We have a number of breeding projects. One is an effort to develop a strain of blue egg layers. Occasionally we get chicks with grey down in this project. They grow up to be shades of blue/grey birds. Some of them are very pretty. We don't know what the gene is yet that causes the grey down. It might be lavender. Surely it is a black diluter, but there is a 'grey' gene that is not lavender. We have a few of these birds now, one rumpless, muffed pullet and one muffed, tailbird cockerel.
We hatched chicks in my youngest boy's 4th grade class this past week. One of the chicks is a grey: The pictures are below. I believe this is a little pullet, but I have been wrong (and often). The chick is yellow breast and tummy with grey neck back and shoulders.
By Leee on Sunday, February 10, 2002 - 10:46 am:
My guess is that this chick is homozygous for lavender and is wild-type at the E-locus. The eye and back stripe are visible on this chick. Lavender does express in the chick down.
The lavendar chicks that I've seen are lighter gray than this, but like every other feather color trait there is probably quite a lot of variation. Another Blue diluter is the Andalusian Blue (Bl) allele. If you look into other subjects on this page talking about blue, most of them are about Andalusian Blue. Lavendar is recessive. This just means that you can have no blue adults and still get some gray chicks. Bl is partially dominant. Blbl+ birds are gray, BlBl birds are mostly white and bl+bl+ birds are black where they should be black. The + just indicates the wild-type gene for undiluted. Normal birds have two plus genes and blues have one mutant. I've had blue chicks that had black down at hatch and some that have been very light gray. Expression of blue is variable on the down type. In adults you can't tell if white birds have the blue gene and sex-linked barred birds are difficult to tell. Blue tends to fuzz the bars and give you indistinct barring, but other things do this too.
Thank you for taking time to compose your interesting post, Rokimoto. We have been trying to discern the differences between lav and Bl in the segregations that we are seeing. Lavender dilutes both pheomelanin and eumelanin, while the influence of Bl manifests primarily as a eumelanin dilution. Presumably we could distinguish the lav and Bl by the presence and appearance of any red/gold. However, none of our blues / greys to date have any other color except grey / blue. One of our greys obviously has sex-linked barring (she is really pretty). When the chicks are old enough to breed, it should be easy to distinguish lav from Bl by determining if our grey / blue is dominant or recessive.
P.S. One of your comments reminds me, we have some barred birds in this line (we have about 200 youngsters now from this project). Some of the barred birds have a soft, blurry, blackish-grey barring pattern. It is as though someone took a picture of a barred rock and softened the contrast and blurred the colors a little. They are very pretty birds, but I might be the only one who appreciates them. It seems that most fanciers prefer sharp patterns and brilliant colors.
A lot of things will dilute the gold color. Sex-linked silver is a common one along with a couple of dominant diluters that are not sex-linked. They don't dilute black, but if you have blue and the gold diluters you can't expect a nice gold color. If you crossed to White Leghorns or Barred Rocks you have sex-linked silver and most of your birds should feather out mostly black if they aren't barred or dominant white.
Leee, Is Infomaniac okay?? CJR
Thank you for your kindness. No, she isn't. She moved to our local nursing home a few days ago. She has MS and has been getting progressively worse particularly this past year. Her speech, hearing and sight come and go but she's been in and out of a wheelchair since about mid-summer. It's a long story and I guess I shouldn't post it here - she can't transfer from her chair anymore and the last round of steriods didn't do much for her.
Lee, so sorry to hear such bad news. Please let Info know that she is missed, as she has been a great contributor to this board. I have gained a wealth of genetics knowledge from the discussions that she and Rokimoto have had, and I have enjoyed the many pics she posted. I am sure that everyone at the Coop sends their warmest get well wishes to her.
Leee, Thankyou for that information about Info. Please relate to her how much she was appreciated at this forum. Her wit and knowledge will be welcomed upon her return, which we hope is soon. Will you be a regular contributor here? It appears the two of you have much in common. knowledge and the willingness to share it with us novices. heres hoping for the best, her friend Robb
Leee, I suspected this. . . and indeed, please tell her how much we miss her here, and hope she can be in touch with her friends via internet. And tell her that her contributions to our "discussions" will have long lasting influence!! I know how difficult this condition can be--and I hope and pray for new and better treatment for Infomaniac and all others suffering MS. CJR
Leee:
This site is getting dull without "Info", please tell her we all want her back asap. Give her my love and support. Anny.
Ditto from me too Leee. I'd wondered where Info went, and I really enjoy her great posts. I hope she improves enough to get back with us all here at the COOP very soon. I miss her....please let her know our thoughts and prayers are with her, and you too.
