White Sport Cream Legbars

[blackbirds13]

well first hatch started with 5 White Sport eggs. Put 3 in lockdown and not one pip. Next hatch is next week.
ended up with 1 sport from the regular flock and 10 creams - 5 boys and 5 girls. Having humidity issues I need to resolve. It's always something.

 

[dretd]

My thinking was just serious inbreeding because so many of the chicks had defects.

...

Now- here is a crazy question for the genetics gurus... What genes in their background could possibly cause feathered legs?

My Whites hatched out with lightly feathered legs

I probably would not even have noticed but since these were the first White Recessive Cream Legbars to hatch here I was inspecting every inch of them! I didn't even think they were legbars at first and thought maybe they were a crossbreed of some sort.

They did lose the feathers during the chick stage but very strange nonetheless!

Serious inbreeding: It seems like most of the attempts at breeding recessive white CL's are from brother/sister pairings as a breeder obtains hatching eggs from one source and hatches out recessive whites and that progeny is used to breed from. So the already somewhat limited genetics of US CLs are further limited by this inbreeding. I could see how the fertility/fragility could be related to the inbreeding and not recessive white per se.

Recessive white has been shown to be from a retroviral gene insertion on chromosome 1: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17878441 'Mapping of the recessive white locus...' In this paper they used White Rocks. I did not know they were recessive white. I know there is a White Marans that is recessive white. So if you are ambitious you could obtain a White Rock and White Marans hen and toss them into the pen with the White Sport CL. If the eggs hatch uneventfully, then it is likely the inbreeding with the CLs that is the problem, not the recessive white. The use of these hens would make it easier to track the offspring since the egg color is tinted to brown.

The Minorca also comes in a Recessive White (had to look it up) and so that might be a better choice to interbreed into the CL (than the White Leghorn) to enhance vigor as it is also a white egg laying Mediterranian breed. In thinking about the infusion of other breeds that may have happened in recreating/reinvigorating the CL in England, it is quite possible that the Minorca could have been used by some breeder and that is how the recessive white ended up hidden in the genetics. It only has been revealed in the US because of the limited numbers of birds that were imported and used to establish the US population. In fact, in looking at the Minorca Standard (pg 123 APA SOP) the White Minorca would be an outstanding match for type when paired with the CL except that it has white legs instead of yellow--a 2 generation fix.

Feathered Shanks:
I had one Cream Legbar hatch last year with a few feathers on his shank. Like you, I was concerned about something else in the mix but was assured by the breeder that there were no other roos around so that was not the case. Like you, the feathers fell out at 3-4 week of age and have not returned. Feathered shanks are a dominant trait so I am not sure why this is happening as no one else in the flock has/had feathered shanks. If I recall right, there is recessive white in the flock but I have no idea if the parents carry it nor do I know if this one carries it either as they are just 7 or 8 months old now and I haven't hatched from them yet. It will be interesting to find out if there is some sort of linkage with a recessive feathered shanks that is linked with recessive white....

 

[nicalandia]

Not a genetics expert but I think outcrossing to a white leghorn would create a lot of issues. First, the white that we have is due to a combination of recessive + recessive. The white leghorn has dominant white. This dominance would likely override the autosexing traits that we would want to maintain. From what I understand, white is normally a dominant color in chickens, with our noted exception in cream legbars. We would need some of our geneticists to weigh in here. I do think that we can do things to improve the vitality of these white sports and develop a distinct strain but it is going to take some work to do it.

I now have a white sport cockerel that is strong and vigorous that was hatched on February 28th and a vigorous white sport pullet that was hatched on March 8th that are growing out nicely. We will see.

Breeding to White Leghorns will introduce a bunch of Unwanted genes, like Silver, some of them also carry blue, and Mottling under the white...

and there are plenty of recessive white breeds not just the white Cream Lebar

 

[Thespoiledchicken]

Quote:
That was my exact thought since the feathered legs seemed to go along only with my recessive Whites. I'm wondering if whatever introduced the recessive White into these birds also passed along this trait.


