This is something that surely everyone knows except me. I know this is really stupid, but I am fearless, shameless and anonymous....

I want to know if Crele is a color scheme or a 'breed' or 'sub-breed' of chicken. Most of the time (all of the times that I can recall) I encounter "crele" in conjunction with a single breed of chicken. (After posting this, I will look at websites of hatcheries to see if they advertize any "Crele" birds.) But, at the same time the genetics of "crele" seem to be clear (start with a black breasted red, add sex-linked barring and you have Crele ... add dominant white instead of sex-linked barring and you have red pyle (a color scheme, not a breed or sub-breed), add silver instead of B and you have silver duckwing...and et cetera).

I had a lovely pullet that died a few weeks ago that had "Crele" coloration. She was really pretty. She was beautiful, and the only wone we have ever seen in our line. But, she wasn't an OEG at all.... She was a sport in one of our lines that we maintain.

If I had to bet, I would bet my money that Crele is a color scheme and not just types of one breed of chicken.

Yes Crele is a color name and a number of breeds have Crele as one of their varieties. For exhibition, it is not easy to obtain really well colored Creles. The simple genetics is not as simple in producing exhibition quality color pattern. If so, all breeds might have a Crele variety! But yes, your basic theory is right. In Dutch, the Cuckoo pattern is used. The Crele color name in Dutch is Cuckoo Partridge. Partridge is their name for BBRed or Light Brown. But a simple combination does not produce exhibition quality color! The Speckled variety is somewhat similar, and then there is Mille Fleur. (and then there now are the Blue added to each!) so there is a lot of study and a lot of breeding with sorting out of a few good ones. Crele, a variety, not a breed or subbreed. Beautiful when well done! CJR

I have a dumb question of my own to add? What the heck is a sport? I have heard it when talking about OEG and also some other breeds. Please enlighten me.

A sport is just an unexpected type appearing in the progeny. It can be due to a new mutation in the line or a cryptic recessive that was at too low of a frequency to appear regularly. I have recessive white segregating in my Black Australorps, but I have never gotten a white chick in random matings and we repopulate with over a hundred pullets (we've only repopulated 3 times). The only reason that I know that we have recessive white is that we test mated the line to a recessive white line and got some white chicks. A white chick in this line would be considered a sport, but probably was crossed in by some ancestor with recessive white. We also get recessive yellow skin appearing in this line and these birds could be considered sports relative to the normal white skin, but most people would just call them non standard culls.

While we're on the topic of jargon, the term / verb 'segregating' is a word that I had to think about for a while. Many professional poultry breeders use the term, but I've never seen a definition of its meaning with respect to poultry genetics. Just like the term 'self-black', one has to try to infer the meaning from context. It seems to me that the verb 'to segregate' is always used with a gene or a trait as the subject of the verb. The context of the usage suggests (to me, anyway) that the trait (or gene) is collecting in a subset of the population. But, 'to segregate' implies more to me than just a single appearance of the trait, as the term 'sport' might imply.

Rokimoto, when you say you 'repopulate' ... that means that you cull the old ones and replace them with new ones...is that correct? And, are the new ones genetically related to the old ones? They might even be the same generation, genetically as the old ones, if you repopulate using the same P generation.

In our blue egg project we are getting some nicely colored eggs from our F1 generation. But, not all are. Some of the F1 pullets are laying eggs that are such a light blue that it is hard to tell that they are blue. The averge F1 pullet in this project lays an egg that is lighter than our Ameraucanas lay. But, we have two F1 pullets (Ameraucana over Leghorn) that lay a blue egg with substantial color and a very good eggshell quality. They also have a better rate of lay than our Ameraucanas have. It was nice to see that there exists this variation ... one has to have a significant variation in order to be able to select to improve the trait.

