Body color in WBS variety

[Mike Gilbert]

Royce, I believe I did that in my Ameraucana history paper which is published in the new Handbook.  See page 14.  But I never worked to develop splash wheaten, it just occurs from breeding blue wheatens together. 

[Patti Jordan]

Patti, I think the reason the yellow-legged gene actually popped out is precisely because I have been breeding a closed flock for so many years.  The "purer" the blood gets, the more likely you have of both good and bad popping out.  I see a lot of Am's that I'm fairly certain are heterozygous but it never gets addressed because the slate blue is hiding the yellow.

Wrt to the "clean-faced" birds, the reason I still get some of them is because I will breed single Mb copy birds and even clean-faced birds.  My breeding program is a little different than the standard "cull mercilessly every bird with a fault or DQ".  Personally speaking, it just makes absolutely NO sense to me to cull, say, a beautiful bird in every other area except being clean-faced.  For example, suppose you or I get a W or BW pullet with terrific eye color, full-colored wing primaries, great leg color, terrific over all body color, etc. but she's cleaned-faced.  (I never mention Type because I always assume that is a given.)  Why not breed her to a double, or even single, Mb copy bird?  Worst scenario is you breed her to a single-copy bird and 50% of the offspring are clean-faced so you sell 'em off as non-standard blue egg layers.  The point being, with everything else that needs to be worked on and the difficulty of getting such things as tail and wing color, why cull an other wise EASY fix?  I hope that makes sense.  Anyways, that's why I still have some clean-faced birds.

Wrt to the color and judges, personally, I've pretty much given up on trying to figure out the judges.  Doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason and especially any consistency to how birds are judged.  This really comes out when there is a double-show.  And most disappointing/frustrating is that there doesn't seem to be any adherence to the SOP when scoring the bird on points.  Maybe that gets looked at when it comes down to whose gonna be awarded Best of Show or maybe even Best LF but I'd bet the farm it doesn't get considered for Best of Class.  Let alone BB. 

And for a judge to actually talk about a bird not conforming to the picture in the SOP, well, I think everbody knows what that says.

The Malcolms, thanks for that info!  I haven't seen that yet but I also haven't kept that many adult females for all that long either.  I've got 2-3 hens left that I can watch for that so thanks again.

John and/or Mike, it's my understanding that Wayne Meredith got WBS bantams from Mike and used them to develop the LF.  Do either of you know how he went about that?  Mike, do you wanna share how you developed the Bantam WBS?

Sadly I agree with you with regards to the judges.  The wheaten variety is fairly new and most of the judges I've shown under are not really familiar with the variety.  Hence why I mentioned body color, some judges lean toward the picture in the SOP or toward other wheaten breeds when judging for color.   

I guess I'm one of those breeders who cull non-standard birds    I wish I had some expert breeders of the WBS variety in my area to help me evaluate my birds, as there are so many things to look for and it becomes overwhelming when you try and evaluate them for every possible fault by yourself.  Most of the times I just go by my gut feeling when I evaluate. 

I just sold my last two Wayne Meredith hens that I got from him several years ago.  I have some of their offspring here and they are easily identifiable because they are lighter body color and their blue is more lavender in color.  For example, the pullet in the picture is out of a Wayne Meredith hen by one of my line roosters.

[John W Blehm]

John and/or Mike, it's my understanding that Wayne Meredith got WBS bantams from Mike and used them to develop the LF.  Do either of you know how he went about that?  Mike, do you wanna share how you developed the Bantam WBS?

Mike covers some of Wayne's development of LF wheatens on pages 20-21 of the latest Ameraucana Handbook.

[Cesar Villegas]

I like the dark wheaten color, like in Wheaten Maran and Sulmtaler females. Id like to get into Wheatens someday and Ill breed for that.
Wheaten AM females are the lightest Ive seen in any wheaten breed.

Of course anyone can breed for whatever traits they choose, but have you read the Standard description for wheaten females?

Yes I know it says the lighter colored is preferred. Preferred but not absolute. But that can be also interpreted many ways.

[Cathy Soldan]

When breeding a darker wheaten to a lighter wheaten will you get 50/50? Or will the color be somewhere in between?
  Mine are still too young to breed, so just wondering.

[Mike Gilbert]

When breeding a darker wheaten to a lighter wheaten will you get 50/50? Or will the color be somewhere in between?
  Mine are still too young to breed, so just wondering.

