An in depth guide to how plumage patterns work, beautifully illustrated with over 240 colour photographs. Amongst other things, this book describes some of the most popular breeds, and covers breeding in numbers, hatching large fowl early, sex linkage, creating new colours, hen feathering and egg shell colours, as well as a lot more.
Know your genotype from your Phenotype? This is the first colour book written on poultry genetics which is written in an easy to grasp manner. Grant Brereton is a disciple of the late Dr Clive Carefoot Uk and Brian Reeder USA. He has a knack of describing every facet of breeding.
The book starts with jungle fowl and feather colours of modern breeds can be traced back to them. He describes methods of breeding to produce a standard, double mating, hard feather and soft feather. There are chapters on on all colour variations, including lavender, chocolate, blue barred, wheaten, pyle to name a few and the ins and outs of breeding these colours.
More Chapters explain how to create a new breed, dominant and recessive genes, heterozygous, homozygous, hemizygous, hen feathering, mottling, frizzling, eggshell colours and much more, all illustrated with beautiful colour photographs.
Contents
Foreword - Geoff Parker 1
Introduction 3
Chapter 1
What is a breed? 4
Breed standards 7
Sourcing stock 9
Breeding in numbers 11
Improving a strain 17
Hatching large fowl early 20
Hard feather / soft feather 25
Double mating 28
Chapter 2
Some Popular Breeds:
Orpington 32
Old English Game 36
Pekin 38
Silkie 40
Sussex 42
Chapter 3
Changing Colours:
Black/Red 44
Pyle and Silver Pencilled 46
Blue-Silver and Chocolate-Partridge 48
White & Blue-Partridge 50
Black & Barred 52
Blue-Barred & Lavender 54
Cream 56
Columbian & Hackle Black 58
Columbian Wyandottes 61
Vanilla/White-Buff Columbian Wyandottes 62
Chocolate 63
Lavender Columbian / Coronation 66
Blue Salmon / Wheaten etc 68
Recreating Buff Wyandottes 70
The complexity of the Blue gene 74
Chapter 3
A look at the genes:
In the beginning, the e+ (Wild Type) 76
Building a variety 81
Creating a new breed or colour 82
Dominant / Incomplete Dominant / Recessive Genes 86
What goes in must come out . . . surely! 92
The Lavender Wyandotte project 94
Genotype / Phenotype 97
Making use of sex-linkage 98
Lets look at impures 101
Heterozygous / Homozygous / Hemizygous 105
An introduction to “Ap” 106
Hackle Black theory 108
Chocolate extra 110
Pigment diluting effects of Chocolate 112
Chocolate and Blue in the same bird 113
The Chocolate gene and feather growth rate 114
Sex linked recessive Chocolate 115
Dun gene 116
Mottling complexity 118
Hen feathering 120
Possibilities with lacing 122
The importance of understanding gene interaction 126
Something lacking? 127
Genetic anomalies 128
Genetics of eggshell colour 131
Extra factors - Barring 134
Frizzling factors 135
The effects of genes on colours and patterns 136
Some popular genes 139
Thoughts for the future 144
Acknowledgements 145
Photo acknowledgements 146
Glossary 147