Leee. Can we sent messages to Infomaniac? I wanted her to know that this site finally has been her "destination"--for readers who would be able to "keep up with her"--or willing to try! I am aware of several other sites that in times past, responded unkindly. A waste of her knowledge. While I still check those sites, I rarely respond--there is little understanding by most,and enough old reliables to take care of requests, well enough---- well, let's just say that she can find poultry friends on this site who appreciate her!! Very much!! And so we will be glad when she can join us again. CJR
Thank you all for your kindness. As you might imagine, it is a difficult transition for her in many ways. She is relatively young and we were hoping to keep her active with us for a much longer time. We are still hoping that we can work out a system where she can spend a lot of time with us and still feel part of the family.
I just found this forum today. Ihave been reading many of the discussions and have very much appreciated the contributions of Infomaniac and Rokimoto in their 'conversing' one with another and to the others. I wish to offer my sincerest regrets at learning of Infomaniac's setback. My mother's mother had MS for just about 20 years. There is not much to say except to offer my prayers on her behalf and on yours Leee. Good Luck to you all!
This is consistent with the description of lav given by Smyth in Chapter 5 of "Poultry Breeding and Genetics", R.D. Crawford, Ed.
By Rokimoto on Sunday, February 10, 2002 - 10:51 am:
You can probably cull most of the birds that will not lay blue eggs at hatch. The blue egg gene is closely linked on the chromosome to pea comb. only around 2.5% of the chicks without peacomb would be expected to lay blue shelled eggs if you started with pure stocks of blue egg layers and white shelled layers.
Recessive white chicks can have various shades of gray down, from a frosting of gray to nearly black down, but the adults are white feathered. Columbian restricted chicks can have gray backs. The adults turn out to be black tailed reds like Buff Columbians or like Silver Columbian Wyandottes. Lakenvelders can have nearly black down with cream in the head. A lot of things can give you this down type.
By Leee on Monday, February 11, 2002 - 12:24 am:
The chick in the images above may give us a clue as she colors up. Since she is a dorsal grey at present and not completely grey like our others, she may have red / gold colors that lav would mute and Bl wouldn't.
Right now it's a toss-up in our minds. The first ancestor generation in this line was composed entirely of female leghorns. Leghorns are known to (sometimes) carry hypostatic blue. But we believe one of the sires in this strain has lav. It would help if we had any experience looking at blue, which we don't.
By Leee on Monday, February 11, 2002 - 12:32 am:
By Rokimoto on Monday, February 11, 2002 - 01:11 am:
Blue blurs the barring, but it doesn't seem to do a good job at changing the color very much. The birds look about the same color as the non blue barred birds, but they are not well barred and on some feathers you get the solid slate color with out the white bars.
By Cjeanr on Monday, February 11, 2002 - 11:18 pm:
By Leee on Tuesday, February 12, 2002 - 12:38 am:
We're tending to her and she has a lot of friends from church always stopping in to see her. My two boys and I gave a saxophone concert at the nursing home this past Saturday and she was our "MC". She'll be 44 years old this coming March.
She has internet access and I'm hoping that she'll use it as a way to make contact with the outside world.
Thank you again.
By Mark Jacobs (Mjacobs) on Tuesday, February 12, 2002 - 09:51 am:
By Robbpa on Tuesday, February 12, 2002 - 10:06 am:
By Cjeanr on Tuesday, February 12, 2002 - 11:10 am:
PS I am very serious about obtaining 2 to 3 dozen "blue egg" pullets in 2003, if they are available. Your project is wonderful and makes the future look interesting, even for an old person, who loves poultry!
By Rokimoto on Tuesday, February 12, 2002 - 02:03 pm:
I wish info the best. I hope and pray for new and better treatments too.
Ron Okimoto
By anny on Tuesday, February 12, 2002 - 02:04 pm:
By HannahH on Tuesday, February 12, 2002 - 08:43 pm:
By Cjeanr on Tuesday, February 12, 2002 - 11:16 pm:
By Leee on Wednesday, February 13, 2002 - 05:47 pm:
She often spoke about you and her poultry internet friends. The boys and I will continue the breeding projects with my sister's advice and input. Hopefully we will have some success with the blue eggers by 2003! She has been the passion and drive behind our poultry keeping (and the expansion - every new chicken is potentially a new breed to her. She's very enthusiastic about the chickens).
I saw her this morning and she seems to be pretty happy running the nursing home and telling everyone how they could improve their job performance. The staff has taken a liking to her. She seems to be coping well for the time being. Cjeanr, you certainly can e-mail her. Her e-mail address is part of her genetics webpage. I don't know how often she's reading her e-mail, but it is hard for me to believe that she will not come back to the internet after she gets the nursing home staff under control.
She really wants to know about the blue/grey chicks, how sex-linked barring interacts with the grey, how does mottle and other genes influence the grey phenotype, what other swell stuff can you do with blue/grey.
Thank you all for your kind sentiments.
By BigBoy on Wednesday, March 6, 2002 - 09:02 am: