Randy I was going by culling for green legs in Delawares so it might work the same for yellow like I said I don't know for sure...but the rooster is the culprit in the Dels the hens that have the correct color you don't have to worry about then you cross the rooster to the yellow colored shanked bird and I believe any breed would work with yellow shanks...that way you don't need to wait so long you could hatch them now good thing you still have the older rooster...
Wheaten and Blue wheaten Marans Discussion Thread
- Thread starter snowbird
- Start date
Quote:
The F1 offspring should appear as blue/black, probably with some red leakage, and will dark legs.
I think it would be easier to get a blue wheaten to mix with your Wheatens.
Then again, I may be wrong.....
The lighter shanks will follow the wheaten genes. Your first generation will be hybrid birchen/wheaten or extended black/wheaten, depending on who you got your blues from. I believe most of the good dark egg laying blues out there are birchen based. Birchen is dominant so your chicks should all look like BCM chicks in F1. In your F1 crosses, you will start to see your yellow wheaten chicks again. If your blues and wheatens in the original cross both carried the proper Id shank clearing gene, all your wheaten chicks should still have the good clear shanks.
Id is hard to identify in blues because the blue gene also lightens shanks. So if your Blue was id/id instead of Id/Id then you will get a percentage of gray shanked wheatens as well. But if your original wheaten had correct shanks, they should carry through to at least a portion of the wheaten offspring in F2
Skin color is not sex linked.
Randy,
With 2 out of 25 I would think you only have 1 bird carrying yellow. I wouldn't cull a good hen just because she's paired up with a carrier. Once you identify your pair, take one out and test more eggs. You took all this time to grow out and cull down to just a few good hens (and waited 9 months for them to start laying!), don't be in a hurry to cull a perfectly good bird. I would hatch at least a dozen eggs from each bird. If you have room to do a trio, then you should have room to single mate, it just takes longer. But then you might find the perfect combo that produces killer roos or hens. And then you'll have no regrets about who you're culling.
Recessives don't always play the odds correctly. I was reading about a flock that carried recessive white. And from one season to the next the range of whites thrown was as high as 80% and as low as 1%.
The F1 offspring should appear as blue/black, probably with some red leakage, and will dark legs.
I think it would be easier to get a blue wheaten to mix with your Wheatens.
Then again, I may be wrong.....
The lighter shanks will follow the wheaten genes. Your first generation will be hybrid birchen/wheaten or extended black/wheaten, depending on who you got your blues from. I believe most of the good dark egg laying blues out there are birchen based. Birchen is dominant so your chicks should all look like BCM chicks in F1. In your F1 crosses, you will start to see your yellow wheaten chicks again. If your blues and wheatens in the original cross both carried the proper Id shank clearing gene, all your wheaten chicks should still have the good clear shanks.
Id is hard to identify in blues because the blue gene also lightens shanks. So if your Blue was id/id instead of Id/Id then you will get a percentage of gray shanked wheatens as well. But if your original wheaten had correct shanks, they should carry through to at least a portion of the wheaten offspring in F2
Skin color is not sex linked.
Randy,
With 2 out of 25 I would think you only have 1 bird carrying yellow. I wouldn't cull a good hen just because she's paired up with a carrier. Once you identify your pair, take one out and test more eggs. You took all this time to grow out and cull down to just a few good hens (and waited 9 months for them to start laying!), don't be in a hurry to cull a perfectly good bird. I would hatch at least a dozen eggs from each bird. If you have room to do a trio, then you should have room to single mate, it just takes longer. But then you might find the perfect combo that produces killer roos or hens. And then you'll have no regrets about who you're culling.
Recessives don't always play the odds correctly. I was reading about a flock that carried recessive white. And from one season to the next the range of whites thrown was as high as 80% and as low as 1%.
Last edited:
thanks village , this is also a email bev sent to me Hi Randy
To get yellow legs you would need two birds that carry the gene for yellow legs to produce a chick with yellow legs. It's my guess that the stock you got from e-bay carried the yellow leg gene. When you saved a rooster from that stock and bred him with his sisters that's when you started seeing the yellow legs.