Segregate is a genetic term that just means that you have variants in the population, when you make matings these variant alleles get transmitted to the progeny, but the progeny do not get both of any parents alleles, they get one from the mother and one from their father. In this way variant alleles segregate or are distributed to the progeny in a random fashion. An example would be crossing a blue (Blbl+) parent to anything else. The dominant and recessive alleles will segregate in the progeny. Half the progeny will inherit the dominant (Bl) allele and half the progeny will inherit the recessive (bl+) allele. These two alleles will be segregating in the progeny of that parent. It is often used as a phrase that indicates that multiple alleles are in the population and they are being transmitted to the next generation in a random fashion.

When I said repopulate it is a term we use when we replace our breeders every year with their progeny. For the Australorps we use at least 10 males and as many females as are still laying. We've cut the population down to 40 females this generation, but we've had it at 400 females when we are testing. We only use 10 or 12 males and ignore inbreeding because we don't consider it a permanent population and we can get the line back by just ordering more animals from a commercial hatchery.

The F1 females that lay a dark blue egg that have a Leghorn parent are probably valuable to you if you are selecting for egg color. It could mean that they have some type of domiant enhancer, or they just got lucky and didn't inherit the diluter that I usually get when I've crossed Ameraucanas to White Leghorns in the past. Like you I usually get pale blue egg laying F1 hens. I'd use some healthy sons from these females to backcross to Leghorns to see if it might be a dominant enhancer. The problem is that probability considerations require you to mate at least 5 sons from these hens back to Leghorns in order to have greater than 95% chance of picking a son that happened to inherit the dominant enhancer from his mother. Half the sons will not have this hypothetical enhancer. You'll also have to keep 5 or more daughters of each son to see if they inherited the ehnancer. For a 0.5 probability the standard is to save 10 progeny for typing. This is overkill 7 would give you a 99% probability of having at least one animal with the allele of interest.

You'll probably want to backcross to Leghorns anyway to improve egg production, so you can use the sons of the dark blue egg F1 hens for that purpose.

Thank you for your post, Rokimoto. I have in the incubator now, eggs from the two F1 pullets that lay the darker blue eggs. (They are really nicely blue ... I am impressed right now.)

Frankly, I am concerned about the genetic 'bottle-neck' that this represents in my project. In 6 months I will have about 100 F1 and F2 pullets laying in this project. If only a small number (2, 3 or 4) pullets lay dark blue eggs, (which, by the way, represents only around 2-4% of the pullets participating in this project at present) give me eggs of a significant color, this represents a serious (statistical) restriction on the genetic diversity in the gene pool. (The Scientific American reported (long ago) that most cheetas are so closely related that they will accept skin grafts from each other without rejection problems.) This phenomenon causes a lot of problems with respect to the usual difficulties associated with inbreeding.

It seems to me that we will have to make an effort to expand the gene pool again after the bottleneck... using F2 males from the blue layers to breed back to the P generation would be a way to get a wider gene pool. Essentially, that is a kind of 'outcrossing' strategy ... at least with respect to those F1 pullets.

I am considering generating another 'P' generation with different sires, same Leghorn dams as a way to get some more genetic diversity in the line.

Thank you again for your post.

Your problem exemplifies why selection causes inbreeding to increase rapidly in small populations. Very quickly all animals are related to the best individuals of some recent generation. The only way to counteract this is to weaken your selection criteria or start with a much larger population. If you weaken your selection criteria too much you run the risk of making no selection gains at all.

Inbreeding is pretty hard to get rid of once you have it. In theory your inbreeding goes to zero at the first outcross, but you get a quarter of it back the first cross you make between the hybrids and more the next generation even if you don't cross closely related individuals. In theory you can regain about half of the original inbreeding while incurring more new inbreeding in later generations.

To get rid of the old inbreeding you have to keep outcrossing. A second complete outcross and you only have to worry about 1/4 of the old inbreeding in your flock. Commercial birds have a high inbreeding coeficient for the grandparents, but the commercial birds are a 4 way cross (resulting from 4 different lines). It may be better to get some new Leghorns than to cross new Araucana males to the old Leghorns. The Araucana population is probably highly inbred. Mongrel Ameraucanas probably aren't that inbred unless you get them from someone that has raise the same flock in their backyard for several generations.