Not understanding your question?   The males are always darker than the females.

[John W Blehm]

When breeding a darker wheaten to a lighter wheaten will you get 50/50? Or will the color be somewhere in between?
  Mine are still too young to breed, so just wondering.

Knowing there are light creamy wheaten females and darker ones and also that there are both color enhancing and diluting genes that could be involved, my guess is we'll continue seeing both phases rather than an in between blended wheaten color.

[Michael Muenks]

I've had both lighter wheaten and darker wheaten pullets/hens do well in shows. There are just many more color pieces to manage with a wheaten which makes them a challenge and fun.

Michael

[Tailfeathers]

Well, John and Mike have outed me.     I started reading the handbook and never made it thru it.  And every time I think about picking it up to read, something else comes up.  Guess I'll have to take it into the Library and put it next to my Poultry Press!  I look forward to reading about how the WBS LF were developed!!

Patti, I'm a far cry from being a expert breeder but you got my email. Feel free to email anytime. I'll help if I can.  Yes, it can be overwhelming to try and evaluate the birds.  I recently had one of my customers, who plans to be a dedicated WBS breeder and show, send me pics of 7 of her cockerels.  Took me close to 2hrs to look at them and write her an email with my feedback.  Couldn't help but think as I looked over those pics about how 2 judges can go thru 900-1100 birds in 3-4hrs.  And why it's almost always a solid Black or White bird that winds up on Champion Row.

FWIW, here's a suggestion from something I do.  When I get ready to start culling birds that are leftover from obvious DQ's, I like to do it in a series of runs based on how I've prioritized the things I want to eliminate or improve.  So, for instance, let's say the #1 thing I want to do is improve leg color in my flock.  The first round of culling I do will be to pull out all the lighter colored legged birds.  Then I'll look them over and make sure I don't want to keep any of them for some reason.  Then maybe the next weekend I go out and cull all the birds with bad tail and wing color.   Then look them over and again make sure I don't wanna keep any of those for some reason.     Then maybe the next weekend I go out and cull all the birds with bad eye color.  Again putting any birds back I don't wanna cull for some reason.  Then maybe I'll make the next round a week later and look for over all body color.  By now I've probably gone from 100 birds down to 20-25.  Finally, I'm gonna go back and look thru my records, try to get my mind wrapped around what lines are throwing what, establish what patterns I can and determine who's likely to pass on what to their offspring, and then I'm gonna make look at what I've got in lines and how many breeding pens that's gonna turn into, and ultimately decide from there how to get down to hopefully only 4 pens/lines with about a dozen birds at most.

Now, all that said, I truly believe one has to be flexible and willing to take their birds into new areas.  For example, as you know, this past year I broke my 2 lines into 12 in order to try and identify who possessed the recessive yellow-legged gene.  I haven't been able to sit down and review my records yet to be certain but I'm pretty sure that my roosters are hetero so that didn't work.  I may have one W rooster that is homo and I'll find out for sure next Spring when I single-mate him to a Buckeye or Welsummer and hatch a bunch of chicks to confirm what I have.  Then probably just my best cockbird (hopefully homozygous) to a half dozen of my best females and single mate them regardless of whether they're sisters.  So that will take me from the 12 lines I have this year down to, oh say, 6 next year. 

From there I'll keep working to get at least homozygous males.  Then I'll single mate some of the best females to a Buckeye or Welsummer and verify whether they're hetero or homo.  Once I get all homozygous birds, I'll go back to linebreeding just the 2 lines again. 

I know a lot of folks wouldn't worry about eliminating the recessive yellow gene but that's just how I am - OCD.  I couldn't stand to live with the idea that I got a gene in the flock that ain't supposed to be there.  It's just all part of the breeding for a better flock to me.

[Tailfeathers]

When breeding a darker wheaten to a lighter wheaten will you get 50/50? Or will the color be somewhere in between?
  Mine are still too young to breed, so just wondering.

(quote:  Cathy, that's a really good question.  I really don't know but I'd be inclined to agree with John.  Your question, though, is just one more reason why I'd really like to see some dedicated breeders with the WBS variety.  My guess is that kind of curiosity would leave to someone doing a mating just to find out.  Then that info could be shared and we all could learn from it.  Thereby moving the breed forward for all.)

Royce, could you share how you interpret Cathy's question?    The males are not wheaten colored, only the females are, and the last time I checked two females don't produce fertile eggs.