The second male is carrying the yellow leg gene and so are some of his sisters. If you only breed with the male you got from me and don't do a sibling mating you should be OK. Eventually you will breed the yellow leg gene out.
If you don't understand I'll try and explain it another way.
Kind regards
Bev
Quote:
The F1 offspring should appear as blue/black, probably with some red leakage, and will dark legs.
I think it would be easier to get a blue wheaten to mix with your Wheatens.
Then again, I may be wrong.....
The lighter shanks will follow the wheaten genes. Your first generation will be hybrid birchen/wheaten or extended black/wheaten, depending on who you got your blues from. I believe most of the good dark egg laying blues out there are birchen based. Birchen is dominant so your chicks should all look like BCM chicks in F1. In your F1 crosses, you will start to see your yellow wheaten chicks again. If your blues and wheatens in the original cross both carried the proper Id shank clearing gene, all your wheaten chicks should still have the good clear shanks.
Id is hard to identify in blues because the blue gene also lightens shanks. So if your Blue was id/id instead of Id/Id then you will get a percentage of gray shanked wheatens as well. But if your original wheaten had correct shanks, they should carry through to at least a portion of the wheaten offspring in F2
Skin color is not sex linked.
Randy,
With 2 out of 25 I would think you only have 1 bird carrying yellow. I wouldn't cull a good hen just because she's paired up with a carrier. Once you identify your pair, take one out and test more eggs. You took all this time to grow out and cull down to just a few good hens (and waited 9 months for them to start laying!), don't be in a hurry to cull a perfectly good bird. I would hatch at least a dozen eggs from each bird. If you have room to do a trio, then you should have room to single mate, it just takes longer. But then you might find the perfect combo that produces killer roos or hens. And then you'll have no regrets about who you're culling.
Recessives don't always play the odds correctly. I was reading about a flock that carried recessive white. And from one season to the next the range of whites thrown was as high as 80% and as low as 1%.
To get yellow legs you would need two birds that carry the gene for yellow legs to produce a chick with yellow legs. It's my guess that the stock you got from e-bay carried the yellow leg gene. When you saved a rooster from that stock and bred him with his sisters that's when you started seeing the yellow legs.
The second male is carrying the yellow leg gene and so are some of his sisters. If you only breed with the male you got from me and don't do a sibling mating you should be OK. Eventually you will breed the yellow leg gene out.
If you don't understand I'll try and explain it another way.
Kind regards
Bev
Quote:
The F1 offspring should appear as blue/black, probably with some red leakage, and will dark legs.
I think it would be easier to get a blue wheaten to mix with your Wheatens.
Then again, I may be wrong.....
The lighter shanks will follow the wheaten genes. Your first generation will be hybrid birchen/wheaten or extended black/wheaten, depending on who you got your blues from. I believe most of the good dark egg laying blues out there are birchen based. Birchen is dominant so your chicks should all look like BCM chicks in F1. In your F1 crosses, you will start to see your yellow wheaten chicks again. If your blues and wheatens in the original cross both carried the proper Id shank clearing gene, all your wheaten chicks should still have the good clear shanks.
Id is hard to identify in blues because the blue gene also lightens shanks. So if your Blue was id/id instead of Id/Id then you will get a percentage of gray shanked wheatens as well. But if your original wheaten had correct shanks, they should carry through to at least a portion of the wheaten offspring in F2
Skin color is not sex linked.
Randy,
With 2 out of 25 I would think you only have 1 bird carrying yellow. I wouldn't cull a good hen just because she's paired up with a carrier. Once you identify your pair, take one out and test more eggs. You took all this time to grow out and cull down to just a few good hens (and waited 9 months for them to start laying!), don't be in a hurry to cull a perfectly good bird. I would hatch at least a dozen eggs from each bird. If you have room to do a trio, then you should have room to single mate, it just takes longer. But then you might find the perfect combo that produces killer roos or hens. And then you'll have no regrets about who you're culling.