The time to worry about inbreeding is when you close the flock. You will not approach commercial production standards until you have made 3-4 backcrosses to production birds. I'd carry on as you are, but I'd make an effort to mate the best females to Leghorn roosters to see if their daughters perform better than the others for egg color. You can make a sub population that isn't getting inbred because you are outcrossing it to Leghorns. Of course you will get inbreeding once you start mating related individuals, but hopefully the number of desired animals will be larger.

There was a publication that I read where it took only 3 backcrosses with selection to attain near commercial production, but in commercial lines 4-5 eggs a year difference is a big difference, but to your operation it probably wouldn't matter than much.

I'd like to know how your F2 pullets turn out. 25% should be blue egg homozygotes. Did you keep the single comb pullets or did you cull them?

Thank you for your post, Rokimoto. I hope you are having a nice Thanksgiving holiday. It is always fun to have a reply from you.

We did think about getting a new set of dams and we are now talking among ourselves about developing a parallel line (new dams and new sire). If we decide to do this, we will cross the lines to each other as well as outcross the two lines independently.... This doesn't really double the effort, but maintaining two lines does double the expense because one is feeding twice as many chickens in twice the facilities.

You are completely correct that the Araucana line is highly inbred. I believe that all (true) Araucana lines are highly inbred. But, breeding such a line to a genetically independent line (such as our Leghorns) should (re)introduce vigor (we hope!)

Thank you for your question about the single-comb F1 pullets (Ameraucana over Leghorn). We simply can't afford to raise a pullet to point-of-lay only to cull her. This is not possible for us. Such 'cull' pullets go into our ranging laying flock to lay eggs for us for at least two years.

Actually, the single-comb, Ameraucana-Leghorn cross pullets are beautiful - they are vigorous and active ... their single comb, beard-muff, long (Leghorn) tail appearance gives them a unique look. They would make an interesting line themselves. When I open the hen houses in the morning to let them range, these Ameraucana-Leghorn single-comb girls fly the farthest out the door even though they are NOT the smallest birds we have. They do, however, continue to lay smaller-sized eggs. I actually like them because I like to pickle eggs, and these smaller eggs are better for pickling. But, our egg-buying customers wouldn't like to get many of them. They have a beige color that is light...sometimes so light that you have to put a (true) Leghorn egg next to it to see that it isn't really white.

An important point that my brother brought up (he is a chemist) is that the blue eggshell color may be influenced by the rate of lay. The chemical that colors the blue eggshell is a compound synthesized by the liver. If that synthesis is slow, a high rate of lay may mean that lesser amounts of that color is available for each individual egg. So, now I am obsessing on this point. The rate of lay might be a trait that works against the blue eggshell color.

The greater the rate of lay the more stress you put on all the factors. Just think what the hen has to do to produce the albumin for a 23 gram egg compared to a 50 gram egg. She has to make more of everything and she has to do it everyday. The things that you are selecting for is production of more of what you want as well as deposition of what is made. I think Leghorns have modifiers that inhibit either the production of the blue pigment or deposition of the pigment into the egg shells.

Remember what I said about it hard to get rid of inbreeding. Even if you start a line by outcrossing the Araucanas, you will regain half the inbreeding by random mating of the hybrids. To reduce the inbreeding of the population you have to keep outcrossing.

We agree that the greater rate of lay puts a proportionally greater demand on the physiology of the female. My brother's point is that the rate of synthesis of the porphyrin compound responsible for the blue eggshell color may be constant for all practical purposes. If the rate of synthesis of this 'chromophore' is essentially constant or reaches a maximum rate, then for a higher rate of lay, there would be less chromophore available for each egg, and therefore a lighter color.

It seems to me that the Leghorns have an ability to suppress brown eggshell color. (Our Leghorn x Brown Layers lay an egg that is a very light beige (a pretty color) but sometimes you have to put a white egg next to it to tell that it isn't white.) But, the brown eggshell color arises from a very different biochemical mechanism.

