Chicken Genetics ?

[mnjrutherford]

How do you get a chicken into genes?

I'm going for something that would qualify, as I understand it, as a landrace. The babies are really cute, but cute doesn't count when it comes to healthy productivity.

[johno]

I'm taking pretty much the same approach.

[mnjrutherford]

That seems to be the wisest course in this day and age. How many years or generations do you intend it to take? Do you think that the babies will be varied or eventually become look alikes? I'm thinking that it would be prudent to introduce one or two "pure" animals of the original group of breeds every couple of years or so. Perhaps in rotation.

[poult]

May 4, 2011 17:04:07 GMT -5 johno said:

That' seems like a lot of record-keeping, but I'm sure it paid off with excellent results!

I kept a rooster with a pea-comb with all the hens for about a month, and let them keep all their eggs. I'm letting nature take its course. So far, there are two hatchlings:
i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp10/johnosgarden/100_1394.jpg

I found out later that the rooster's background is in question. Hopefully he was at least part Ameraucana ad has the blue egg genes...

If he has the pea comb you are probably good to go. As I recall the linkage of pea comb and the blue egg gene is so close that only 5% of the time do they separate.

I've done this cross, too. Nothing like getting lots of big blue eggs out of Leghorns.

[steev]

The question is not so much how do you get a chicken into genes, but why? It's bound to make their butts look big. Guess that could be why; matter of taste.

[mnjrutherford]

OH the VISUAL!!! All our birds wearing tight "genes". My mother would have a heart attack from laughing to hard! She would also say that it proves that my dad has chicken legs!

[johno]

My two chicks have been kicked out of the nest and are now holding their own with the rest of the flock. I really have no idea which hens they are from.

I had given Dad 8 eggs to put in his incubator (with duck eggs he was already incubating). Three hatched - two from brown eggs, one from a green egg. So one is from the Ameraucana hen. The other two I can only guess, but they are mostly black with yellow chins so I'm guessing they might belong to the back Australorp.

The three hens that have been staying with the nest are the Black Australorp, Brown Leghorn, and Cuckoo Maran. It seems that the Black Australorp has left it to stay close to the two chicks.

[poult]

Yep, the E extension allele (what your Black Australorps are) is black, and it's dominant. Those eggs will be from the Australorps.

[bertiefox]

Could any of you chicken experts help with this problem? We are running around eight chickens totally free range (commercial type birds) with three cockerels, of whom one is definitely the 'boss' and travels around with most of the flock.
The last time I tried to incubate some eggs, only one hatched, and that was another cockerel. They never go 'broody' so we can't use a hen to incubate the eggs.
What's the best way forward?
Should we get a few hens from another breed that DOES go broody to sit on existing eggs? Is there something wrong with our cockerels (they are around three years old)? Should we put all of them in the pot for 'coq au vin' and replace with a young one?
Or some other solution?
Sorry if this is a little bit 'off subject' for this thread, but it seemed a good place to post it.

[johno]

Thanks for that poult.

Good questions, bertiefox. I'm no expert, but you say they are commercial type birds - do you know the breeds?

[synergy]

A friend told me she was told ' if you need heat to hatch eggs , you are doing it wrong'. She told me that in the 17th century multiple pens were made where hens were confined to nest with bars and fed and watered and allowed to roam only a little each day . As the chicks hatched they were small enough to be able to roam out through the gaps in the bars and return to the hen for warmth. After a period of time the hatched chicks were moved on and the hens returned to the flocks. Another friend suggested silkie hens are naturally broody so perhaps a combination of using a predisposed hen and a specially set up segregated area of the poultry pen would work?

[poult]

Bertiefox, did you try to incubate the eggs yourself with one of the small styrofoam incubators? Incubation is almost more art than science, and once you do it a few times you get a "feel" for what works for your set up. If you got one to hatch, some things were definitely off in your incubator, but not so much that it was a complete bust.

I really doubt it was your rooster. You can get infertility in roosters but it's not something that happens very often, and I've heard of roosters 12 years old that were still fertile, although I wouldn't imagine too many roosters live that long! It could be your main rooster has favorite hens and doesn't allow his Lieutenants to breed any of the others. This could account for low fertility. Do you know what a germinal disc looks like on an egg yolk when you crack one for the frying pan? Next time you do that, examine the egg in a bowl first. If the egg is fertile you will most likely see a 1/4 inch whitish circle with a darker center. They vary in how well they show up. You may have to pick the yolk up in your hand (clean hand if you're going to eat it ) and gently roll it to see the other side. If you see one of these, that's a developing embryo. Fresh from the hen they are small and not so white, but if your kitchen is warm and you don't refrigerate your eggs, they will be larger since an embryo does divide if the ambient temperature is over, I think, 76ºF. Pretty easy in a kitchen sometimes. This would answer your fertility question. Also, did you (do you) candle your eggs? It's very simple to do if you've never done it. Start to incubate your eggs, wait a week (you can do it as early as 4 days with white eggs) and in a dark room hold a flashlight closely against the top of the eggs making sure you exclude any light from leaking out between the egg and the flashlight. You can do that with a piece of cloth wrapped around the head of the flashlight. The object is to see the contents of the egg. If you do it correctly, the egg contents will glow, and you will be able to see in a fertile egg, the blood vessels. It's faint at seven days, but unmistakeable for anything else.