I use to have White Marans...very lovely birds

My understanding was they also started out as Sports from Black Coppers. To bad I don't have them any longer because that would be cool to do a test breeding between the two and get some Recessive White Olive Eggers!

Off to go check out the Minorca breed!

 

[nicalandia]

That was my exact thought since the feathered legs seemed to go along only with my recessive Whites. I'm wondering if whatever introduced the recessive White into these birds also passed along this trait.


I use to have White Marans...very lovely birds

My understanding was they also started out as Sports from Black Coppers. To bad I don't have them any longer because that would be cool to do a test breeding between the two and get some Recessive White Olive Eggers!

Off to go check out the Minorca breed!

No linkage, they are located in different chromosomes

 

[dretd]

Quote:
Nicalandia, could you elaborate on where you think this recessive leg feathering is coming from in these chicks? None of the parent stock has feathering on the shanks so something unexpected is going on. In the one I had hatched, I put it off as due to shipping messing with the chromosomes, but in Thespoiledchicken's case, these are from home-grown eggs so that would not be a factor.

 

[nicalandia]

Nicalandia, could you elaborate on where you think this recessive leg feathering is coming from in these chicks? None of the parent stock has feathering on the shanks so something unexpected is going on. In the one I had hatched, I put it off as due to shipping messing with the chromosomes, but in Thespoiledchicken's case, these are from home-grown eggs so that would not be a factor.

the stubs you see there have nothing to do with Shank Feathering, its a completely different gene/s from known Shank Feathering genes, Soure http://www.edelras.nl/chickengenetics/mutations2.html#gen_mut_footfeath

stubs will never turn to feathering and will be more prominent in males

Ptilopody(footfeathering)
•Pti-1B, Pti-1L (& pti-1+ -> wild type) B-brahma L-Langshan
•Pti-2 (& pti-2+ -> wild type)
•pti-3 (& Pti-3+ -> wild type)

---------------------------
Stubs
•Ht (Heel tuft feathering)
•sb-1
•sb-2

 

[dretd]

Quote:
Thanks for the information--I was only aware of the dominant leg feathering, so gives me more to research!

It looks like the sb-1 and sb-2 are recessive traits, so logically this may be what these wee chicks have. I could not find information regarding what chromosome the genes were on and you had said they were not linked to the white (which I presume is on 1 as in other recessive whites), so do you know what gene it is on? I also uncovered a thread that referred to a feather suppressing gene but couldn't find more information. To your knowledge, is it a theoretical gene, or is it positively identified?

I also ran across some discussion on a competing website that talked about the stubs being a DQ if they are present on clean shanked birds so for all intents and purposes, there is no phenotypic differentiation between stubs and feathers in the show ring.

 

[nicalandia]

Thanks for the information--I was only aware of the dominant leg feathering, so gives me more to research!

It looks like the sb-1 and sb-2 are recessive traits, so logically this may be what these wee chicks have. I could not find information regarding what chromosome the genes were on and you had said they were not linked to the white (which I presume is on 1 as in other recessive whites), so do you know what gene it is on? I also uncovered a thread that referred to a feather suppressing gene but couldn't find more information. To your knowledge, is it a theoretical gene, or is it positively identified?

I also ran across some discussion on a competing website that talked about the stubs being a DQ if they are present on clean shanked birds so for all intents and purposes, there is no phenotypic differentiation between stubs and feathers in the show ring.

the gene has not been Genetically sequenced but so far the gene has not been documented as potentially linked..

I have seen reports where there is a shank feathering suppressing gene, but I beleive it still undocumented, let me dig more on the subject.

yes they are DQ all none feathered shanks..

 

[Brada Puhi]

Aloha,

There was a show on Discovery Channel I think, it was called Extreme Genes. They showed a chicken this guy was developing that was huge and featherless. They said it was due to selective breeding. So they must have found birds with not just shank feather suppressors but whole body feather suppressors. It was bred for places with very hot climates.

Aloha, Puhi