Hello again. This video rounds off my series of videos about the genetics of colours and
patterns, particularly in Wyandotte chickens. We started out with a basic introduction to
genetics concepts and terminology, and we’ve worked our way through all the basic building
blocks that we needed – the genes that make the blue colour, sex chromosomes, sex-linked
genes and sex-linked crosses, and finally the genes that control the lacing pattern
and the colours of the lacing and the ground colour of the Wyandotte’s feathers. So by
the end of the last video, we had covered the theory of it all.
In this video I want to show you how I used all that information when breeding my own
Wyandotte chickens, in particular my favourites, the white-laced buffs.
Nine years ago (October 2010) I was very lucky to obtain some fertile eggs from a line of
Wyandottes that carried the dominant white gene. Here in New Zealand it is impossible
for private individuals to import live chickens or fertile eggs, because of our very strict
biosecurity laws that protect our native wildlife – and since we have almost no native animals,
that pretty much means birds.
So although I’d love to have some of the chicken breeds available in other countries,
we New Zealand chicken breeders are very restricted in what we have to work with. But I managed
to get some fertile eggs of Wyandotte chickens carrying the dominant white gene. When they
hatched, I had a mixture of different coloured chicks - two of them were the white-laced
buff colour I wanted. Unfortunately, both of them turned out to be boys. I called them
Buffter and Buttercup. The following year they were old enough to
breed from, and I mated Buttercup with a silver-laced Wyandotte hen. This time I know what genes
I’m dealing with and so I know what to expect in the chicks – Buttercup has one copy of
the dominant white gene which is what’s giving him the white lacing on his feathers,
plus he has two recessive genes for the gold ground colour, one on each of his two Z chromosomes.
Miss Silver, the silver-laced Wyandotte hen, has no dominant white gene (so two little
‘i’s), and she has one copy of the dominant Silver gene – it’s that Silver gene that’s
making the ground colour of her feathers look silver. And of course we know she has only
one copy of the Silver gene because it’s carried on the Z chromosome and since she’s
female, she has only one Z chromosome. So, all the female chicks will inherit her
W chromosome plus the Z chromosome from Buttercup which has no Silver gene, so all the females
will have feathers with gold ground colour. All the chicks that inherit Miss Silver’s
Z chromosome, which carries the Silver gene, will have the silver feather ground colour.
And of course since they must inherit a Z chromosome from their father, they will be
boys. Quite separately to the inheritance of the
feather ground colour is the inheritance of the dominant white gene that affects the otherwise-black
lacing. Buttercup has only one copy of the gene, so he passes that on to half his chicks
and the other half get the recessive gene that leaves the lacing black. So we should
get:
Half females with gold ground colour and half males with silver ground colour, and within
each group, half will have white lacing and half will have black lacing.
I hatched 8 chicks from the first setting and 9 from the second clutch. So statistically
they should have been about four of each colour, but I got a bit lucky.
Six of the chicks were white-laced buff, and
of course they were all female. Statistics are only reliable when you are
working with big numbers, and 17 is not a big number. But this was probably my favourite
breeding project because it combined a sex-linked cross for the feather ground colour with a
separate inheritance of the dominant white gene affecting the lacing colour. And it was
very satisfying to actually see the sex-linked Silver gene turning up exactly as predicted
on all the males and none of the females. Plus it did confirm what I believed about
the genes that Buttercup was carrying. And it was lovely to see that cockerel with
the silver gene plus the gene for dominant white, who as predicted had white feathers
with white lacing, in other words he was just pure white.
I picked the best white-laced buff female and I named her Butternut. Three of the others
had some minor faults for the breed so I didn’t use them for breeding, and I sold the other
two to another enthusiast. So the following year, with Butternut, I had
a chance to breed a white-laced buff hen. I was interested to see what a chicken with
a double dose of the dominant white gene would look like, so I bred Butternut with Buffter
(the hatch-mate of her father). I hatched more than one clutch, but combined, this is
what I got: This time of course there was no Silver gene
in the parents, so they all had the gold feather ground colour. Remember that the parent birds
had one copy each of the dominant white gene and statistically each of them should pass
on that gene to half of their chicks. So we should expect half the chicks to be white-laced
buff like their parents, a quarter of them should get no dominant white gene from either
parent and so have the normal black lacing, and a quarter of the chicks should get two
copies of the dominant white gene. Since this was not a sex-linked cross, the
colours of the chicks didn’t tell me which was male and which was female, so I haven’t
included the sex on this chart. With these 13 chicks, the proportions were
nowhere near the half / quarter / quarter that was predicted. Which demonstrates very
well that statistics really only work when you are dealing with big numbers.
In this case luck was on my side and out of 13 chicks I got 9 with the white-laced buff
colouring. Only one chick happened to not inherit the dominant white gene from either
of his parents and so have black lacing. And three of them clearly had a double dose of
the dominant white gene. As chicks, these had very pale chick down,
almost white compared to the goldy fuzz of the chicks with one copy of the dominant white
gene that would grow up to be white-laced buff. And when these double-dose chickens
grew up, it was very clear to see that the double dose of the dominant white gene had
a marked effect on the gold feather ground colour – these chickens hardly even looked
laced at all because they have almost no pheomelanin expressed. If I didn’t know their genetic
background, I would never have guessed what it was. Of course I did know that they had
two copies of the dominant white gene as well as the genes for the lacing pattern so they
were excellent for breeding even though they didn’t look very pretty.
And the following year I did breed from one of the hens with a double-dose (her name is
Chantilly) plus one of the white-laced buff hens, called Tommi-Sue. But I wanted to try
to deepen the buff feather ground colour to more of a deeper gold, so I bred them with
a Wyandotte rooster who had excellent gold feather ground colour, although he had the
black lacing – his name is Rufus. So these are a combination of the chicks from two different
sets of parents – Rufus, the black-laced gold rooster, plus either Tommi-Sue, a white-laced
buff hen with a single dominant white gene, or Chantilly who has a double dose of the
dominant white gene. All of Chantilly’s chicks will be white-laced, and half of Tommi-Sue’s
chicks will be white-laced.
And these numbers fit the statistics very
well – the inclusion of eggs from Chantilly, with her double dose of the dominant white
gene has greatly increased the proportion of chicks with white lacing. And I was very
happy with the richness of the gold feather ground colour.
Again I chose the best female white-laced buff for breeding the following season, but
unfortunately, one afternoon a vicious dog that was visiting our neighbor jumped the
fence and slaughtered several of my chickens, completely wiping out all my years of work
in breeding and improving the white laced Wyandottes. I hope that someone else in New
Zealand has continued to breed Wyandottes with white lacing, but for me, all I have
left are some feathers, some photos and videos, and wonderful memories of my experiences in
putting into practice all I have learned about the genetics of these beautiful chickens with
the pure white lacing.