Variations from 2nd generation crossbreed

[16Chickens Keeper]

The birds are a month old now.
They're getting very friendly.
View attachment 1700421 View attachment 1700422 View attachment 1700423

I've now got 18 more that are one week old.
These things breed like rabbits.
I hatched a single Serama at the same time.
At least he's not all alone but he's living in the Land of the Giants.

When they get a little bigger, I'll let them out of the goat house.
They now get almost an hour of supervised free range time before bed.
They love it.

Are the lighter ones female and the darker ones males?

 

[Ra_]

Are the lighter ones female and the darker ones males?

Actually just the opposite in the case of those birds.
The first bird is a female. The next three are males and the last two are girls.

 

[Ra_]

The first hatch of 2nd generation Rainbow Rock are now almost 8 weeks old.
They've been free ranging for awhile now and I've had two more hatches since.
The boys all look standardized the way the 1st generation are, with the exception of the white strain.
The girls are mixed between looking like their mamas and unique genetic throwbacks.
Here are a couple of the clone boys, along with the unique Fifi.

 

[Ra_]

Here's Fifi with Golden Boy.
Do you know what's odd?
I've been developing these Rainbow Rock since last summer.
This year I've sold 6 roosters and zero pullets.
Weird.

 

[Ra_]

Birds that are almost black are another one of the genetic throwbacks that I'm seeing in the females. I see these two together a lot. I'll try to sell them as a pair.

 

[nicalandia]

Was this really unexpected? This is basically Mendelian Genetics and to be precise Mendel's second law also known as the law of independent assortment.

Let's make this simple as possible.

Barred Rock genotype: E/E, co+/co+, S/S, B/B
Dixie Rainbows: eWh/eWh, Co/Co, s+/- and b+/b+

The cross would have yielded E/eWh, Co/co+, S/s+, B/b+

The cross of the F1s would have yielded 25% E/E(Black chick down), 25% eWh/eWh(yellow/orange chick down), and 50% E/eWh(black chick down) just to site chick down, I see that one of your bird looks like a Delaware, he is eWh/eWh, Co/Co, S/S, B/?

 

[Ra_]

Was this really unexpected? This is basically Mendelian Genetics and to be precise Mendel's second law also known as the law of independent assortment.

Let's make this simple as possible.

Barred Rock genotype: E/E, co+/co+, S/S, B/B
Dixie Rainbows: eWh/eWh, Co/Co, s+/- and b+/b+

The cross would have yielded E/eWh, Co/co+, S/s+, B/b+

The cross of the F1s would have yielded 25% E/E(Black chick down), 25% eWh/eWh(yellow/orange chick down), and 50% E/eWh(black chick down) just to site chick down, I see that one of your bird looks like a Delaware, he is eWh/eWh, Co/Co, S/S, B/?

Thank God that was the simple version.
I got flashbacks to my fruit fly experiments.

Would you breed the offspring that are standardizing to the first generation.
Or would you breed the whites and blacks and Fifi and other throwbacks?

When you said Delaware, were you talking about Golden Boy?
I'm getting about 20% white birds in second generation hatches.
They all develop different patterning from each other.
One of them has turned the pumpkin color of her grandmother Dixie Rainbow.

My incubator is full of Rainbow 75s
They are 25% Barred Rock and 75% Dixie Rainbow.
Any predictions on what those birds might look like, other than huge?

 

[Ra_]

I see that one of your birds looks like a Delaware?

I looked up Delaware and I see that they were achieved through a strikingly similar path.
I'm sure you're probably aware but they are a cross between Barred Rock and New Hampshire.
The New Hampshire here looks a lot like my Dixie Rainbows

https://livestockconservancy.org/index.php/heritage/internal/delaware

 

[nicalandia]

I looked up Delaware and I see that they were achieved through a strikingly similar path.
I'm sure you're probably aware but they are a cross between Barred Rock and New Hampshire.

Yes, very similar path indeed.

That dark pullet you recently posted that look strikingly similar to a true "Birchen" pullet(google Birchen Maran) its because she is segregating Extended black with Columbian restrictor(think about a black sex link hen but instead of gold she is Silver) or an Extended black pullet that is lacking the melanizers that are required to make a Self Black bird(Barred Rocks are self black with sex linked barring mutation), I must say that you are producing quite the fascinating offspring of such cross. I would just keep breeding F1s to F1s and expect the Unexpected, so far you have been quite lucky to get such diversity. Just how many did you hatch? The luck of the draw would have you hatch chicks with all black down(75% chance actually)

 

[Ra_]

Yes, very similar path indeed.
I must say that you are producing quite the fascinating offspring of such cross. I would just keep breeding F1s to F1s and expect the Unexpected, so far you have been quite lucky to get such diversity.

Thank you.
Yes, this Birchen Marans looks just like Fifi.

I looked up the definition of F1.
So what I'm calling second generation is really F1 ?
My next hatch is all 75% Dixie Rainbow.
I have one of those in each of my last two hatches and they're very large.
Sadly I may have to stop hatching after this and cut back on the existing flock.
The feed bills are getting high and it's harder to sell these than it is my Serama.
Haven't sold any of their hatching eggs this year either.