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Not the shade of blue
Beth C:
--- Quote ---When the inside and outside of a dry shell are the same color of blue or white I believe you have an egg without any of those many brown modifiers.
--- End quote ---
That\'s kind of what I was thinking, so I\'m glad to see someone with a lot more experience confirm it. I don\'t get too wrapped up in egg color, but figured if the brown pigment was on the outside, then the color on the inside was what I ought to be shooting for.
Now, how do you figure out if there is white, besides waiting for a white egg to pop up & test-mating? Does white modify blue (i.e. create a lighter shade of blue/dilute the blue?) If I\'m understanding what I\'m reading it doesn\'t, it\'s a recessive and pops up when 2 bump into each other - is that correct?
John:
--- Quote ---Now, how do you figure out if there is white, besides waiting for a white egg to pop up & test-mating? Does white modify blue (i.e. create a lighter shade of blue/dilute the blue?) If I\'m understanding what I\'m reading it doesn\'t, it\'s a recessive and pops up when 2 bump into each other - is that correct?
--- End quote ---
I believe the only way to know for sure is wait \"for a white egg to pop up & test-mating\".
Even though blue shell color is dominant to white I think it is like muffs. If a bird is pure (homozygous) for muffs they are fuller than those on a bird that only has only one gene (Heterozygous) for muffs. It\'s a double dose effect.
Some blue eggs are so light they almost look white. Maybe the hens that laid them carry one gene for blue (O) and one gene for white (o) shell color. If that is true we can try to avoid white eggs from popping up by selecting the bluer eggs for hatching and compensation mating.
Beth C:
--- Quote ---Even though blue shell color is dominant to white I think it is like muffs. If a bird is pure (homozygous) for muffs they are fuller than those on a bird that only has only one gene (Heterozygous) for muffs. It\'s a double dose effect.
--- End quote ---
That makes sense. I haven\'t personally gotten a white egg, but someone I sold a bird to last year got some that she *thinks* is from a wheaten I sold her, but she\'s not positive. She doesn\'t breed and bought it as a layer only, so it\'s really not an issue, but now it\'s on my radar and I\'m keeping an eye out for any more.
Mike Gilbert:
This is kind of off on a tangent, but if you read the abstract found at the link in my previous post, there is good evidence
that blue egg chickens did not originate in South America. The study involves a blue egg chicken native to China, and there is good evidence Polynesians brought chickens to South America eons ago. I have always maintained that all the chickens we have are descended from the seven that came off Noah\'s ark about 4,000 or so years ago. One other point; the O gene produces blue egg shell, but the o gene does not produce white egg shell, it simply designates a gene that is neutral with regard to shell color. Other, unrelated genes produce white and/or brown shells.
John:
--- Quote ---but the o gene does not produce white egg shell, it simply designates a gene that is neutral with regard to shell color.
--- End quote ---
\"O\" adds blue to the shell and \"o\" just means blue isn\'t added.
But in the absence of any genes to add brown to the shell a bird that is o/o will lay white eggs. It seems to me that since a bird that is o/o produces white eggs you could say that o produces white egg shells.
Just as Mb adds, produces or causes muffs and mb doesn\'t. We generally would still say mb/mb produces a clean faced bird, just because Mb wasn\'t there to produce muffs.
Am I missing something?
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