Genetics of Chicken Colours

S
C
I
T
E
N
GE
OF
RS
U
O
L
O
C
N
S
CHICKE
SIC
E
TH
BA
D HANCOX
DORT - DAVI
SIGRID VAN
DS
N
& FRIE
THE FIRST EASY GENETICS BOOK EVER!
OVER 600 COLOUR PHOTOS,
FOR PEOPLE FROM 13 YEARS OF AGE AND UP
TAKE A LOOK...
AND DECIDE FOR YOURSELF!
Introduction
Genetics, just the word was enough for me to say “No way, not for me, I’ve got no mathematical talents; great
for the academics!” What you now have in front of you is the work of a dummy who is now opportunistic
enough to say:
Colour genetics?
That’s like making vegetable soup!
Many thanks to David Hancox, Henk Meijers and Grant Bereton, all experimental poultry breeders with
many years experience. I thank all for all the discussions and feedback on proposed genomes, the “genetic
recipes”, and help interpreting the various components. Without them all there would be no ‘book for
dummies’ because when I started nobody was dumber than me when it came to the ‘mathematics’ and ‘laws’,
which is what it all looked like at the start of this project!
Suddenly I found it was time to start writing, finding photographs, creating what wasn’t available, and
making some drawings. J. Ringnalda, an experienced photographer (and breeder), gave me great help taking
the photographs when requested, at shows and visits to other breeders. I held the chickens in position and he
made some great photographs, which are included in this book. I also used a few he made previously, to add
to what couldn’t be found at shows in Holland and abroad.
I’ve done this book in the same way as I think, talk and live. Playfully: not too seriously: and as uncomplicated
as possible, because idleness of the mind is a universal trait. Henk went through the manuscript and
photographs, and took out my dummy failures. During the translation David added interesting facts and lots
of his experience.
The Recipe Book is the second part of this book; it contains an enormous number of photographs. Finding
some colour varieties wasn’t easy. There were many in my archive, lots were taken at shows, and the very
rare colours were obtained from Breed Clubs and Poultry photographers.
2
Content
1.
•
•
•
•
•
The colour of chickens, compared to vegetable soup 9
Where is the colour of the chicken located? 10
The Jungle Fowl as Standard 11
Why the plus? 12
Why is one letter in capitals and the other in lower case? 12
Gallus Bankiva: is this the only Jungle Fowl responsitble for
chicken colours? 14
2. The only colours in chickens are black and red 15
• How are black and red made 15
• The black in chickens 15
• The red in chickens 15
• The are two sorts of red in chickens 16
- Sex- linked Red 16
- Autosomal Red 16
3.
•
•
•
•
How to get the right gene mix? 21
Which gene mix gives what? 21
Sex linked and Autosomal genes 22
Homozygous and heterozygous 23
Hormones, influencing colours 23
4. The e-series as a basis for colour 25
• Hobby names, tell us nothing about genetic back ground! 25
• What is a genome? 26
5. The four gene groups 27
6.
•
•
•
•
•
The colour distribution genes (group 1) 28
E, Extended Black 28
ER, Birchen 31
eWh, Wheaten 33
e+, ‘Wild type’ Partridg 38
eb, Brown 43
7.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The uniform colour changing genes (group 2) 51
I, Dominant White 51
I^D, Dun colour 56
I^S, Smoky 59
choc, Chocolate 61
c, Recessive white 65
S, Silver 66
Bl, Blue 69
lav, Lavender 74
rb, Recessive black 77
Dull Black 77
ig, Cream 79
Cb, Champagne Blond 79
Cha, Charcoal 80
8.
•
•
•
•
•
Colour distributing genes (group 3) 82
Co, Columbian 82
Db, Dark brown 84
Di, Dilute 86
Mh, Mahogany 88
Ml, Melanotic 91
9. Pattern genes (group 4) 95
• Pg, Pattern gene 99
- Pencilled 101
- Double laced 102
- Single laced 104
- Pencilled or Autosomal barred 105
- Spangled 107
• mo, mottled, mille fleur 112
• Brain teaser 124
• B, Sex-linked Cuckoo or Barring 133
10. Extras
Part 2, List of genomes plus photographs of
Standard colour varieties, as described in a
Standard of Perfection.
For the English readers...
Readers can see this book was originally written in Dutch,
with the prime emphasis on the European Continental breeder and his poultry scene. I have endeavoured to translate it
so that it would have wider appeal to the English speaking
world.
This has proven more difficult than I imagined for several
reasons. Firstly fowl are not herdbook animals, but are bred
to a Standard, this being a written description of the ideal
fowl. Standards however differ from country to country.
What is acceptable in one is not in others.