The same mechanism that suppresses brown eggshell color shouldn't be expected to suppress blue eggshell color. The brown porphyrin comes from hemoglobin degradation and is deposited only on the outside of the shell. The blue porphyrin is throughout the shell and therefore must be continuously added as the shell forms, not just at the end when the shell is already complete. (You can take a plastic scrubber with warm, soapy water and scrub off most of the brown eggshell color of a brown egg.) So, these are two very different coloration mechanisms. I have long evaluated the 'blue potential' of a given female by removing the membrane on the INSIDE of the shell to reveal the color that I might expect if that bird had no brown eggshell genes.

The fact remains that, if there is a limited supply of the blue eggshell pigment (due to rate of synthesis limitations), a high rate of lay will result in a lighter eggshell. I have not seen anything in the literature about this. I have seen studies of blue layers crossed to Leghorns, but only to the F1 level.

Part of our F2 generation are babies now, and our two incubators are full of eggs that will begin hatching in another 7 days...these are also F2 progeny. We are really looking forward to seeing how they lay. These F2 chicks have F1 parentage (and no parents from the P generation). So genetically, they are still 1/2 Leghorn, but 25% of them will be homozygous for the blue eggshell gene, whereas the F1s are all heterozygotes.

This really a DUMB question but it ia driving me crazy. My neighbor has been ill and I have been taking care of her chickens. Really getting into it too. One morning I went there and there were nine baby chicks in a compost pile. My husband and I were wondering just how and when does an egg get fertilized?

Zea, The egg is fertilized by the rooster covering the hen (something like cats breed--he holds her by the head feathers, and it is a very short activity), and the yolk is fertilized before the various layers are added to the egg (yolk) and before the shell gland puts the shell around it--the last stage before the egg is layed. The whole process of producing an egg, from ovulation to egg white and membranes, to shell and into the nest, takes a little over 24 hours. A hen is really an assembly line for producing a "baby" about every day--a real drain on the system! Not dumb, if you have not experienced "chickens" before! It is really pretty wonderful! CJR

Thanks CJR! Can you tell me how long it takes once an egg is laid until it hatches babies? Also why does the hen keep moving her nesting place?

Zea108811, When an egg is laid, and if is fertile, it remains dormant until it is incubated. So after it is laid, it may be several weeks before a hen will "set" on the nest, or it may be placed in an incubator. At that time, it begins to develop and it will be TWENTY ONE DAYS until embryo grows and develops and the eggs hatch.

A hen finds the nest she likes each time she lays an egg--she will not stay there on the egg!! Usually, they use one nest all the time--but you will have to ask her why she may move from one nest to another???She will often go where there is already another egg in the nest--warm and safe! There can be lots of reasons that have to do with your setup. But just do not expect that egg a hen has laid, to hatch by itself--ever. Needs constant incubation at about 99.5-100f for 3 weeks (and proper humidity). Okay??CJR

Just found this web site and I love it. I have forgotten more than I remember. But here goes my really dumb question. How long after mating does the hen carry fertile eggs? We lost our Golden Seabrite rooster and at this time I am still putting the eggs in an incubator. When will I be wasting my time? Thanks!

Nancy

Nancy, Can't tell for sure, as it depends upon the hen's system. And it could also depend upon how many hens he was covering, and his health and vigor. With only one hen, the chances are for a longer time of fertility. Some sources say up to three weeks, there can still be some semen in the oviduct. Others say up to a week. Worth a try until you can get another rooster. CJR

Does anyone no what I can breed my LB Splash with, to get LB?

Brown-red (if LB stands for lemon-blue). Actually, you would want a lemon black, but those aren't existent as a variety. Crossing with brown-reds is the best thing.

I was told to also use a BBRed hen with my Lemon Blue Splash to get true Lemon Blue.

You wouldn't want BB Red. They have a brown body instead of the black body you want to breed from. Both Lemon Blue and Brown-reds are varients of the birchen plumage, so you want to breed them.

Appreciate the information. I'll see if I can find a BRed hen.