Recessives don't always play the odds correctly. I was reading about a flock that carried recessive white. And from one season to the next the range of whites thrown was as high as 80% and as low as 1%.
Quote:
Okay, so you know the 2nd gen Davis roo is a carrier, and his sisters MIGHT be carrying. If your ebay hen is a carrier, not all of her offspring necessarily carry, and you don't know for sure if any of your 3 first year hens are even hers. You could have perfectly good hens from her, if any of the 2nd generation hens are hers. Your goal is to eliminate ALL the carriers of the yellow skin gene in your entire flock. It could just be your 2nd gen Davis roo with his mother (the original carrier) that are making the yellow shanked birds. Your 3 newer hens from your first year could all be clean. Carriers are hard to identify. Were your Buddy Henrys direct from Cottage Hill/Skyline?
If the list isn't too long, you might want to let folks know who got eggs from your original 4 birds that they probably have yellow carriers and if they breed siblings or breed back to the parent birds they'll see yellow. They could have ended up with a really nice roo or a few hens like yours that will start making yellow shanked birds. Kind of ironic that out of 150 birds, maybe two that you found to be the best are also carrying yellow. At least your eye is consistent. If Don is right, maybe you can't get a good roo and hen out of the same pairing, so with luck all your first year hens are clean, and it's just your Roo's mother that's the carrier (maybe none of your 3 first year hens are sisters to your younger roo).
You would have to hatch fewer eggs if you put your hens under a yellow shanked roo. Borrow someone's Leghorn, RIR or Plymouth Rock Roo, and if your hen's a carrier then 50% of the offspring will be yellow shanked. The offspring will just be hybrid layer/meat birds, but you probably wouldn't have any problem getting rid of them. Putting your carrier 2nd gen Davis roo with a carrier hen will only hatch one in four with yellow. I'd sleep better with the 50% odds.
Okay, so you know the 2nd gen Davis roo is a carrier, and his sisters MIGHT be carrying. If your ebay hen is a carrier, not all of her offspring necessarily carry, and you don't know for sure if any of your 3 first year hens are even hers. You could have perfectly good hens from her, if any of the 2nd generation hens are hers. Your goal is to eliminate ALL the carriers of the yellow skin gene in your entire flock. It could just be your 2nd gen Davis roo with his mother (the original carrier) that are making the yellow shanked birds. Your 3 newer hens from your first year could all be clean. Carriers are hard to identify. Were your Buddy Henrys direct from Cottage Hill/Skyline?
If the list isn't too long, you might want to let folks know who got eggs from your original 4 birds that they probably have yellow carriers and if they breed siblings or breed back to the parent birds they'll see yellow. They could have ended up with a really nice roo or a few hens like yours that will start making yellow shanked birds. Kind of ironic that out of 150 birds, maybe two that you found to be the best are also carrying yellow. At least your eye is consistent. If Don is right, maybe you can't get a good roo and hen out of the same pairing, so with luck all your first year hens are clean, and it's just your Roo's mother that's the carrier (maybe none of your 3 first year hens are sisters to your younger roo).
You would have to hatch fewer eggs if you put your hens under a yellow shanked roo. Borrow someone's Leghorn, RIR or Plymouth Rock Roo, and if your hen's a carrier then 50% of the offspring will be yellow shanked. The offspring will just be hybrid layer/meat birds, but you probably wouldn't have any problem getting rid of them. Putting your carrier 2nd gen Davis roo with a carrier hen will only hatch one in four with yellow. I'd sleep better with the 50% odds.
Hi All! I have a question. I just picked up my first chicks on Saturday! They are wheaten Marans. The guy I got them from said they are about 2 1/2 months old. i wish I had a way to put pictures on here but at this time I do not. They have a good bit of adult feathers but still a lot of fluffy feather patches also. Can anyone give me an idead if 2 1/2 months old is right based on this description? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
By 10-11 weeks I would imagine that most of their chickdown would be gone.
