probably already know this, but in general capital letters indicate a dominant gene and lowercase letters indicate a recessive gene. A "+" after a gene means it is the wild-type form (found in the original wild ancestors of chickens.)

Assuming you have both male and female red Orpingtons...what would the breeding steps look like to introduce lacing into the line? Blue lacing would be my personal ideal. When I use the calculator it's clear that lacing is not simple inheritance however which is most of my breeding experience (Used to breed rats).

You need to change the e-locus gene (most red chickens are E^Wh while laced chickens are usually E^R or e^b). Laced Wyandottes should be e^b. Most of the e-locus genes give some odd mixed effects when a chicken is not pure for one or the other, so it's not just a case of simple dominance.

You need Pg and Ml. Those are linked, so you can probably get them together from a laced bird, and treat them almost like one gene. You will get a few birds where the linkage breaks and they lose one or other of those genes, but hopefully not too many. I am just going to talk about the pattern gene (Pg) and ignore Ml (Melanotic) because they will mostly stay together, but you really do need them as a pair. They are usually considered dominant, but I think incomplete dominance might be the more accurate term. Birds are unlikely to have nice lacing if they are not pure for Pg and Ml.

The reds probably have Co (Columbian) already.

There are almost certainly some modifier genes that are needed to make GOOD lacing, but they aren't ones that have been well studied, and they aren't in the chicken calculator.

Do you already know how the blue gene works? It is an incomplete dominant: one copy turns black into blue, two copies turn black into splash. You will need to carry this gene along in your crosses too, making sure you don't lose it along the way.

The comb type is controlled by a single gene (Rose is dominant over not-rose).
The foot color is controlled by a single gene (white is dominant over yellow).

I assume I'd have to bring in non-orp genetics like a blue laced red Wyandotte to even start. After that though it's not super clear what to do. & the lack of pictures makes it more muddy.

If you start with Blue Laced Red Wyandottes and Red Orpingtons, I think you can basically do a two-generation pattern, repeating until you have the right birds.

Cross a laced bird to an Orpington. Choose chicks that have the most Orpington traits. Take them and cross back to the laced bird. This time choose the best possible laced bird. Repeat the pattern, crossing the new laced bird to a pure Orpington again.

Eventually you will have nice laced Orpingtons, and can breed them to each other instead of continuing to cross back and forth.


More details:

The e-locus genes have a big effect on chick down color, which you can probably use to save a lot of time & food raising "wrong" chicks. (You can sell them young, or raise them out for meat, or just outright cull them.)

I suggest you start by taking photos of Red Orpington chicks, and the Wyandotte chicks (black, blue, and splash varieties.) When you cross Orpington x Wyandotte, take photos of those chicks too. After that, when you cross laced with red, you want chicks colored like those half & half chicks (not like pure red chicks). When you cross back to laced, you want chicks colored & patterned like the pure Wyandotte chicks (not like the half & half chicks).

You are not dealing with any sex-linked genes here, so it should not matter which direction you do the crosses (which breed is the male parent and which is the female parent)

When crossing Laced to Red the first time (pure Wyandotte to pure Orpington), you should get chicks that are split for several genes:
E^WH/e^b (e-locus split Wheaten and partridge)
Pg/pg+ (pattern gene and no pattern gene.)
R/r+ (rose comb and not-rose)
W+/w (white skin and not-white skin, aka yellow)

If the Wyandotte was blue, you will have:
Bl/bl+ (chicks with the blue gene)
bl+/bl+ (chicks without the blue gene)

If the Wyandotte was splash, all chicks will be blue (Bl/bl+)

So all the chicks should be pretty much the same, except for some having blue and some having black. It is moderately common for Wyandottes to carry the gene for single comb (not-rose), so you might get some chicks with single combs. If you do, use one of them for the next generation, and you will be a bit ahead in getting rid of the rose comb.

Do pay attention to what those chicks look like as they grow feathers, and take photos at various ages. In the next generation, you will want to be able to recognize when a chick has half of the genes for lacing (one of everything instead of two.)




Breeding one of those chicks back to the Wyandotte should give you:

Some chicks E^Wh/e^b (not good, has the wrong e-locus gene.)
Some chicks e^b/e^b (GOOD. This one has only the right e-locus gene.)
There is a good chance that you can sort those out when they hatch. Keep only the ones that "look like" Wyandotte chicks, and you will hopefully have just e^b chicks to grow out.

