Backyard Poultry Forum

OMG I just noticed this for the first time on some of the chicks I hatched last night... I'm off to get some photo's

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Huney

There's only a very fine eggshell between genius and insanity!!

What a great topic with fantastic contributions.

Great pics Christian. As I just happened to be reading about BPR last night, found pics very helpful thanks. A couple of questions you might be able to help me with; the female barred bird is hemyzygous so can only have one dose of the barring gene (being sex-linked), but the boys can be homo or hetero fo B. When you breed for the lights how do you go about it? Do you beed for 100% lights by using the lighter males over black Rock sports ie B/B x b+/-, thus producing all B/b+ & B/- offspring?

I understand that by alternating your breeding pens & using the black sports every second year can help with selecting for sound rich black colour with good beetle green sheen because it is easier to see on the solid black bird? I think the barring gene also keeps the dark pigment out of the shanks so dark shanks (& beaks/irises) are I believe found in the black sports, which would tend to support the B gene at work in the barred birds.

One last question; if the chicks (cockerels) only had the single dose of B/b+ (& therefore darker depending I suppose on the presence of modifying genes), can you still sex them from the pullets (B/-) by the spot on the back of the head as per your photos??

Thanks again Christian

I hope I got this right!! Black and blue chick. Is this the small white dot your referring to
[quote="blackdotte"]A short explanation before the pictures

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Huney

There's only a very fine eggshell between genius and insanity!!

here are a couple of ER downs just to confuse:





i maybe wrong and am happy to admit.

Hi All,

These are some Partridge PR bantams which my son has hatched, could all please be revealed about them which e locus, what ehancer and inhibitors present etc. the help will be greatly appreciated as i have really been concentrating on barred and white to pass on some knowledge to my son will be a bonding experience also:






Cheers

Christian

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Interested in Plymouth Rocks, Breeder of Light Barred Standard

They are Brown eb, gold s+, Pattern gene Pg & Dilute Di.
Those shown are a pullet breeding line
David

Hi David,

Thank you

Cheers

Christian

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Interested in Plymouth Rocks, Breeder of Light Barred Standard

Christian
Thanks for posting those pics and David for answering. It confirmed what i thought on partridge.
mine are very similar

I would also like to ask what e locus are these chicks which came from the same mating? They should be eb - and in fact the above chicks should be Pgpg; they came from crossing two lines with solid breasts, the male tho was a pure pb line - though lines from an era when they the males all had solid breasts) and the females came from a good cb line though were themselves ALWAYS coarsely pencilled.


I used to have all the lighter ones in my pb lines but now the dark striped versions appear even in pure pb partridge lines (never crossed to a cb line but could have got blood from a a laced line mixed into it ) but as adults are indistinguishable - or am i missing something ? Why is there the light down generally in the partridge?

And how is it that these chicks look nothing like the pics that ruff has posted of what are typical eb chicks ? Does this mean they are not eb? even though chicks like both the above grow into good well pencilled pullets?

I would have thought that the partridge would show the most characteristic eb down as partridge is the nearest to the pure unadulterated (by modifying genes). Why is this not the case?
Please can someone explain the difference in chickdown and possibly if or what the connection is to the coarse pencilling.

well hebe i shall try to answer you but i get just as confused over eb and e+ myself. kazjaps knows her photos because they are her chickens and she knows what she put into the mix. so she must have genes in there that make her e+ chickens look very eb.

those chickens of intochooks blackdotte says have dilute which is making the down lighter. if they were my chickens i would have called them silver but dilute is obviously lightening the gold/brown.

knowing what the birds will grow into will help or just waiting for them to grow up. if they are pure breeds then it is easier to know and blackdotte is the 'dotte colour expert.

i often worry that i get eb and e+ mixed up. the more genes in the pool the more i have to worry about. some say the eye stripe is the tell tail sign on the e+ bird compared to the eb but i can get eye stripes on ER. i mean a pure e+ has sharp well defined sharp contrast striping that go right up on the head but kazjaps has just fuzzed it all up in hers. i added those ER chickens that are marbled and chocolate, not solid black like usual but i new the parents and i looked at blackdottes book to help.

Thanks Ruff that helps because it seems i am not going mad. Yes some dilutes are so pale they can look like they should grow into silver. I kept on thinking e+ but I am assuming my lines are not e+ because there is no pink breast and they get good markings in the breast area.

Some of the lightest as well as the darker birds can have quite bold eye stripes, especially the females - eyeliner.
here are the CB females which unusually for the breed have pencilling
and here is a PB partridge female.


