Lavender bantams and large fowl

[bantamhill]

I actually have a few  half breed chicks running around and I am producing more. I have successfully crossed lavendar bantam cock on a large fowl Ameraucana hen and hope to produce more from that cross.


The offspring are interesting:

Bantam Old English Lavendar cock x Bantam Ameraucana hens - coal black chicks with single combs

Bantam Ameraucana Black cock x Bantam Old English
Lavendar hen - coal black chicks with single combs

Bantam Old English Lavendar cock x Large Fowl Black Ameraucana hen - black with brown/red feathers on neck and head

My next step is to cross the siblings next year and hope for a few lavendar chicks to cross to black Ameraucana bantam and large fowl.

[John]

Some of my d\'Anver/Ameraucana cross birds had buff/gold in them and I culled them.  I used two lavender d\'Anver males over three black Ameraucana females.  I think the buff/gold came from one of the males, since he had some brassiness to him.  The keepers look very nice.
I have a few from Michael\'s cross too with single combs.  One that I culled was a beautiful blue cockerel with blue legs and a single comb.  Any ideas on why he would be blue?  The Ameraucanas must have carried the single comb gene.  I\'ll cross Michael\'s strain with mine in the spring.  
Micheal, let me know if you want a cockerel from my cross.  I have extras.  
I also put the d\'Anvers over two LF hens, one black and one smoke colored.  It looks like I have one pullet from each of those matings.  Most of the bantam X LF eggs weren\'t fertile.
 

[Mike Gilbert]

John, the blue cockerel came out of your mating because the lavender parent had a BL gene that was passed on to the chick.   The BL couldn\'t have come from the black, or the black parent would have been blue, not black.   The single combs came about because both parents passed on that trait to their offspring.  Had the D\'Anvers been pure for rose comb, and the Ameraucana hen passed on a gene for single comb, the chick\'s comb would have been rose, not single, because rose is dominant over single.   Your single comb females will probably not lay blue eggs, but tan or brown.   This is not a hard and fast rule, but remember the blue egg shell gene is closely related to the pea comb.   These genes are located relatively close together on the same chromosome.    I\'ll be anxiously waiting to find out if either  of you get lavender males next year without the characteristic brassiness.   Perhaps the cross onto the black ameraucanas  will do the trick?   Time will tell.

[John]

I don\'t have him anymore to check, but was quite sure he was toe punched as coming from Michael\'s eggs.
He looked just like the other cockerels that I hatched from him, with single combs, but they are black and he was blue.  
I still think the single comb is from Michael\'s lavender OE and black Ameraucanas that have the single comb gene.  
I haven\'t studied the combs on the pullets, but most of the d\'Anver/Ameraucana cockerels have walnut combs (as they should) and a couple look like they have pea combs!
In the spring I\'ll cross the two strains, mixing blood lines from two strains of black Ameraucanas with laverder OE and lavender d\'Anver.  I think this will get me quicker to where I to go.

[John]

I examined the lavender/black cross birds yesterday and noticed the two cockerels with pea combs are also from Michael\'s eggs.  That makes sense, because at least one of the Ameraucanas that he used must have carried genes for both pea and single combs.  I toe punched the chicks when they hatched.  That\'s how I can tell what matings they came from.

[Suz]

In the spring I\'ll cross the two strains, mixing blood lines from two strains of black Ameraucanas with laverder OE and lavender d\'Anver. I think this will get me quicker to where I to go.

Could you please explain about how this will get you quicker to where you want to go?

Thanks, Susie

[John]

I think the tail carriage on the d\'Anvers is too high and on the OE too long.  By crossing lavender birds from each breed with black Ameraucanas and then breeding the F1 generation of each cross together we may have an easier time breeding out the faults (brought in by each) than breeding to just d\'Anver or OE.  Because we are mixing three breeds, instead of two, the gene pool will be larger for the F2 chicks and if enough are hatched we may have some show quality lavender Ameraucanas by this time next year.  The d\'Anvers had a lot of benefits over the OE, like muffs and slate legs, but if I only used them in the mix I may have to battle with the high tail carriage for generations.  Hopefully the OE will have a \"compensation mating\" affect on it.  I also think the over all type of the d\'Anver is closer to the Ameraucana type than OE.  Both are fairly small and that is a plus since some of the black Ameraucanas are a bit too large.  I don\'t know if the combs matter.  The OE single comb is recessive to our pea combs and can be somewhat masked, but we need to breed for a pure pea comb.  The d\'Anver\'s rosecomb has equal dominance to the pea comb, so all of the F1 generation have walnut combs.  My hope is by hatching enough chicks I\'ll get some with pure pea combs in the F2 generation.  That, I think, will be the most difficult trait to achieve early on.