Secondly it is possible, and indeed factual, that breeds and
varieties of breeds can be produced, to look the same, from
different genetic pathways. This may produce in some cases, birds that look as described in the Standard, are exhibited and win at poultry shows, but can not, and do not breed
true. Lastly, and most importantly, even English speaking
countries have different hobby names, sometimes even within breeds. Partridge is a typical case, this name is used for
two entirely different colour patterns, the wildtype e+ bird,
and the brown eb patterned bird. The English speaking
world only applies ‘partridge’ to the female wildtype, the
male being a black/red; the European breeder would call
this bird a Bankiva wildtype partridge; and the geneticist
a Red Duckwing. In Germany, Goldhalsig which means
with a golden neck; Braungebändert which means brown
pencilled/laced/ribboned; and gebändert which actually
translates into ribboned/laced in the shape of a horse shoe,
a type of “U/V-shaped”, all translate into Partridge. I have
tried to follow the naming method that would be most
easily understood, giving explanations where I thought it
appropriate.
After you read this book I hope (to misquote Churchill )
that “Now this is not the end. That it is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”
of your interest in this subject.
David Hancox
Winter 2007
C
Chickens are also food
for the soul
1. The colour of chickens, as compared to soup
T
Stock cubes, the e-allele.
The e-allele is the basis on which
chicken colour is made. All the
ingredients (colour genes) you
add, determine the ‘taste’ of the
e-allele.
There are 5 sorts of broth
(e-alleles or the e-series) on which
to make chicken colours. Wild type,
Duckwing (e+) is one of them.
The colour of a chicken doesn’t consist of just one factor but is the combined
action of many genes. In certain combinations the presence or absence of
diluters or enhancers will give variations to the colour variety. The colour
of the chicken is best to compared to the taste of the soup. To make a soup,
you first choose a basic ingredient, the broth. It can be beef, chicken, herbs,
mushroom or fish. The base determines a big part of the taste. The basis
of chicken colours is determined by the e-alleles. The choice of the broth,
‘e allele’, will determine how the other ingredients are going to taste and
look. There are ingredients, that give taste and colour to the soup, adding
one, e.g. salt, has an effect on the others; sweetness is covered, or tastes
differ. By adding tomatos to vegetable soup, the soup is going to become
red, and you would call it tomato vegetable soup regardless of the order
in which you added the other ingredients. So you have made vegetable
tomato soup.
The tomatoes cover the colour of both the broth, and the vegetables that are
included, but the vegetables are still there, although the tomatoes heavily
influence their taste. We can see the tomatoes as a dominant gene, and the
vegetables as recessive genes. The effect on the vegetables is that their
expression decreases or is changed (pieces of potato become orange instead
of yellow white).
Adding cream to the tomato soup will lighten the colour. The red becomes
light orange but the vegetables keep their original colours.
This compares with adding a colour-diluting gene that has an influence on
the red colour (tomatoes), but not on the black (vegetables).
G
Genetics of Chicken Colours The Basics
Chicken colours compared to tomato vegetable soup, that
comparison fits!
Isn’t the word ‘genetics’ horrifying enough to shout ‘that is not my
piece of cake!’?
Or even worse, why would you be interested in colour genetics
anyway?
A chicken is a chicken and its colour is always there. For those
who think thats enough to know, this book is worthless.
For the ones that want to know how the chicken got that colour,
this book is great!
There have not been many books about chicken colour genetics
lately, although most books are written in English. The books
that are written are mostly old,20 years or more, or just dull , not
comprehended by the average breeder, due to the scientific way
they have been written and,being without colour photographs
not appetizing at all. Books about colour genetics have never
been illustrated as richly this book for dummies! Because we are
dummies we need all those photographs to understand, because we
are not professors nor mathematicians.
Therefore I wrote/made this book because we aren’t scientists, we
are fanciers and exhibition breeders!
This book is made by a dummy who stirred and cooked all the hard
to understand knowledge until it became a tasteful and digestible
meal for anybody with an education (13 years up). How can a
‘dummy’ do this? Simple, by asking no high
demands to own thinking and understanding,
taking all the time needed to comprehend,
and ask others who do understand the genetics
if something isn’t totally clear.
All colour genes are divided into 4 groups. Every
group is explained in 1/3 text and 2/3 photographs
because a picture tells more than a thousand words.
It starts with the explanation of certain words you just
have to know, that’s the toughest part and consists of less
than 5 pages. The book is bursting with new things because
science didn’t wait for this book the last 20 years. The action
of the genes is explained and you don’t have to learn anything
because its very logical. It is so much more logical that you can’t
understand why this book like this has never been written
before, and why genetics were always was covered with
a vail of mystery. Well, that era is over now, anybody can
understand the colour genes after reading and looking at the
pictures in this book.
Why write a book about something you work with every day as a
breeder, and why has a book like this never been written ?