Of them, as they grow, you should have these variations:
Pg/Pg (GOOD. This one has two copies of the pattern gene, and probably has good lacing. You want to keep chicks like this.)
Pg/pg+ (Not good. This one only has one copy of the pattern gene. It probably has partial lacing, and looks somewhat like the chicks in the previous generation.)

Choose the chicks with the nicest lacing, because they probably have the right genes for it. The more chicks you have, the more picky you can be at this stage. Females usually show lacing more nicely than males, so choosing the nicest lacing might mean choosing females (either gender can work fine for the next step.)

At this stage, if you have several birds with equally nice lacing, you should probably give precedence to any that has a single comb, or white feet, or both. But save at least one or two others as backup, in case something happens to the best one! And good lacing is more important than getting the comb or feet right at this point.




Then go through the same process again, except that you use one of those laced chicks with the Red Orpingtons, and you cross back to one of those laced birds, instead of using the pure Wyandotte. This time as you are crossing, some of the chicks will have more Orpington traits than others (because the laced parent is already part Orpington.)

When you cross a laced bird to Orpington, you should get chicks that have the split e-locus and are split for the pattern gene, just like in the very first cross. Since they all match there, you want to select heavily for other Orpington traits: body shape, feathering, single comb if you can get it, white feet.

When you cross the half-Orpington chicks back to a laced bird, you are selecting very heavily for good lacing. Other traits are much less important at this stage.

Single comb x single comb should give only single combs, so once the rose comb is gone it will stay gone (unless you re-introduce it.)

Because yellow feet are recessive, you won't be able to tell which birds are carrying that gene and which are not. Since you will keep crossing back to Orpington (white feet), you may lose the yellow-foot gene along the way, which would be nice. In later generations, if you get any chicks with yellow feet, you will know that their parents both carry the gene. When the project is almost finished, you can use test-mating to identify any remaining birds that carry yellow feet (breed to a bird with yellow feet, see if you get any yellow foot chicks. If you get chicks with yellow feet, you know the bird being tested is a carrier for the gene. If you get 8-10 chicks with white feet and none with yellow, then the white-foot bird is probably pure for white feet. Do not keep the chicks from the test, because they are certain to carry the yellow-foot gene.)

When you are crossing half-orpington birds back to laced birds, you can cross them to their laced parent, or to a different laced bird (maybe a sibling or half-sibling of the parent, depending on what you have available at the time.) It should work equally well either way.




In general, the more chicks you hatch in each generation, the more likely that you can find ones with all the genes you want, so your project can make faster progress.



You can typically get one generation a year when breeding chickens, but sometimes you can get a second generation by breeding a cockerel to a mature hen (because cockerels are usually ready to mate before their sisters are laying eggs big enough to be good for hatching.) But you need to be a bit careful, because some traits are not obvious until the birds are older (like proper Orpington body shape of adult birds.) Choosing your breeding stock too young can sometimes mean that you choose the wrong ones.

 

[Chickensaurus Rex]

I think some laced Orpingtons do exist. You might be able to save a lot of effort by starting with them.....

This is the most amazing and perfectly exact reply I could have possibly gotten. Seriously like thanks do not suffice for this information; I'm literally going to print it out and put it in my garden plans book so it can't be lost. Everything is here; the gene locus names, their effects, the crossings and order...

Thank you very much for this. You went way out of your way and I appreciate it immensely.

 

[NatJ]

This is the most amazing and perfectly exact reply I could have possibly gotten. Seriously like thanks do not suffice for this information; I'm literally going to print it out and put it in my garden plans book so it can't be lost. Everything is here; the gene locus names, their effects, the crossings and order...

Thank you very much for this. You went way out of your way and I appreciate it immensely.

I'm glad it helped

When I use the calculator it's clear that lacing is not simple inheritance however which is most of my breeding experience (Used to breed rats).

The chicken calculator is...challenging to use

^This bit right here was VERY helpful to me, because it gave me an idea of how much you already knew. That made it much easier to explain.

(Oh, a piece of trivia I don't know if you've found yet: bird sex chromosomes are backwards of mammals. A rooster has ZZ, a hen has ZW, so the mother determines the gender of each chick, and all the sex-linked traits work backwards of how they do in mammals. Your project doesn't involve any of the genes on the Z chromosome, so it won't really matter to you.)