When creating a new variety of a breed...

[FrChuckW]

Shelley, you'ere going to need to build some pens for this experiment and not allow free ranging to keep the lines pure and no inteference from other birds that you don't want in the mix.

Take a roo from color A bird and a hen from color B bird and mate them together. Also take a hen from color A and a roo from color B and mate them together. This will establish your initial two lines to work with.

Take a daughter from your first line and breed her back to the roo, take a son and breed it back to the mother, do this with both lines. Also take a brother and sister from each and mate them together.

This will give you 3 lines to work with, Paternal, Maternal, Sibling.

The Paternal line will establish what traits from the roo you want to keep, the maternal will establish what traits from the hen you want. The Sibling line will show what defects are hiding in the birds and allow you to breed them out.

Next you will want to breed granddaughter to grandfather, grandson to grandmother. This will help stabilize the genes and you can see what is working and what is not. Breed sibling to sibling again, you should get some birds that have everything you don't want and some that you do out of this pairing. Keep the ones you want, butcher the rest.

Now you want to take a Roo from line B and breed it to a hen from line A, take a Roo from line A and breed it to a Hen from Line B.

This will restore vigor to both lines and you should be almost to your goal.

Remember some charecteristics are sex-linked, usually to the opposite sex by the parents.

 

[shelleyb1969]

OMG! Thank you soooo much for that detailed plan

. I honestly had no idea how to even begin, so you just saved me from eventually starting a new thread

. I have both hens and a roo in the black bantam Ameraucanas....now I just need to figure out what Mille Fleur breed is my best bet to cross with.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

Sorry I cant be of much help with the mille fluer but I wanted to say ameraucanas have a pea comb, not rose. You know what you could do is get a mille fluer cochin and some wheaten ameraucanas because I think mille fluer may have wheaten but not sure.

 

[shelleyb1969]

Quote:
Thanks for correcting me, FMP

....how embarrassing!

You can definitely tell I'm totally new to this stuff!

I'm gonna need LOTS of help.

The problem with Mille Fleur Cochins is finding them, even hatching eggs, at a reasonable price. If there's a more economically priced breed that I can start with, it would help me a lot financially. But who knows

...I may eventually have to go that route.

 

[shelleyd2008]

There are other breeds that are mille fleur and clean legged, OEGB being one of them. I'm sure there are more.

Mille fleur cochins are the result of buff, columbian, and mottled. So you just need to figure out what you can mix together to get a mille fleur ameraucana.

I want to be first on the list when you get them going

 

[shelleyb1969]

Quote:
You know, if I get this project going, I'm going to eventually need a test hatcher

!

 

[shelleyb1969]

I've actually got mottled cochins as well as columbian cochin eggs due to hatch next week...leaving out only the buff. But I also have a young mille fleur OEGB pullet. So many possibilities!

My initial thought was to use a mille fleur d'uccle so as to keep the good beard...but how hard would it be to get rid of those leg feathers on the offspring?

 

[shelleyd2008]

I think it would harder to lose the leg feathers than it would be to get a good beard and muffs back. I don't think crossing with cochins would be a good idea though, their body shape is totally different from ameraucanas. Idk what else you could do to get them....

 

[aveca]

Every chicken breed today except the jungle foul are because of someone experimenting to try and create a picture in thier minds.

Sir John sebright spent 30 happy years of his life developing the little sebright bantam

I am really impressed with the new breed the cequred or checkered one mans dream bird , he felt the one barred breed had an unfinished look so I cant remember what he crossed with the barred breed to get the spectacular tail but it was very impressive. And the color of the bird got even better than the origional barred bird. I think there is a story about it, It might be inspiring to read for you . He tells about all of the trail and errors and nay-sayers. He had the last laugh in the end. He is highly praised for his work. The story about that new breed was in practical poultry, the have a web site under construction, I went to go look for the article .

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

Aha I figured out a good cross. I remembered being at the ameraucana national thing a few years back at the Montana show and I overheard a breeder say he used d'anver to get a certain color in his ameraucana bantams. They have similar type and the comb would only take a couple years, the legs and beard are good though. So I know there are mille fluer d'anvers out there, I see them all the time. Get some of those, the only thing you'd have to work on other than color is comb type which is easy.