Buff genetics

[Guest]

We crossed a Wheaten rooster with a Buff hen to work on improving our Buffs.  

One of the chicks has a buff head, with a mostly black body, and a lot of buff shafting.  Is this possible or did one of our black roosters get in the pen when we weren\'t looking?

[Guest]

Doug,

One of your black roosters crossed with the buff bird.

Tim

[Guest]

I don\'t know, A cookoo maran crossed with a buff brahma gave me a bird that is almost all black with buff stipling and nearly black legs.

[John]

Assuming the buffs and wheatens are fairly pure, I would agree with Tim that a black or other cock was involved.  

[Jean]

I also agree with the others.  I have had several buff and wheaten crosses here and they have all turned out buff with white in the body and tails.

Jean

[Mike Gilbert]

Jordan,
If the Marans had only one copy of barring  it is very possible your chick inherited extended black without the barring factor, leaving a pretty much all black genotype, which when crossed with the brahma brought in some buff stippling/feathering.    That would be my best guess.

Mike G.

[Guest]

The bird I mentioned above was hatched on 4/22/08.
I have another, similar hatched 6/2/08.  The buff hens and wheaten rooster have been penned together right along.  A black rooster from the next pen over might have gotten in once, but I don\'t think it happened twice. That would be a large time span for the same fertilization wouldn\'t it? These are 2 of 15 hatched on various dates since 4/22.  

Some of the others have some white with one being allmost all white on the rear half.  From Jean\'s post I assume these are fairly normal for this cross.

The hens are good looking buffs except for being just a little light in their undercolor.  Is it possible they could have genes that would result in offspring like this?  Or could a normal looking wheaten rooster?

[John]

they could have genes that would result in offspring like this?

I say yes.  It is possible.  The adult LF buffs can have good buff color (phenotype), but not be pure (genotype) based on the genes (eWh Co Mh Di) we would normally build a buff Ameraucana on.  Buffs don\'t necessarily have to be based on \"wheaten\" at the E-locus and I believe some LF buffs are \"brown\" (e^b) or half wheaten and half brown.  For the last couple years I have been selecting for proper buff phenotype in the day-old LF buffs and putting those that hatch with dark markings on the tops of heads and dark shanks in the \"reject\" brooder.
That doesn\'t mean the black cock isn\'t the daddy though.    

[Guest]

Doug,

I found something interesting while I was doing my research on chicken genetics. In 1961,  Dr Lewis T. Smith of Iowa State University was crossing rhode island red with white leghorn. He then crossed the offspring from the rhode island red and white leghorn cross and produced a male black chick that was dark red as an adult. The previously mentioned male was crossed with a red jungle fowl and produced some black chicks, some rusty black chicks and some wild type chicks so there was a genetic component to the black down/red adult phenotype. So a black chick phenotype is possible.

In my opinion, the black would have to of come from the buff side of the cross and not the wheaten.  Some buff carry dominant white and this gene would mask the expression of black pigment.

Did you get any adult birds with white in their plumage? What is the juvenile color of the black chick you mentioned?

Tim

[Guest]

Tim,

The two adult buffs we started with had no white showing.

Several of the F1 offspring have some white with one being allmost all white on the rear half.  The oldest one is about 13 weeks at this point.  Color has not changed.

The black/buff offspring were dark brown all around the face/front of the head at hatch. They were a dull black color everywhere else with nice slate legs.

As the males started to feather in they were black with buff in the shafts of most of the feathers and some buff penciling.  More so in the chest area.  Color has not changed as of yet.

The one female is mostly dark buff (slightly brownish or reddish) on the head, chest, and shoulders.  She has the same color as the males everywhere else.

By the way, we hatched out two more on 6/14/08.

We will try to get some pics posted.

[Guest]

Doug,

Sounds like you have birchen segregating from the buff birds. Birchen is not always dominant over wheaten so you can get wheaten looking birds that are heterozygous (split) for wheaten and birchen. The fact that some of the F1 are white in the tail end is an indicator that at least one of the buffs carry dominant white. I have worked with dominant white quit a bit. Females that are sex linked gold, wheaten or wild type and carry one dominant white gene tend to have the greatest red pigmentation on the anterior(head) end with the red pigment tapering off toward the tail end. Dominant white has little or no effect upon the expression of red pigment in the feathers. Dominant white works well on black pigment.  Breeders use dominant white to cover the black (from the birchen) and then other genes fill in the buff or red pigment.  

The males should add more red into the hackles, back and shoulders as they get older. I am surprised they are not showing more red in the breast. Buff birds carry all kinds of columbian restrictors Db, Mh and Co. The F1 would have to carry at least one or more of the restrictors. Maybe one of your buff birds is not carrying a full compliment of the genes.



Tim

[Guest]

Tim,

Do you have any recommendations for breeding or not breeding that particular buff hen?

[grisaboy]

   Keeping a bird in your breeding flock depends on your goals.  If you are If your goal is to produce pure buffs, you should get rid of her.  She will always produce off color chicks.  
   If you have the space, and like to experiment with other colors,  You might be able to use these birds to develop a Black Gold flock.
  There are always exceptions when deciding what to keep or get rid of.  If the buff chicks from this bird are the best color and type of all the other buff chicks, it may be worth keeping her even though she throws off color chicks.  The caveat is that it may take years to breed this out of your flock, but the resulting flock improvement may be worth dealing with all of the culls.

  By the way,  you should mark all of the chicks from this bird, buff and off color,  as they all could carry this same genetic make up.  You could get rid of the hen but have off color chicks pop up again (sometimes after a couple of years), because some of her chicks are still in the flock.

Curtis