dominant colors?

[wabbitswayer]

Hey folks, (ignorance showing again)

I know that in horses, gray is dominant over other colors. How about in chickens?

[Jigs]

in poultry you will find that there is way more colors than there is in horses so it all depends on the cross and what that bird has in its history, then you can find out what color is dominant

[wabbitswayer]

In my rabbits, gray is dominant as well. Again, that's comparing a furred creature to a feathered creature.

Thanks.

[Kickingbird]

Just to add to what Jigs said, color in chickens is also very complicated and not just simple inheritance. There are modifiers (such as gold and silver), diluters (such as blue), and pattern genes. All of these genes affect the base color of the bird...........my head is starting to hurt just thinking about it

KB

[wabbitswayer]

isn't that what this board is about? ;D

[Jigs]

Im wiht you on this also KB its very very complicated, the only way that you can really explain it is if you give us a scenario, like two birds that you want to cross, even then it can be very complicated because you have to know the birds history. lets say you were crossing black cochin to buff cochin, does the black have any other color in its background? if so what colors? and just think you can keep going, what colors are in the birds that were crossed to make the parents of the black, and so on and so on, thats why some people keep pedigrees, its mostly in pigeons. I try and stay out of it and stay with my purebreds.

now my heads hurting

[fowlplay]

damn.....i finaly had some worthwhile input and ,well jigs pretty well hit the hammer on the nail with what i had to say ;D well, good thinking jigs! parental hitory plays a very large role. i know that things can pop up that havent been seen for many generations. for example, i have a roo that was hatched from a barred rock roo, and a black giant hen. he is purple looking, with lots of green, white , and black spangling in him. he is just a farm bird, but he his atleast twice the size of my games. pretty weird i thought.

[Jigs]

a friend of mine once crossed a black jersey giant to a black australorp and one egg hatched and the bird was solid white with a double comb like the ones on sicilian buttercups, it was the craziest bird I ever saw and it was huge!

[bantamguy]

Hi everyone,

I have heard but not sure if it's right but in most chickens White tends to be the more dominant colour and also quite popular with some.

- bantamguy

[Jigs]

whitr cna be dominant but so can black and eveyr other color, it all depends on what your crossing, its to complicated

[Kristen]

Well, it can all be simplified to a certain extent. To start with, most gray birds are actually blues. Blue is simply a hemizygous bird with one splash gene and one black gene. The gray is not dominant in this case because it is simply the product of a combination of two partially dominant genes which blend to create it. However, another type of "gray" is the self blue, which is recessive to practically everything containing black. A third type of gray is that such as what is found in silkies. This is not a blue but in fact a true gray. It is, in fact recessive to most colors with black. There is another type of gray known as "smokey" which is a dominant gene to white white and black, but partially recessive to wild type. That's all I know of. Hope this answers your question. Kristen

[Jigs]

but that only describes a small portion of what there really is remeber there is over 2500 colors in poultry

[Kickingbird]

Guest-Kristen said:

Well, it can all be simplified to a certain extent. To start with, most gray birds are actually blues. Blue is simply a hemizygous bird with one splash gene and one black gene. The gray is not dominant in this case because it is simply the product of a combination of two partially dominant genes which blend to create it.

====>

Just to clairify, The gene that causes blue is the blue gene. Signified by (Bl). When two blue modifying genes are combined in a bird (Bl,Bl) This causes a phenotype of splash (white with some blue splashing).

The bird that shows this type of blue is hetrozygous because the gene is autosomal (not linked to the sex gene). A hemizygote has a gene that is linked to the sex gene and is only passed on with that gene. For example a barred rock hen is hemizygous for barring. If she is bred to a black or red (or any solid color) male only her sons will be barred the hens will be solid color.

KB

[wabbitswayer]

Only on here can I get an education in genetics where it didn't take me four years to figure it out!!