Buff gene dominance

[faith valley]

In order to increase my buff flock I crossed my wheaten line into my buff line per Mike Gilbert\'s advice.  When crossing the buff bantam ameraucana to the wheaten bantam ameraucana 24 of the 25 chicks came out buff with tiny bits of smutty black in wing tips or in tail tips.  Some chicks appear to not have any of the black. The other chick looks wheaten in color.  

So am I to assume that buff is a dominant gene over the wheaten gene?

Secondly, in birds, is it the male gene or the female gene that determines the sex of the chick?  

Thanks

Patty

[Mike Gilbert]

In order to increase my buff flock I crossed my wheaten line into my buff line per Mike Gilbert\'s advice.  When crossing the buff bantam ameraucana to the wheaten bantam ameraucana 24 of the 25 chicks came out buff with tiny bits of smutty black in wing tips or in tail tips.  Some chicks appear to not have any of the black. The other chick looks wheaten in color.  
So am I to assume that buff is a dominant gene over the wheaten gene?
Secondly, in birds, is it the male gene or the female gene that determines the sex of the chick?  

Thanks for that report Patty.   Buff is made up of multiple genes, one of which is wheaten at the e locus.   I understand it is possible to have buffs with e>g (brown) at the e locus too, but wheaten is by far most common.  That is why I recommended the cross.   Dominant or recessive is only meaningful when comparing alleles - which are different possible genes located at the same place on the same chromosome.   Wheaten does tend to be recessive in the absence of certain unidentified melanizers when compared with other possibilities at the e locus.
All chickens have the same number of chromosome pairs, but there seems to be nothing  inherited on one of the sex-link chromosomes that females have.   There are many genes that express from the other sex link chromosome, but only male chickens have two of them; females get only one.   Examples would be silver (S) or gold(s) , sex linked barring - B, brown eye (br), the gene that inhibits melanin formation in the dermis of the shanks (Id), and there are more.   See Sellers genetics website.
But back to your question:  which gender determines sex?
Depends how you look at it, but the way I see it, only the females can make more females, as the male does not have the \"blank\" chromosome that is required for it, hence cannot pass it on to his offspring.   Does that make any sense?

[faith valley]

Mike thanks for that explaination, that helped a lot. In the first brooder of a dozen older buff x wheatens,  I can only find 2 males- all of the rest are female, that is why I was questioning which parent bird determined the sex of the offspring, I thought it would be good to know. The younger brooder I cant tell them apart male verses female yet.  

I would say that 3/4 of these youngsters came from that buff hen that I got from you last year, paired with with a wheaten male. The balance came  from John\'s buff male over wheaten hens.

Patty

[John]

Buff is made up of multiple genes,

This is the reason I don\'t recommend using buff to improve wheaten.  There are too many unwanted genes to breed out.  
Wheaten to improve buff is the way to go.

[Beth C]

I\'m so glad you posted this, because I\'ve been kicking around the same idea. Question - if the first generation produces birds that are visually buff, how many generations before you would consider them \"real\" buffs as opposed to \"projects?\" Also, is there any advantage to a buff cock over a wheaten hen, as opposed to a wheaten cock over a buff hen?

[faith valley]

The other thing to consider is whether or not to breed these F1 youngsters to each other or to breed them back to parent buff.  

If the genes work the same as in Call ducks...if breeding the F1\'s to each other, of the F2\'s 25% will be buff, 25% will be wheaten, and 50% will be junk..... The following year, you could breed the F2\'s to the original buff parent birds and have locked in the buff color. With this method they would be buff by the 3rd year.

If breeding F1\'s back to parent stock then the F2\'s would be 3/4 buff, the F3\'s would be 7/8 buff.... So actually it would take about the same amount of time either way....  That is if chicken genes work the same a duck genes.

thoughts?~

Patty

[Mike Gilbert]

I\'m so glad you posted this, because I\'ve been kicking around the same idea. Question - if the first generation produces birds that are visually buff, how many generations before you would consider them \"real\" buffs as opposed to \"projects?\" Also, is there any advantage to a buff cock over a wheaten hen, as opposed to a wheaten cock over a buff hen?

Beth, they are \"real\" buffs at the point they are breeding true and not throwing any wheaten offspring in my opinion.   I would try to use a pure buff male over a wheaten or blue wheaten female that is showing as little tail and wing color as possible.
I made the same cross in bantams last year, bred the one crossbred female I kept back to a pure buff male this year, and hatched about a half dozen.   Out of the three pullets hatched that are 3/4 buff, two have black spots in the tail, one of those also has some black in the wing coverts, and the
third one is buff with just a couple of small black flecks in the tail.   She is, however, two different shades of buff.   She will be bred back to pure buff next season.   So it is easy to do, maybe not so easy to perfect.