I am wondering if the pencilling of the cb females is in any way connected with the dark striped chicks?
(and as i am new to this forum can anyone explain why my pics are coming out so small or what i should do to make them bigger??

The following on Dilute Di, on e+.

Brumbaugh J.A., Hollander W.F., (1966)
Genetics of Buff and Related Color Patterns in the Fowl.
Poultry Science Vol.45: p.p.451-457

http://www.chickencolours.com/Genetics% ... m&Holl.pdf

From the above paper, here are photos of e+/e+ (wild type) Gr (Co) and Di chick downs:



Not the best of photos, but at least you can see that Di/Di on e+ dilutes the phaeomelanin (brown) down significantly (similar to Db). I.e. it nearly makes it white, not a buffish shade like wheaten based buff columbian.

Hebe, you've selected the thumbnail image links. Remove thumbs/ from the url, and you will get full size images. eg, your darker chickens:

....../data/500/thumbs/cb_x_dufus_partridge_chicks_darked_stripes.jpg

to

....../data/500/cb_x_dufus_partridge_chicks_darked_stripes.jpg



Basically, without modifiers, the eb chick down is mostly brownish. They may have a couple of thin stripes on the back, but thats about it. Eg:


Here are a few links to eb chick downs at The Coop, to see the variation in down that modifiers produce:

e+ or eb?
http://www.the-coop.org/cgi-bin/UBB/ult ... 3;t=001466
Ron Okimoto:


eb chick down
http://www.the-coop.org/cgi-bin/UBB/ult ... 745#000001

chick down phenotypes
http://www.the-coop.org/cgi-bin/UBB/ult ... 387#000008

If you look at all the photos, yes some have striping around the eyes, but usually different pattern (eg eyeliner - concentric, & head markings usually more blotchy for eb, but arrow-head like for e+ & straighter eye stripe).

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Ruff, I suppose it is possible that eb could have been hiding in my d'Uccles (as a recessive), but when I segregated chickens without Co and Db, I usually got very typical e+ chick down.
Eg, the following Blue Red-like (salmon breast) hen came from two different Quail lines (the father in-between Blue Quail & Blue Buff Columbian in phenotype, segregating co+):


The e+/e+ allele chick photo (on the previous page) segregated from the d'Uccles (eg, e+ common in Quail, Buff Columbian, Silver Millefleur, Millefleur, etc).

There was also eWh segregating in a couple of d'Uccle lines.

P.s. e+/e+ Db/db+ and e+/eWh can look similar, plus these can look similar to eWh/eb.

Thanks for all the great info that's coming out.
It causes further questions though:
1) How do we know that these light or striped down are eb and not a different e allele/version of eb?
2) Does it make any difference?
3) My dark striped eb I believe came from laced/mutts that looked like partridges so it looks like something was introduced to the line , it was accompanied by poorer quality pencilling, could it be that the current thigh quality partridge pencilling is associated with a different eb that is even more responsive to Pg?
4) My gold laced were always little brown jobs my silver laced were never the silver version of the gold; could it be that there are many many e alleles but some closer to existing? I know there are two ER's

My thinking is that the differences between what we see as different e alleles at down stage have significant differences between them, the difference between all these eb's is huge as much or even more than the difference between eb and e+ so it's not unreasonable to think there could be more going on than just a chance modifier...

Oh and thanks Kaz for the tip on the pics.

hebe

1. to delve into the down colours cross matings are made with other colours or a known identity.. understanding how the genes work helps. i often break down set colours to see what is there. at the moment i am playing with the red shouldered yokohama as i do not believe all that has been said, too many questions have been raised and only a very few have explored it this only leaving things to those peoples assumptions and interpretaions.

2.no it does not make a difference in the end. if you are seeking to perfect a pattern and breed it true and have done it there is no difference in the end. it just comes down to curiosity of what has mad this bird and why. by knowing it gives you tools for improving, reproducing it and making it in other breeds.

3.perhaps when you introduced your new lines there was something lacking in that new line that you had in your own. so rather than introducing something new you were removing something. this lack of something not only was reflected in the down colour but showed up as poorer lacing in the adult. any of the genes can do that: Ml,Pg,Db.

4. you can make a colour pattern in many different ways. one is the millie fluer which you can make on ewh, eb and i am pretty sure ER. the same with lacing. but to do this a different combination of genes needs to be used as all these E allels have different amounts of black in and need to be manipulated in a different way. how these genes show up on down colour has nothing to do with the adult plumage colour. one such example is mottling which can range from invisible on down to totally dominating depending on the E allel. also possible but controversially the mottling gene type may affect the expression. perhaps as many suggest the mottling gene expression is based on other genes interfering. so it can be one gene affects another which may affect another in turn.