Black Gold Variety Discussions

[Guest]

Does this bird look to be black gold.



Rooster

[John]

She may be something to use toward making black gold, but I wouldn\'t use her because of the willow legs.
Below is the LF F1 pullet that I used this season.  She is half buff and half brown red.  I used a brown red cockerel over her.  He was 1/2 bantam and had lacing all the way down his breast.  I\'ve got a long way to go.
 

[John]

I may have posted this before, but here is one of my F1 bantam black gold pullets.  Greg has her now.  I hatched a few dozen pullets and raised them up last year.  Then I culled them down to the best three that I used to breed from this season.  Once again we have a long way to go, if perfection is the goal, but I bred from the best I had available.

[Mike Gilbert]

In making black gold from \"scratch\" try to avoid females with salmon or near salmon colored breasts.   That would usually indicate \"wild type\", or small e at the e locus.   Black golds are birchen (E>R) at the e locus.    The ultimate goal is to have a bird (female) that is laced and shafted on every feather, even the breast feathers.   The lacing and shafting are superimposed over a black (or as near black as possible) background.   Obviously salmon on the breast will prevent the proper color from being expressed.

Mike Gilbert

[Guest]

The pullet in the picture is heterozygous birchen and ?. She hatched form a cross between a easter egger and a monique blue egger. I hatched out a bunch of eggs for a lady who wanted easter egger chicks. She had black muffs and beard so I kept her in order to see her adult color.

I am not working toward the black gold color.

In order have a quality bird the feather must be black with gold lacing. And each feather should have a gold shaft.
Is that correct?


Michael,

What was your source of birchen for your birds from the brown red variety ?  

Rooster

[bantamhill]

Brown red Ameraucana bantam.

[John]

I have gotten brown red bantams from black crossed with *silver, but the bantam silvers still don\'t breed true and some still are *birchen instead of being pure for wild-type.

[Mike Gilbert]

John,
The chipmunk striped chicks are pure for wild type, as Birchen is dominant over \"e\" and any chick carrying the birchen gene would have chick down that is  black or near black.  

Mike

[John]

any chick carrying the birchen gene would have chick down that is black

I am learning as I go.  This may be the first year that all of the bantam silvers are hatching with the \"chipmunk\" look, so I have finally quit using birchen.  In the past some hatched black and I raised them.  Remember years ago I showed a very nice birchen cockerel that I thought was silver...until the finer points were pointed out (thanks).  Well I figured the birchen males were close to silver males and bred from them hoping to breed in the missing white in the wing bay area.  In short I was building on the wrong foundation (but that\'s another sermon).  Year after year I thought I was so close to having some great silvers, but kept going backyards by crossing the birchens in with the silvers.  Yes, I should have culled all the black chicks (hindsight is great).
It is possible that some of the *silvers that I used were actually E^R/e^+ and not pure silver.  That may explain why I could get brown red and blue chicks when crossing them with blacks and whites.
Give me another 20 years and I might get it right.  :thinking:

[Guest]

John,

Where did the blue gene come from?

Rooster

[John]

Where did the blue gene come from?

They came from my bantam silver (maybe silver/birchen) females crossed with bantam white males (I think...because I also used black males over them and think the black cross produced the brown reds).  The blues generally feathered out with some silver in their hackles.  Mike took home one of these \"blue\" pullets that was solid blue with great type from a show in Ohio a few years ago.
I have heard of people getting blues from black and white crosses, even though I know they should come from black/splash crosses.

[Mike Gilbert]

You will get blues from black / white crosses only if the white bird carries the dominant Bl gene that dilutes the black.   The gene can\'t come from the black side of the mating, as the black would not be black if it carried the Bl gene.   Some whites will carry the Bl gene and others don\'t.   The only way practical way to tell, unless you know the parentage, is to test mate.

MikeG.

[John]

It makes sense that the Bl gene is coming from the white birds, but seems odd to me that if the bird is heterozygous recessive white \"c\" and incompletely dominant blue \"Bl\" that the splash would show thru.  It would also seem that breeding these white looking birds together would produce a % of pure splash birds and I don\'t remember getting any from my whites when I had them.

[Mike Gilbert]

John,
The recessive white and the dominant Bl are two completely different alleles.   Here dominant Bl only means one copy dilutes black.   It does not mean it negates recessive white in recessove white\'s pure form.   Chickens can be pure (homozygous) for both.
In fact, if only one recessive white gene is present, the bird would likely not be white at all.   Recessives have to be pure to be manifested.    Recessive white in it\'s pure (homozygous) form can cover up all kinds of colors, some  better than others.   And it definitely covers up black and/or blue.    I\'m not sure if \"covers up\" is a good term, as it prevents the formation of melanin pigment in the feathers.
Similarly, the sex-linked barring gene prevents dermal melanin from forming, which explains why barred chickens with this gene will never have slate leg color.  

Mike

Mike  

[Guest]

The genetic term for the action of reccessive white on a bird of color would be epistatic. A person  would say the recessive white genes are epistatic to the extended black gene. In this case the recessive white genes supress the expression of the extended black gene.

There is another way of stating the expression of genes.  In chicken genetics there are diluters and enhancers. It could be said that the  recessive white genes dilute the black pigment eumelanin to white the absence of color.

Another term used in genetics is the term hypostatic. The extended black gene would be hypostatic to the recessive white genes. The black pigment  is hypostatic to the absence of color or white.

Or you could say it the way Mike said and say the white covers the black. Most people could understand  the concept the way Mike presented it.

Rooster