Because its very interesting. You can really improve your breeding,
you don’t have to gamble and guess as much anymore. No or less
miscoloured chickens , and you save lots of money on feed and
lives of chicks that are not the right colour. You can now
take a good typed bird with another colour and cross it
into your line for vigor, fertility or whatever your goal is
and because you know what you are doing, in a few years
you have the desired trait and the colour is restored.
Don’t cry ‘there are creepy symbols in this book!’, just
read it and you will find out they are only shortcuts for
longer words and... they are internationally recognized
so you can ‘talk’ to anybody in the world about genes
when you know these shortcuts.
For English breeders the shortcuts are logical,
because most genes have English names! Breeders
from other countries find it a bit more difficult but
every shortcut is repeated over and over again
together with the ‘long name’, so you don’t have
to learn them by heart. You just recognize them in
a playful way.
The book is written loosely, no ‘scientific’ jargon,
it reads as if somebody is telling you the story of
chicken colours, not dull at all, you won’t fall
asleep as you did when you read the old books.
Attention is retained because you have eyes to
look at the beautiful photographs that tell you about the genes.
For the ones who can’t remember anything, there are several
schemes in which you can look up the name of the gene and its
ER has breast lacing, this distinguishes this colour from Gold of
Silver Necked Black, which doesn’t. A Gold Necked Black hen
can be also a poorly marked ER hen on which the lacing doesn’t
extent far enough over the breast. Gold and Silver necked Blacks
are normally based on E.
A Brown Red hen.
Genetically a Gold
Birchen
All patterns on which the
rooster has a patterned tail like
Gold or Silver Pencilled and
Autosomal barred are based
on ER, as are the spangled,
laced etc.
The
colour
of the
French
Marans is
actually a Red
Birchen without
lots of selection of
breast lacing. Some have
black breasts others show
some kind of lacing.
Silver Birchen rooster, note the breast
lacing and the so called ‘crow wing’,
that is black instead of the common
brown or white as on the ‘duckwing’ of
other roosters of the e-series.
eWh, Wheaten – This is a bit of a strange e-allele, and it’s difficult to
choose whether it should be here, before e+ Duckwing or last in order.
The e-series is described in order of dominance and Wheaten is the
next in dominance after E and ER, unless there are black enhancers
present; Wheaten then becomes the most recessive allele of the e-series,
and should be at the end of the list. There is something else a bit odd
about Wheaten. There is almost no difference between the Wheaten and
Duckwing roosters. The only small differences, that only a practiced
eye will recognise, is that the hackle and saddle feathers of the Wheaten
roosters have no or very little black shafting. If it’s there, then it’s in
the lower part of the hackle. Hackle and saddle are therefore orange red
(when s+ gold) without black stripes like the Duckwing and the yet to
be described eb-rooster. Commonly Wheaten roosters have lighter under
fluff than the other roosters of the e-series, who have greyish under fluff.
The Wheaten hens do differ a lot from the other ‘e’
hens. eWh Wheaten hens tend to be more reddish.
eWh Wheaten extends the salmon coloured breast
over the complete body of the hen and at the same
time removes the black stippling.
Yellow Wheaten
Chabos.
In the chick down there is a big difference between
an eWh and an e+ Duckwing based chicken.
The eWh chick is cream coloured or white.
Sometimes there is some stippling on the head or
diluted dorsal stripes are present, if there is, for
example Columbian in it. The chicks look
Gold
Wheaten
Chabos.
actions.
The photographs are not standard pictures,
but photos of ‘real’ animals, mostly at
exhibitions but also at breeders’ homesteads
in their pens and coops.
You will see so many new things in
chickens if you know what to pay attention
to, you can be a colour-judge after reading this book and you
know why colours look the way they do.
Next to easy text, beautiful photographs the page design is vivid
and playful too, as if every page is a piece of art, therefore this
book is a little party.
Its a book for breeders who want to look at photos instead of
studying and learning text.
The second part of the book is the ‘recipe book’, in which most
Standard colour varieties are explained. The book is originally
Dutch, so there are lots of Continental European colours but
the English/US colours and others are included too and where a
photograph was available, its in there as well.
In the recipe book there are also some new true breeding colours
that are being created all the time by imaginative breeders who like
to play with the colour genes. You can,if you wish, be one of them
and create your own colours. Anybody who thinks or says ‘colour
genetics, thats not for me’, will agree after reading this book that it
With cap and body warmer,
chicks of Tollbunt Polands...
is not a mystery at all and anybody can understand it!
The book consists of 224 pages, has over 600 photographs, all
are in full colour of course. Therefore the book isn’t going to
be‘cheap’, because there are high demands for the printing process
and colour printing is, of course, much more expensive than black
& white printing.