Other than fertility, incubation is a matter of keeping the temperatures correct and in a narrow range, and keeping the humidity from getting too high (or too low) so that the egg loses enough moisture in the three weeks (for chickens) to have an air cell that is big enough for the chick to pip into a day or two before hatch. Incubators instructions often talk about filling the water reserves, but too much water in the incubator for three weeks will kill more chicks by far than an incubator run on the dry side. I have several cabinet incubators and I run them by filling the water reservoir up, letting it run until it's empty, leave it empty for several days before filling it again. I NEVER run it steadily full. In my climate (northern NYS) that's recipe for dead chicks. They try to pip internally into the air cell, and the air cell is still too small and they essentially drown in the fluids still in the egg. You need to have the air cell large enough so that when the chick internally pips, which they do about 24 hours before they externally pip (crack the shell to the outside), they can breathe air. Their lungs aren't operating on air until they internally pip. Climate will make a difference, though. If you are in a desert area, you would run more humidity.

When it comes to temperature, the styrofoam incubators hold temperatures ok if they are in an area where the sun doesn't hit them, or aren't in a draft, or aren't where little kids keep checking. But you need to test their thermometers against a fever thermometer in warm water before you do anything else to make sure they are accurate. A few degrees in the wrong direction can do bad things to the eggs. A high temperature spike of only three degrees can kill embryos.

If you are ok with temps and the humidity, you should be able to pull off some hatches. Don't let one bad hatch discourage you, as it's really something that takes some practice to work out how your incubator works and what works best for you. Try it a few times more at least.

If you want to go totally natural and let the hens do it, then you need a few Silkie or Cochin hens to do the job for you. The production type birds lay like mad, and I personally only keep Leghorns for house eggs because they lay well, but you aren't going to get one that sets very often. But the hens that set aren't the best layers, so if you want a lot of eggs for the house, don't flood your chicken coop with only the ones that will set.

It's all fun, anyway.

[johno]

Here it is years later on this journey. I find myself with a nice collection of birds to carry out this project. My 6 Pearl White Leghorns started laying at 12 weeks from hatching! By spring they'll be breeding with my 6 Ameraucana/Easter Egger roosters, all hatched from blue eggs, or so I'm told. I also have a few nice Ameraucana hens who all lay sky blue eggs. One roo and one hen are 1/2 Araucana and 1/2 Ameraucana, but appear as Ameraucana except for white earlobes instead of red. One roo and two hens are White Ameraucanas, the rest are Blue/Black/Splash, and from various show lines. A couple of the roos are obviously not entirely pure, is why I concede to calling them Easter Eggers.

My experiments with letting them go broody and hatch naturally have not been very successful. I plan to use an incubator this time around. The hardest part, to me, will be separating out the chicks I want to keep. Spring seems to be prime time for selling chicks so I'm not too worried about getting rid of the rest. Any suggestions on what to look for in the hatchlings would be deeply appreciated.

So, I think I'll be set for productive and efficient blue egg layers. My next introduction of genetics after this project will be Cornish for meatiness (I found a nearby source of White Laced Reds). Has anyone here ever crossed their own Rock x Cornish for broilers?

[flowerweaver]

Cornish may not be the best choice in a landrace for egg layers. They were developed to gain weight quickly and often have respiratory problems from it. In essence they were bred for short lifespans. If you want a dual breed you might look at Faverolles, Brahmas, and Marans, or keep your Cornish line separate from your egg line.

[mnjrutherford]

I agree with Flower. I would use Orpington for both increased body size and flavor. Well, I AM in fact, using Orpington for this purpose. I'm also selecting for egg size and getting a really good showing of 70+ gram weight eggs. Our colors range from a couple that are near white to sky blue, pinks, deep tan, and a range of greens and browns. I love my eggs. What I really want to achieve now is RELIABILITY! Holy moly, getting these ladies to lay reliably is like pulling the teeth they don't have!

I am SUPER impressed that you have Leghorns that were laying at 3 months of age??? Seriously??? I could handle that! Ours don't start laying till 8 to 10 months. Seriously? 3 Months?? 12 weeks???

By the by, all our original breeds are dual purpose. Amerucauna/Rhode Island Red/Buff Orpington/Barred Rock The Rocks add in the sexing gene marking them male/female at birth which makes it really easy to separate out the males so you can give them a slightly different diet AND you can consider caponizing which is done at approximately 4 weeks of age. I will begin by practicing on the meat birds AFTER they are slaughtered. I'm thinking about using some sort of anesthesia because it just ain't gonna happen otherwise. Orajel would be a good topical for the incision point. But I would really like to use something in the way of a general.