Breeding Miniature/Bantam chickens from Large Fowl?

[RememberTheWay]

I have tried to run several searches for threads about people working on new bantam breeds or creating miniature versions of a large fowl variety but am coming up empty handed.

I am trying to research how my predecessors have achieved these things so that I could come up with some type of general outline for how to move forward if I decided to do so and figure out about how long something like that would take to accomplish. I currently have some Legbars that I would like to have miniatures of and I have Ameraucana's I would like to have miniatures of. I currently have one splash pet quality bantam Ameraucana rooster and one pullet of the same color. I have large fowl in splash too, as well as an Ermine large fowl and a self blue in both M/F large fowl. I have heard from other breeders that creating minis can be accomplished by breeding a larger then normal bird to a smaller then normal bird and that some of the resulting offspring should be close to the smaller size I would be going for. Or of course you could always breed in an already established bantam variety.

Has anyone worked on a similar project can you tell me about your project and what kind of challenges and successes you had in your project? Would love to hear all about it and see progression photos of you have them.

Also- when deciding where to place this thread. Because I am talking about new breed /variety creation and possibly crossing I did t feel it was appropriate to put it in the "breeding to SOP and genetics" forum. Can anyone tell me why we don't have a forum for Breeders that aren't necessarily following SOP or starting new projects? Maybe something along the lines of "Everything Else Breeding" lol?

 

[troyer]

It is possible to breed down from largefowl by using the smallest ones and going from there. Probably not many have done it which is why there is little information on it.
I have Cubalaya and in the 22+ years I've had them I've bred down largefowl to bantam size, well kinda. One of those times I used only largefowl for the project and it took ten years. The other two times I had a bantam hen to work with and used small largefowl roosters, even with having a bantam hen to work with it took seven years. About three years into the project you can start using bantam roosters if you have them.
Note: When using a bantam hen with a largefowl rooster, wait until she's two years old before allowing a largefowl rooster to mate with her, she won't be as easily smashed by him because her body structure is mature.
In my case I had smaller than normal largefowl roosters available. I don't know if that's the case with Ameraucana.
I don't know how many pictures I have of the progression.
I am in the middle of doing a fourth breeding down project right now. The purpose this time isn't because I need the small size, but rather to fix a largely missing tail trait in the bantams that the largefowl have.

 

[RememberTheWay]

It is possible to breed down from largefowl by using the smallest ones and going from there. Probably not many have done it which is why there is little information on it.
I have Cubalaya and in the 22+ years I've had them I've bred down largefowl to bantam size, well kinda. One of those times I used only largefowl for the project and it took ten years. The other two times I had a bantam hen to work with and used small largefowl roosters, even with having a bantam hen to work with it took seven years. About three years into the project you can start using bantam roosters if you have them.
Note: When using a bantam hen with a largefowl rooster, wait until she's two years old before allowing a largefowl rooster to mate with her, she won't be as easily smashed by him because her body structure is mature.
In my case I had smaller than normal largefowl roosters available. I don't know if that's the case with Ameraucana.
I don't know how many pictures I have of the progression.
I am in the middle of doing a fourth breeding down project right now. The purpose this time isn't because I need the small size, but rather to fix a largely missing tail trait in the bantams that the largefowl have.

Thank you for this. You probably are right in thinking that the reason there isn't much information available is because few have actually done it. I would say that is probably dead on, especially considering the project time length and knowing how ridiculously short everyones attention spans are these days. "Squirrel!"

The Ermine rooster I have actually is smaller than normal large fowl so he may be useful. And I would like to add that with large fowl to bantam mating I have seen some roosters actually not stand on the back of small hens and only pen her down by the neck. Not all of them- of course a good many still stand on the back. Wouldn't it be easier to mate the other way -meaning bantam roo to large fowl hen? Or would that take even longer because the chicks are hatching from a regular sized egg then?

I had one breeder say she used an XL cock bird to a XS hen and the the resulting chicks were much smaller then the parents. I also have seen people quote similar mating recipes when discussing how they ended up with micro birds

 

[troyer]

Thank you for this. You probably are right in thinking that the reason there isn't much information available is because few have actually done it. I would say that is probably dead on, especially considering the project time length and knowing how ridiculously short everyones attention spans are these days. "Squirrel!"

The Ermine rooster I have actually is smaller than normal large fowl so he may be useful. And I would like to add that with large fowl to bantam mating I have seen some roosters actually not stand on the back of small hens and only pen her down by the neck. Not all of them- of course a good many still stand on the back. Wouldn't it be easier to mate the other way -meaning bantam roo to large fowl hen? Or would that take even longer because the chicks are hatching from a regular sized egg then?

I had one breeder say she used an XL cock bird to a XS hen and the the resulting chicks were much smaller then the parents. I also have seen people quote similar mating recipes when discussing how they ended up with micro birds

If the bantam cock can do the breeding that'll be fine. Some of them figure it out and others just can't get the hang of it.