Wheaten genetics

[chikenkid617]

Hi, I'm just curious how wheaten genetics work when crossing to duckwing. I'm hoping to make blue (gold) wheaten and silver wheaten/salmon in the main breed I work with, and I am using blue breasted red to wheaten to make the blue wheaten and silver duckwing to wheaten to make silver wheaten. I'm just curious how many generations this will take, chicken genetics calculator says wheaten to duckwing makes duckwing and you have to cross those to wheaten to get more wheaten, but ai, Google, and other threads here say wheaten is dominant over duckwing, so I'm just curious which is true. I know how BBS and gold/silver genetics work, just asking about the wheaten to duckwing . Thank you!

 

[chikenkid617]

@NatJ

 

[NatJ]

Hi, I'm just curious how wheaten genetics work when crossing to duckwing. I'm hoping to make blue (gold) wheaten and silver wheaten/salmon in the main breed I work with, and I am using blue breasted red to wheaten to make the blue wheaten and silver duckwing to wheaten to make silver wheaten. I'm just curious how many generations this will take, chicken genetics calculator says wheaten to duckwing makes duckwing and you have to cross those to wheaten to get more wheaten, but ai, Google, and other threads here say wheaten is dominant over duckwing, so I'm just curious which is true. I know how BBS and gold/silver genetics work, just asking about the wheaten to duckwing . Thank you!

If what you really want is chicks that are pure for the Wheaten gene (E^Wh), then you should be able to get some in the second generation. For that, it does not really matter whether Duckwing is dominant over Wheaten or vice versa.

Cross the Wheaten and the Duckwing, and you've got chicks that are E^Wh/e+ (one Wheaten gene, one Duckwing gene.)

Breed those chicks back to Wheaten, or breed them to each other, and you should get some chicks that are E^Wh/E^Wh (pure for Wheaten). That would be about 50% if you crossed back to Wheaten, or 25% if you breed the crossed chicks to each other.

I would take a good look at your Wheaten chicks and your Duckwing chicks, then at the crossed chicks you produce. Taking photos might be a good idea. Duckwing chicks usually have clear stripes in the down. Wheaten chicks mostly do not. Mixed chicks tend to have some amount of striping.

When you get some pure Wheaten chicks in your second or later generations of breeding, you can probably pick them out by sight, just based on the down color. Mark them, or put them in a separate pen, and choose your next generation of breeders from them. After that, the Duckwing gene should be gone, so you will not have to think about it any more.

I know how BBS and gold/silver genetics work, just asking about the wheaten to duckwing .

There may also be some other genes involved in making good wheaten vs. good duckwing chickens, but breeding back to Wheaten for a few generations will probably fix most of them.

 

[chikenkid617]

Thanks!

 

[NatJ]

Thanks!

You're welcome!

 

[RonOkimoto]

Hi, I'm just curious how wheaten genetics work when crossing to duckwing. I'm hoping to make blue (gold) wheaten and silver wheaten/salmon in the main breed I work with, and I am using blue breasted red to wheaten to make the blue wheaten and silver duckwing to wheaten to make silver wheaten. I'm just curious how many generations this will take, chicken genetics calculator says wheaten to duckwing makes duckwing and you have to cross those to wheaten to get more wheaten, but ai, Google, and other threads here say wheaten is dominant over duckwing, so I'm just curious which is true. I know how BBS and gold/silver genetics work, just asking about the wheaten to duckwing . Thank you!

I would like to know what you get from your crosses. What breed are you working with?

Silver and gold are sex-linked so you should make your first cross Silver Duckwing males to Wheaten females. This will give you silver F1 progeny of both sexes (the males will be heterozygous S/s+). You can use a blue splash (Bl/Bl) male or female to cross to a gold Wheaten to produce all blue hybrid progeny.

I would like to know how dominant the wheaten allele is in this cross. I have only dealt with wheaten crosses where Columbian (Co) was involved and wheaten showed some dominance, but I would have characterized it as incompletely dominant.

Your Wheaten should have wheaten chick down. There should be reduced black and mostly straw colored down. The adults should have a cream undercolor. The undercolor is just the fluff at the base of the feathers, so if you spread the feathers on the back of a wheaten bird the undercolor should be cream colored. If you do this for your Silver Duckwing birds the undercolor will be gray. I am near sighted so I could take off my glasses and blow on the back of a bird to see the undercolor.

The hybrid chicks may be intermediate in down type and have reduced black in the striped down. The adult hybrid males will likely look like Silver Duckwing because wheaten reduces the black in the hackle and saddle, and Silver Duckwing have other modifiers reducing the black in the hackle and saddle. The hybrid male undercolor is supposed to be cream colored (for dominant wheaten), but it may only be a lighter shade of gray (that is what it was for me, but Co was present in my crosses). The hybrid females may show some wild-type stippling, but they will not be a clean silver body color. Dominant wheaten should distribute the salmon pigment over the body of the bird, so they should be a light wheaten color. Their undercolor should be cream, but it may be light gray.

So, I'd like to know how this cross turns out. Thanks.

Ron Okimoto