The Official Forum of the Ameraucana Breeders Club > Breeding
Genetic discussion of slow Feather (K) and tardy feather (t)
Mike Gilbert:
Hemizygous is exactly correct. I try to avoid such terms with folks who are confused enough already. Crystal, how many pullets have you hatched from your slow feathering rooster?
Like I said earlier, even if they are slow feathering they will feather faster than their male siblings.
OR, maybe we are dealing with t instead of K. Whole different set of possibililties.
Beth C:
I looked at the Sellers site, and this sounds just like what I\'m getting:
\"Kn:
Very slow feathering or \'delayed\' feathering gene. The order of dominance among the genes allelic to this locus is Kn>Ks>K>k+. The slow feathering gene is believed to be associated with a bald patch on the back of the adolescent bird. The feathers do come in given enough time. Since this is likely due to a dose effect of the slow feathering gene, the homozygous males should be the most likely to exhibit the trait. In my personal flocks, I have both males and females exhibiting this. Many novice poultry keepers wrongly attribute the bald back phenotype with a picking problem.\"
The \"dose effect\" part confuses me - is Kn a separate gene or the effect of multiple copies of the K gene? Or a combination of K & t? Or can you have K & t in the same bird?
All of my lavenders hatched looking normal. Most started to get wing feathers on schedule. The females took longer than any of the same age birds of other varieties to get body feathers, and took forever to grow tails. Some had bald patches that weren\'t noticeable until you parted the feathers, since the feathers they did have were long enough to cover them. The males had primaries, tail stubs, and feathers on the tops of their heads, breasts & thighs. Their necks, backs, & abdomens were completely bald. The few I grew out did eventually feather in, but it took roughly 5 months. I got 2 fast-feathering birds, both pullets, both with single combs (don\'t know if that means anything).
In hindsight, the original birds were also slow to feather, although none were as severe as their offspring. But I do remember them looking \"rumpless\" until they were nearly grown.
Mike Gilbert:
The dose effect just refers to two K genes versus one, or vice versa. The three different K genes with different subscripts simply refer to three different mutations/manifestations of K.
They are all inherited at the same place on the same chromosome, so they are alternate genes for the same locus (location) on a chromosome.
Beth C:
So if these are mutations of the K gene, can a bird carrying K produce a Ks or Kn offspring, or would the parent bird have to carry the mutated form of the gene? I\'m curious, since the slow feather is so much more pronounced in the chicks than it was in the parent birds. I guess if the parents were each Kk, they would produce KK chicks that would be slower to feather than they were. But those should be about 25% of the offspring, instead of nearly all of them, right?
Mike Gilbert:
Mutations happen. Your experience would indicate the arrangement of the molecules making up the K gene could be somewhat unstable, causing mutations more likely to occur than what would be considered normal. I don\'t really know.
Another possibility is that you are dealing with both the K and the t series of genes, and you got real unlucky with the birds you chose to breed. That would be another example of dosage effect. I don\'t think anyone can say for sure.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version