Mike, I was thinking a Black-tailed Red like the Buckeye and RIR. Figured that would be easy because my WBS have colored tails. Plus I just personally think that makes for a better looking bird. Though I'm definitely open to any suggestions and/or advice!
My plan to eliminate the yellow-legs is just to cull anything right off that doesn't show a blue leg early on. I understand some of those may be heterozygous for blue but I figure after about 4 or 5 years I should have homozygous blue as long as I continue to cull any yellow or even light blue. I'm thinking I should be able to tell at the age where they start turning from flesh color to blue. About 8wks old if I remember right. So if I pay attention to all the chicks at that time, I should be able to distinguish. Yes?
To be honest, I hadn't actually thought about skin color but that's a good point. Forgot about that. I was about to say that I assume the yellow skin is connected to the yellow epidermis so if I eliminate the yellow leg, I should eliminate the yellow skin. But now that I think about it, my yellow legged Am's that showed up this year are White skinned. So that's a pickle! Any suggestions on that? Other than the obvious I mean like keep white skin and cull yellow.
John, amen to that!! One of the great things about not being one of the brightest bulbs in the socket is that I'm not afraid to say I don't know much. Or even sometimes nothing at all. If anybody's done anything like this, I'm all ears!
Ive thought about this before. Unless you do testing mating right away from the F1 offsprings that carry the yellow skin it will take some time breed the single comb and yellow skin gene out. I thought about using a red orpington or a buckeye since buckeyes have the pea comb already. You would have to breed it to Wheaten and then back to wheaten with each generation keeping only the red. I thought about using a Red colored male over a silver female to get pure gold pullets to breed back to a red am project color male.
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