Cream Legbars

[nicalandia]

I have clear salmon females with a melanized cockerel father

Genetics its not a simplistic as one would think, your hens may be free of the melanizers while your rooster may be only a heterozygote for them, your stock does not seem to display homogeneity,

 

[nicalandia]

here taking a closer look a the "Ideal" Male as the SOP Calls for, and focusing on the saddle feathers we can see that some males clearly lack any grey barring, making them to look like regular crele pattern




Legbar Male with cream/silver Barring saddle
http://cdn.backyardchickens.com/b/b7/500x1000px-LL-b7a91e4e_CLPair.jpeg

Henks Dutch Male that shows not grey barring on her hackles, his pattern is Crele while his color may be on the rich side of cream

http://cdn.backyardchickens.com/b/bc/500x331px-LL-bc9d88a8_hollandse_kriel_koekoekpatrijs.jpeg

I tried to get a few pics of my males saddles since there seems to be a discussion on the color and barring of them.

Melanizers are at play here, but as Chickat pointed out this type of melanizers and the hen melanizer may not be linked to each other, females may/will express genes different from males..

 

[sol2go]

<edited>
Melanizers are at play here, but as Chickat pointed out this type of melanizers and the hen melanizer may not be linked to each other, females may/will express genes different from males..

That is roughly what I got from the Classroom links you posted. The discussion seemed to acknowledge that the term "melanizers" may cover a wide range of unknown factors. The posted discussion was a few years back, so I don't know if more info is available.

As the Cream Legbar club applies to the APA for acceptance of the proposed Cream Legbar SOP, I suppose it would be easier to meet the 50% true to type, color, etc requirements if breeders can develop an all-in-one breeding program.

If we have to split out into gender specific lines this early in the process, it may be more difficult to make a case for acceptance. I realize there may be lots of reasons to have separate cockerel/hen lines, hopefully we won't be dependent upon that right up front.

I'd like to add how much I also like @chicken picken's rooster. It's great to see such nice examples. These and a few others I have seen really change my perspective on what "cream" can do - not to overlook the nice type too =)

 

[nicalandia]

Quote:
These Melanizer subject has haunted me for years now, but I believe I am close to figuring out, I've been re-reading my books on genetics, searching for old informative threads at the Classroom forums, and was able to confirm that Pg on itself its hypostatic to both Males and e+ females, Melanotic its Hypostatic to Males but it does affect females but not enough to fully melanize the hackle, PG and ML on itself wont produce the solid black striping in the hackles and Saddle on males this male is eb/eb(duckwing phenotype as wildtype e+/e+ males) Pg/Pg Ml/Ml Co/Co without any of this genes he could not produce the Lacing Pattern found on Lace wyandotte males, but take a close look at his saddle Striping, this is the stripping that produce the grey barring called on "Golden" Black Laced Wyandotte(cross between Gold Laced Wyandotte Rooster with a Silver Laced Wyandotte rooster)

but as you can see here not all Wyandotte males show solid black stripping on the hackles
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..this lighter males you see from time to time will have nearly white shoulders and the ones with strong hackle melanin will also have strong melanin on shoulders, Now the Waybars, which are genetically Pg/Pg Ml/Ml Co/Co and B/B on top of that, as you can see this Male lacks the Saddle Stripping and therefore he is not showing Grey barring on saddle, so in his case he either lacks the saddle stripping gene(that I believe is pressent on CL) or its being inhibited by another gene..

now a male with better saddle eumelanin http://www.britannicrarebreeds.co.uk/images/chickens/wybc.jpg
Quote:
I like him very much too.. so to recap, the females excess melanin is caused by melanizers that are behaving Hypostatic on the males, the saddle stripping melanizers on the males seem to be either a different gene from Ml/Ml, Pg/Pg or an inhibitor is at play here.. What to do? keep your breeding records for as long as you can so you can track and detect pattern in adult birds..

 

[chicken pickin]

Thanks for the nice compliments about my cockerel. I am happy to hear that others like the way he looks and that others also consider him to be close to the SOP. I am very happy with him and to make it better so far he is good natured.

 

[sol2go]

Quote:
Thanks for the notes, and the reminder to avoid setting undesirable traits into our breeding lines.
I then read a bit with regards to hypostatic and epistasis.

After going around the block on a few things, the dark tips on the salmon breast feathers (which keep popping up on CL hens) seem to be a recurring question, because that is not typical to e+ wild type females and should be difficult to accomplish even with Pg and/or Ml in play - right?

Is it also true that the pattern genes are not as likely to produce black patterns on the breast feathers of wildtype males? In the case of Cream Legbars, we want to see clear salmon breast feathers on the hens, but dark barring on the cockerel chest feathers. If we do have dark barring on the cockerel chests, that shouldn't necessarily result in dark tips on the hens salmon breast feathers? Looking at breeding from another direction, hens with melanized chest feathers won't improve the barring on the chests of the males?

Back to your comments on cockerel hackle and saddle barring - I have seen dark barring on cockerel chest feathers, but little or no melanin in the hackle and saddle feather barring. So these two areas may not be affected by the same hypostatic factors? I'm still waiting to see if hens with dark barring in their hackle feathers improve the hackle/saddle barring in the cockerels.

If the Cream Legbar is considered e+/e+ wildtype, does anyone else wonder if there are characteristics associated with eb that could be creating some of our inconsistencies without being eb? possibly partridge/brown in the body stipling of hens - since it is actually a modified black, and would be unaffected by cream? unknown heavy melanizers? maybe the same factors that provide the light under fluff and yellow legs that we want?

