If anyone is interested I recently discovered this article. www.rosecomb.com/federation/articles/articles.html
Thank you for the URL, Robbpa. This is also discussed in Crawford's volume "Poultry Breeding and Genetics", and there is a comment about this in the online table of chicken genes (linkage group 1).
It usually has little effect on the fancy because one male isn't mated to 10 females. Wyandottes with their heavy feathering may suffer more due to infrequent successful matings. A barber job or plucking before egg collection will usually increase the fertility of the eggs. Birds kept in trios or pairs usually mate frequently enough so that the sperm viability of the rose comb birds doesn't matter that much. Rose comb sperm only survives in the hen for a couple of days while normal combed bird's sperm survive for around 7-10 with some recorded cases of 30 days (but that is rare). So as long as the male is mating every other day or so you are fine.
Then, this will not become an increasing problem in generations to come? When I used to breed game cocks, I noted that the straight comb cocks were more aggressive in the pit and more game also. But I never paid attention to how agressive they were as greeders. WE liked pea combs as they dodnt require dubbing. In our chickens the s/c birds just won more contests
The Rose comb fertility problem was first noticed in the 1950's. It has been the same problem before it was noticed and since, so I don't think it will get any worse than it is.
We have a "female" Leghorn that has huge comb and wattles but lays small (tiny) eggs every once in a while. We call her "RoosterHen". Her head looks like a rooster's head but her feathering is female and, like I said, she will lay an egg every so often. I posted her picture here a few months ago.
By Infomaniac on Thursday, January 31, 2002 - 12:34 am:
By Rokimoto on Thursday, January 31, 2002 - 08:45 am:
By Robbpa on Thursday, January 31, 2002 - 11:31 am:
By Rokimoto on Friday, February 1, 2002 - 01:13 pm:
There was a couple of studies on comb mass and fertility in males. Birds with larger combs sired more progeny. I don't know if this has anything to do with aggressiveness.
Ron Okimoto
By Infomaniac on Friday, February 1, 2002 - 10:29 pm:
At first we thought she was a rooster but she never developed male plumage. We thought she just might be a rooster that has henny feathering. So I kept her in a pen by herself for a couple of weeks and she produced a little pile of eggs in that time.
We keep her for the novelty. Most people probably would have culled her. But, she's funny and strange... just my type!
This experience made me think that there was probably a strong link between comb size (or rather the deviation of comb size from the norm for that breed) and sex hormones. I was postulating that a female with a lot of testosterone (or the chicken equivalent) might grow a large comb and wattles and might perhaps lay small eggs, like RoosterHen does.
But, I never followed up on any of those ideas.