The knowledge in the book is updated to 2008 and therefore
contains information from the newest scientific literature that is
beneficial to breeders of hobby chickens. The English book will
be more up to date than the original Dutch version because we
collected some more new and interesting facts.
This book will be your colour bible in breeding. You can look up
everything when you forget something, or look at the photographs
if you’re looking for something specific.
You can discuss things clearly, don’t have to guess anymore and the
Dutch breeders who have this book already are very happy with it.
D HANCOX
DORT - DAVI
SIGRID VAN
DS
& FRIEN
S
C
I
T
E
N
E
G
OF
RS
U
O
L
O
C
N
E
CHICK
ICS
AS
TH
E B
ESCRIPTION
RECIPES & D
TIES
LOUR VARIE
O
C
D
R
A
D
STAN
The hobby has got a completely new dimension
the past year.Several groups of Dutch breeders
have come together at forums and everybody is
discussing what they finding in their pens. Even
colour experiments are being done and everybody
is able to understand each other. Together with
the chicken colour calculator breeding is more
fun than ever! In addition, old colours/breeds
can be restored with this knowledge, and new
colours will be created!
This book is the first genetics book ever made
with so many photos, easy reading style, and
for the first time in history written by chicken
fanciers. Everything is based on scientific
facts and therefore you can rely on it in your
breeding until new perspectives are discovered
by science.
Genetics of Chicken Colours The Basics will be
available in a real print book (easiest to read) and
also as a secured (very copy protected) eBook.
Check out www.chickencolours.com for the
latest news and when its available and where to
purchase!
There are a number of ways in which the colours could between the breeds is large.
have been listed, as a list of Standard colours as found The proposed recipes, the description of the genotyin the Dutch ,German and US Standards, or in conjunc- pe, are theoretical. If possible they are derived from
tion with the breeds illustrations as in the UK, Austra- breeding practice. Unfortunately there are no breeders
lian and NZ Standards, or in alphabetical order, or on who can tell exactly what’s ‘in’ their colour variety, unthe basis of the ‘e’ allele, or using the hobby names. less they have access to laboratory techniques at the
The latter was the eventual choice.
chromosome level. Also problematical is the fact that
This list doesn’t pretend to be complete, indeed there many colours can be made using different genotypes.
is little input with respect to Asian, especially Japanese The most common breeds are the most researched, but
breeds, and those from Latin America and Africa.
in many uncommon or geographically isolated breeds
Several colour varieties are no longer found in certain even the experts can’t tell with absolute certainty what
Countries, and indeed some may never have existed in genes are present. Several Dutch and landrace colours
some Countries. Therefore some colours are shown fall into this category because neither the history, nor
with pictures of chickens that are found in other parts selection criteria of the colour is well understood. See
of the World. For the ‘professional’ there are variati- these recipes as an aid to discover which genes are part
ons and differences because the Standard colours and of a colour variety. Question marks or red text are advarieties may differ, in several
ded when the genotype
breeds, from Country to Counis doubtful or unknown,
try.
or where the colour can
For the exact colour of a spebe made by differing
cific breed in your Country,
methods.
the best source of information
The genetics of chicken
is the Breed club or your Nacolours is not an exact
tional Standard.
science but more the
The pictures depict the generesult of combining the
ral colour. The chickens phofactors that are possibly
tographed are not perfect but
responsible for the pheare used because there were no
notype, and how the cobetter birds available. Becaulour variety looks.
se of differing photographic
techniques and light conditiNot all colour varieties
ons (colour of artificial light),
were available in the
colours shown may have a
archives, or to be seen
slightly different shade to that
at shows at the moment
seen with the naked eye. The
it was decided to make
pictures have been computer
this book. Thanks to
edited so they meet, as near as
the Breed Clubs, breepossible, the colours in reality,
ders and photographers
but for true reality daylight
listed on the next page,
is the correct circumstance in
some really rare colour
which to judge a colour of a
varieties were able to be
bird. Therefore more pictuadded.
What is white, should be kept white...
res have been added for some
Many thanks for that!
colours where the differences
The following list of genomes is based on the descriptions of the accepted colour varieties as mentioned in The Dutch Standard of Perfection, January 2007, additional Standard colours found in
other Standards have also been included as required.
In the text of the Dutch Standard there is a chapter ‘Short summary of the connection between the
colour varieties of our Fowl’. Although the Standard is dated 2007 the actual representation of the
colours, and that the Standard is “the guide for breeders”, it’s recommended strongly that this be
read for interest sake only, and then forgotten as the date of this text is unknown, but thought to originate about the turn of the last century, circa 1905 and in the meanwhile the connections and understandings of the Standard colour varieties has totally changed due to genetic research.
YOU WANT THIS UNIQUE
BOOK?
GO TO
WWW.CHICKENCOLOURS.COM
FOR MORE INFORMATION