Can you tell which ones are the hens and which are the cockerels? The cockerels will have a lot more black in the wings/shoulders and breast.
check out some of the pictures of other 10-12 week old chicks here on BYC (just put 10 week cockerel in the search window) and you can see that you should be pretty well feathered in with juvie feathers. Some Marans can be slow feathering, but most are not. Either way, I'd say lots of fluff still would mean they are a bit younger, like closer to 6 weeks.
Can you tell which ones are the hens and which are the cockerels? The cockerels will have a lot more black in the wings/shoulders and breast.
check out some of the pictures of other 10-12 week old chicks here on BYC (just put 10 week cockerel in the search window) and you can see that you should be pretty well feathered in with juvie feathers. Some Marans can be slow feathering, but most are not. Either way, I'd say lots of fluff still would mean they are a bit younger, like closer to 6 weeks.
Quote:
Great Idea.
Joe
Great Idea.
Joe
Quote:
The Delaware green vs. yellow works a bit differently because you want yellow and are trying to get rid of the recessive id gene that puts "blue" eumelanin into the shanks and creates the green. the Id gene is sex linked and that's why it will always only be your roosters that are carriers of the id "blue shank" gene. White/Yellow shanks are autosomal and work in the regular dominant/recessive way. There is the potential for both sexes to be carriers, so it's a bit more complicated, except that he already knows the roo carries, so he just has to weed out the carrier hen(s)
The Delaware green vs. yellow works a bit differently because you want yellow and are trying to get rid of the recessive id gene that puts "blue" eumelanin into the shanks and creates the green. the Id gene is sex linked and that's why it will always only be your roosters that are carriers of the id "blue shank" gene. White/Yellow shanks are autosomal and work in the regular dominant/recessive way. There is the potential for both sexes to be carriers, so it's a bit more complicated, except that he already knows the roo carries, so he just has to weed out the carrier hen(s)
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Quote:
Thanks for the input. I searched pictures of chicks from 4-12 weeks. None of them look like my chickens! I do know I have one rooster and 5 hens. I will try to get some picutres on here so you can see them. Maybe that would help. I am kind of worried about them because the age the guy that sold them to me I do not think is true. But then again maybe it is true and there is something wrong with them.
Thanks for the input. I searched pictures of chicks from 4-12 weeks. None of them look like my chickens! I do know I have one rooster and 5 hens. I will try to get some picutres on here so you can see them. Maybe that would help. I am kind of worried about them because the age the guy that sold them to me I do not think is true. But then again maybe it is true and there is something wrong with them.
Quote:
The Delaware green vs. yellow works a bit differently because you want yellow and are trying to get rid of the recessive id gene that puts "blue" eumelanin into the shanks and creates the green. the Id gene is sex linked and that's why it will always only be your roosters that are carriers of the id "blue shank" gene. White/Yellow shanks are autosomal and work in the regular dominant/recessive way. There is the potential for both sexes to be carriers, so it's a bit more complicated, except that he already knows the roo carries, so he just has to weed out the carrier hen(s)
Thanks I was figuring that out in the posts so since I have always culled all the chicks that I've hatched when 1 had yellow shanks and I have New Hampshires and Delawares I could always test mate both sexes right from the start to find out if any of my "keepers" were carriers right from the start correct and I don't have much problem selling mixes either. I sure want to start off with the least amount of problems now that I have some good enough to breed.
The Delaware green vs. yellow works a bit differently because you want yellow and are trying to get rid of the recessive id gene that puts "blue" eumelanin into the shanks and creates the green. the Id gene is sex linked and that's why it will always only be your roosters that are carriers of the id "blue shank" gene. White/Yellow shanks are autosomal and work in the regular dominant/recessive way. There is the potential for both sexes to be carriers, so it's a bit more complicated, except that he already knows the roo carries, so he just has to weed out the carrier hen(s)
Thanks I was figuring that out in the posts so since I have always culled all the chicks that I've hatched when 1 had yellow shanks and I have New Hampshires and Delawares I could always test mate both sexes right from the start to find out if any of my "keepers" were carriers right from the start correct and I don't have much problem selling mixes either. I sure want to start off with the least amount of problems now that I have some good enough to breed.
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