more on genetics

To start with, I first crossed sumatra to phoenix and got only birchen or brown red
birds. No solid blacks. So I then crossed sumatra to black minorca which gave me black birds with black skin and either single or pea combs. The single combed birds from this breeding look identical to cemani. I had very few red faced birds from that breeding. I then mated these cross birds with phoenix and have produced birds that are solid black or blue (the rooster
is a blue gold) with over 75% being black skinned and faced. I have found no sexlinking in this particular breeding. The reason that I obtained better results from using the minorca x sumatra was that the sumatra and the minorca have genetically different types of black. The sumatra seems to carry a recessive gene for color in hackles which when mated with the
phoenix produced birchens and brownreds. By combining the two kinds of black, I was able to cover the hackle color with black, producing solid birds. These birds are still strikingly much like cemani, except that the tails are longer. I have single combed, pea combed and rosecombed. I will dispose of the peacombs and work with the single combs and rose combs as
seperate groups. I also plan to cross the 1/2 sumatra/minorca hens with larger meat type birds to produce a large meat type black skinned bird, however, I will not use white birds, as this is a mistake and will cause the sexlinking to occur. The sexlinking tends to be bypassed by crossing to black birds, because these birds tend to have and increase in melanosis to
begin with. I am using black giant and black birds from barred rock breeding. I am also working with black feathered silkie across chabo, cochin and d'uccle to produce a bantam of black skin and face but without the silk feathers, which I feel obscures the patterns such as cuckoo, mottle and mille fleur, which I prefer to solid color birds. I will also be working to
put the black face and skin characteristic on other color patterns in standard birds, such as laced, barred, spangled, ect. I have a vision in my head of blue and buff laced birds with rosecombs and black skin and face, among other equally weird combinations. I have this year crossed sumatra to fayoumi and have autosomal barred birds with black face and skin. These are quite striking. As well, I have done crosses in the past of malay and sumatra and have produced black skinned birds identical to malay. Very neat. This gene is actually quite easy to work with, however, you must deal with the variation and be willing to select heavily. Remember, black or blue birds are easiest to transfer the gene onto.