I suppose the answers to my questions are a combination of experience/phenotype, and experience/genotype. Anyone? thanks =)

 

[chicken pickin]

Does anyone know if we have an overlay developed? Im not sure if that's what it is really called, but its a line drawing(not an image) that shows ideal body type and the angles that are preferred. I know Marans has an overlay and you can drag it over your images and it will show where your cock bird is off on shape or angle. Just curious.

 

[KPenley]

Does anyone know if we have an overlay developed? Im not sure if that's what it is really called, but its a line drawing(not an image) that shows ideal body type and the angles that are preferred. I know Marans has an overlay and you can drag it over your images and it will show where your cock bird is off on shape or angle. Just curious.

A few of us worked on shape/shade pictures, but I'm not sure if anyone did an overlay. Michael might have been working on one???

 

[nicalandia]

Quote:
hypostatic means that a gene expression will be supressed or Hidden under another gene, In the case of Wildtype e+/e+ Pg is Hypostatic on males and females, Melanotic is Hypostatic on males but has effects on females, the combination of Pg/Pg Ml/Ml and Co/Co will have effect on both genders, in homozygous form they will be fully laced and in heterozygous form they will be incompletely laced, so one could indeed create Laced Legbar project, the Females will show it more than meles
Quote:
Pg will not show up by itself on e+/e+ females But Melanotic will as shown on the pics from the Classroom forum link I posted, so these dark tips could be the effect of Mi(Melanotic) or the combined effect of both Ml and Pg(pattern gene)
Quote:
that’s correct Pg on itself has no effect on males breast melanin and Melanotic does not affect the breast on any background, I believe the difference between light grey breast barring and dark grey barring on the males breast and body its not related to this melanizers 15989026 / snow man / the girls
Quote:
Those are very very important questions you have asked here and I think serious breeders should take not of that, Only with tracking the breeding results of your birds one would be able to predict such outcome.. As you mentioned before there does not seem be to any correlation between Dark breasted males with Melanized back/saddle males, as you have seen males with dark breast without dark back/saddle What would a guy like me(curios beyond belief) do to get to the bottom of this genetic riddle? Instead of neglecting her I would use her, she would help me resolve this mystery or at least get me closer to finding the genetic answer I would geet the darkest female I have(dark crest with black patterns on breast) mate her to my breeding stock male(which male you use does not matter much as this would be the only time you would be using him, but any male with average looks would do, a male that is not too dark and not too light) Get a F1 of that cross and cross it back to that dark female/females this backcross will produce birds with 75% of the original hens genetics, and 50% of the backcrosses(BC1) will have genes will be in homozygous states, I would still only breed these BC1 males back to that original dark female/females, majority the progeny of such cross(BC2) will genetically very close to these female/females, at this stage we will be able to say with certainty what type of Males this type of females produce

 

[dretd]

I hope that a genetics expert will be able to answer some of your questions, although I think that some of the questions about melanizers will remain speculation for quite some time.

As I understand it, epistasis is when the phenotypic expression of one gene influenced by the actions of a separate gene that is unrelated to that first one. In the case of hypostasis, the first gene that is being modified/masked by the second is called the hypostatic gene. I am sure that someone more knowledgeable will be able to verify or explain it better!

I have had several successive hatches this year. The first batch from June had very few girls that have any of the black breast tips. In the last batch, all of the girls appear more melanotic with various degrees of tipping and the breast seeming overall more richly colored. I was wondering if it could be an influence during incubation that might have changed the degree of expression of the melanizers or favored the chicks as they developed that were more melanized. My hatch rate for both hatches was pretty low--about 50% or so.

I had wondered about eb, I have also wondered about recessive wheaton as well. One of my boys is what I would consider a 'normal' color for a CL roo and the other is very light with more of what seems like pale lacing on his breast. This last batch of highly melanized girls was sired by him. Since he his barely barred/light and the girls are overly melanized (the hen is/was very slightly melanized on her breast) the exaggerated black on the breast is unexpected. I had wondered on the recessive wheaton on him at one time just because he was a very pale downed chick (just like his normal brother) and he was so light, but I have decided that he is just a very light boy e+/e+ after hatching a number of chicks from him. He is from Maria, who did a wonderful job with her birds and I don't suspect any hybrids from her stock. I think he is just on the right side of the bell curve for colors we see in Cream Legbars where his hatch mate is right in the middle.

I will look forward to hearing what genetics folks think about the phenotypes of both chick down color and adult plumage color in both e+/eb and e+/eWh birds.

Here is a boy that is more melanized than ideal (solid black feathers in some of his secondary coverts). You can see he has what I would consider a normal amount of black in his hackles and his saddle is mostly cream barred with faint grey barring. I am gong to breed from him next year and see what he produces. He has really good type and so his wing color flaws are worth over looking.
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Here is a picture of the overly light boy I had mentioned:
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He has very little distinct barring on his breast. I really like his head has a reasonable body type and he is very nice/easy going so I was hoping to get some good girls to move forward. I wanted more color in his offspring and I guess I got what I wished for in spades! So Nicalandias hypothesis of some of the melanizers being hypostatic in males but not females could very well be true since his girls are all more melanized than their mother. Its blowing 30 mph winds today so brrrr I will go out and add in pictures of the chicks when the weather improves.