[Guest]

You can cheat a little on the tail carriage by using females produced from the Danvers cross. From what I\'ve experienced, F1 males tend to have their father\'s tail set, the F1 females tend to get their tail set and body carriage from their mother. Using a male(s) from the OE cross to females from the Danvers cross you\'d probably hit the nail on the head.

Regardless of how you\'re working the crosses or backcrosses, you\'re looking at a huge F2 generation in order to get semi-showable offspring from it. I say this because you\'re looking at selecting for three different comb gene combinations on top of everything else. With so many of the F1\'s (and F2\'s) carrying the single comb gene, you may end up getting one acceptable comb for every four or five that are unexceptable. That\'s not even taking in to account that close to 50% of your offspring will be black, not lavender.

Since I\'m starting this from behind it will be a whole year before I can get to where you\'re all at. I may just take the longer route and breed black Ameraucana males over the F1 females from the cross, then breed the F2\'s to eachother to get my first lavenders. This would give me lavenders that are 75% Ameraucana, which should have the majority of their traits correct except for size.

As an alternative, I could try a variation of what you\'re doing John. Mate a lavender OE to Porcelin D\'anvers, then select the best ones to mate to black Ameraucana females. Might be a good way to water down the strong body and tail types as well as splitting up the comb genes prior to their introduction to Ameraucana stock.

Either way I wouldn\'t have anything showable until 2008. How soon do we need them? Lol  

Regards,
Dan Demarest
Missouri

[John]

The type on these F1 birds looks very nice and I was temped to show one of the pullets as a black Ameraucana.  The walnut combs on the females is very small.  
Some of the OE cross birds have pea/single combs.  1 out of 16 chicks could be lavender and have a pea comb!  If I don\'t get lucky, I\'ll breed the F2 lavenders pullets to a pure black Ameraucana cock.

[John]

Here is the only F1 bird that I hatched from my attempt to breed for lavender LF.  It is a cockerel from a d\'Anver (bantam) male and a LF Ameraucana.  Her variety is still in question, but I have referred to them as smokey.  They may be dominant white or dunn?  Anyway it may be dominant over lavender also, since the cockerel shows the same color as his mama.  He is a medium sized bird with walnut comb.

[Mike Gilbert]

John,
OK, so you know the lavender gene is present in this cockerel, so why not use him back over his mother, then mate this same cockerel back over his daughters the following year.   I think that would be a good plan  to get some large fowl lavenders.   You did save the mama, right??
If not, take this cockerel and mate him with black, then use those daughters with this male.   You would have to save quite a few daughters, as there would be no guarantee they would be  carrying the recessive lavender gene.   Theoretically half of them should.

Mike

[John]

Wrong.  I didn\'t save his mama.  I wanted to cut back and got rid of the old \"smokey\" birds.  The rest of your story is my plan.  I just wish I could tell which pullets will be carrying the lavender.  Black seems to be dominant over smokey too.  If some chicks hatched out smokey, then I would only keep the black pullets assuming they would be 1/2 lavender.

[Mike Gilbert]

Is there any chance \"smokey\" is a type of modified lavender?
The cockerel looks pretty close to lavender on my computer screen.

Mike

[Guest]

Hi guys,
I don\'t have a lot of time this evening/morning but wanted to point out something John, that I forgot to mention at Sedalia. Smoky is an actual gene mutation at the Dominant White locus. It was studied by a student as part of his thesus in a European university. I\'d have to dig through some files to find the specifics, but I\'ll try to do this from memory for now.

Smokey, \" I^S \", is a really odd gene. In the heterozygous form it expresses in the chick down, but not in the adult plumage. This is \"very peculiar\" in the genetic world. In the Homozygous form, it expresses as a co-dominant gene, diluting a normally black plumaged bird to a \"true blue\". It wouldn\'t be nearly as light as what your bird is. It would appear as a \" Bl\" type of blue, what we know as a blue heterozygote.

I can only say one thing about your bird.......FANTASTIC! It\'s not, in my opinion, heterozygous for Domiannt White. If it were, I would expect it to be mostly or partially white, with blotches of color rendomly placed on the body. Your bird has well defined lacing! Hold on to that bird please, it\'s got something special! Just going by what you\'ve told me/us, I\'d say it\'s either got I^d \" dun\" or a new mutation at the Dominant white locus.

Getting back to the Lavender side of things, I would go with Mike\'s recommendation of mating over black females. I would go further to recommend that you divide the offspring from that point, saving all the black offspring for a group mating of siblings until you figure out which ones are the carriers of the lavender gene, and breeding the \"dun-like\" offspring either to new black females or to themselves.

You\'ve got a gold mine in that bird John, take good care of him.

Regards,
Dan Demarest
Missouri

[bantamhill]

Due to some warm weather I am getting eggs from my F1 pens from the bantam self blue cross and the self blue x large fowl black Ameraucana are producing again.

Michael