The Official Forum of the Ameraucana Breeders Club > Breeding
Genetic discussion of slow Feather (K) and tardy feather (t)
dak:
I culled every lav bird with a slow to feather tail this year. I worried I wouldn\'t have a cockerel left. In the end the only males I had left were 5 from a split hen.
Mike Gilbert:
--- Quote from: crystalcreek ---So, back to the question. Let\'s assume it is K, as Jean has said. How do we eliminate it?
By breeding only from fast feathering birds and known splits. Over time, eliminate the splits
Can males who exhibit the trait be used if they are crossed on normal females? I have gotten some lovely females from this cross, but if they are all carriers, we\'re back at square one, which leads me to the next question--If they feather fast why are you back to square one? Since K is a dominant gene, and they feathered fast, they did not inherit K. Can females who are daughters of slow males carry the gene hidden? No, but if they do carry K they will still feather faster than KK males Does it pass to only their male offspring, female offspring, or both?Potentially both. But if the male is K/k, he will send fast feathering to about half his offspring and slow feathering to the other half
I don\'t understand sex chromosomes in chickens, and therefore sex-linked traits are confusing to me. I really want to, I just can\'t seem to wrap my brain around it.Keep trying. Maybe go to the Sellers website and click on the photo to get to some of the basic information?
--- End quote ---
Mike Gilbert:
Lets go back to basics for a minute. Genes are inherited in pairs, one from each parent, EXCEPT for sex linked genes. For those, males get two - one from each parent - and females get one - from their father only. So your slow feathering male could be Kk or he could be KK. K is dominant, that is why he was slow feathering even though it is possible he has only one K gene (the other would be k). The capital letter designates which is dominant. Lower case means recessive. IF your rooster is Kk, he will throw K to about half his offspring, and k to the other half, so his pullet offspring would be either K- or k-. They don\'t get either one from their mother. The genotype of his male offspring will depend 50% on whether their mother(s) are K- or k-. They could be KK, kk, or Kk. Does that help at all?
crystalcreek:
But that\'s not consistent with the females I\'ve hatched. I haven\'t seen 50% female offspring with slow feather. I think I\'ve hatched enough that I would have seen one here and there with slow feather, even if I wasn\'t getting 50%. Whether he\'s KK or Kk, he should be producing females with slow tails, right? Surely I haven\'t been that lucky not to hatch one.
OldChurchEggery:
So, to visualize, if you know you have a slow feathering male, would the inheritance work out like this?
I called the hen contribution \"hemizygous\" since she would only have one copy of any gene if it\'s sex-linked. I don\'t know what the official term would be, but I figured hemi- would work okay as a prefix since it means half.
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