When I look at a chicken I don’t see an animal but rather a mental picture of what it took to create what’s in front of me, a recipe if you like…. There are three main ingredients in this recipe as far as creating a good fighting chicken, I am going to talk about the first….The physiological or the anatomy of a chicken. 

We cannot talk about anatomy without talking about genes and genetics….Dont let this scare you as even a basic understanding will help you go a long way in breeding…..This will also help you discard some of the BS that people will tell you….

Now when you first look at your new brood cock observe his physical features, among the things I look at is his comb (properly! and I will explain this later), his stance – does he stand proud? his carriage – is his wing tuck close to his body or does he carry it low? Then I feel him. Feeling a chicken tells a lot about his anatomy and health, does his keel show? The length of his body, is it proportioned to his station? Now let me tell you why this is important. The anatomy of the chicken will dictate his ability, a long bodied rooster for example will not be as athletic as a short bodied one (in most cases), another example is a chicken with a bad stance where his feet falls far behind his shoulders will not cut as good as one where his feet fall just slightly behind his shoulders and so on….

This is all governed by the “FORM WILL ALWAYS FOLLOW FUNCTION” rule…..A good example would be the asils…..The true asil will have short wing feathers so most of them will not break as high as most American types, this is obvious..Right? So when people ask me what bloodline do I mate with the asils? The question I put back to them is what do you want your Asil to do? If you breed it with some of the Mclean types (not all) that have almost the same wing constitution what will happen? 

So now we’ve talked about the Physiological side and its importance…..Now lets talk about it’s application…

Now all this physiological or physical features are something they inherited from their Momma and Papa (equally!!!!!!) Each donate a set of gene – one from the Momma and one from the Papa (this is where I laugh at at 3/4 1/4, 5/8 3/8 brigade – important, but means nothing if you don’t understand genetics). Again one gene from the Momma, one from the Papa, the genes are halved prior to fertilisation and then the genes match up in the egg (sperm and Ovum) into pairs of like function, for example controlling comb style or feather colour.

All the genetic information that’s transmitted from a chicken to its offspring is organized on chromosomes. A cock has 39 pairs of chromosomes. One pair, called the “sex” chromosomes contain the information that determines gender. The other 38 pairs are called “autosomal” chromosomes. Like a cock, a hen has 38 pairs of autosomal chromosomes, but unlike a cock, she has only one sex chromosome. So a chick will contain 78 different chromosomes that will pair up.

Now we know that chickens have 39 pairs of chromosomes. We also know that each chromosome is like a vessel for genes. 

Im not sure what everyones level of understanding on what a gene is so here is a crash course on genes and their behaviour as it relates to poultry. 

Each gene is a different ‘packet’ of information. Genes contain the information in how your chickens look, the colour of their legs, plumage, comb type, shape of their bodies and so on.

The information in the genes is in the form of a chemical code, often referred to as the genetic code. 

A gene can be thought of as a recipe. This recipe is made up of an estimated 20,000 to 23,000 genes represented in letters. If you think about it there are over 1 billion combinations or sequences in the chicken genome (humans however have 2.8 billion combinations). And like chromosomes, genes also need to pair up. With Gamefowls, the gene pool is significantly less as there are genes that are not present, so don’t confuse yourself by reading the entire poultry genome as majority of them do not relate to our birds. This is because our ancestors have selectively bred the modern gamefowl for 500 years.

Let me give you a basic example on how genes control the appearance of Gamefowl. 

Comb type in poultry is controlled by only two pairs of genes. One pair contains the rose comb represented by the letter (R) and the other pea comb represented by the letter (P). If (R) is present, it is represented as capital (R). If it is  absent it is represented by lower case (r). The same goes for the letter (P) in pea comb. A chicken with a rose comb will have at least 1 copy of Capital (R) (dominant) and will be represented in this formula (RRpp) or (Rrpp) (remember 2 sets of paired genes) and a bird with a pea type comb will have at least 1 capital (P) (dominant) gene and will carry (rrPP) or (rrPp).

Now what about the straight comb rooster you ask? Well this is where recessive and dominant genes come in play.. If neither the capital (R) nor the capital (P) is present, the chicken will have a straight comb, represented by (rrpp) meaning the Straight comb is recessive to both. Therefore in the hierarchy of comb traits the straight comb is the lowest and can only appear in recessive state. 

Now there are sixteen other combinations, (16 / 4 = 4) that will result in Pea, Rose, Walnut, and Straight combs. There are 7 or so combs phenotypically but they are only variations of the said 4 types. There are comb matrixes on the internet and its best that you look them up as I can only write on Fb and not draw matrixes.

The Gamefowl though in the vast majority of cases, only deals with the pea and straight comb. Why you ask? Well we have the Galus gallus or red jungle fowl (rrpp) and the Asil (PPrr or Pprr) to thank for it. As you can see the Rose comb is always in the recessive state (r) in those two ancestors. Therefore in Gamefowl the Rose (RR) (Rr) or Walnut which also requires the dominant (R) does not appear as their ancestors do not carry the gene. Although there are Asils that come rose and walnut combed they have been weeded out over 5 centuries of selective breeding by Gamefowl fanciers. If you see a walnut or a rose combed game chicken then it is a tell tale sign that some blood was added to it recently.

It is important that as a breeder you get a hold of the pairing up of genes concept…… if you breed garbage genes in, it will not necessarily show up in the first generation but once it pairs up it will eventually come out. 

Our goal as a breeder is to pair up the desired traits. You hear breeders like me say closing the gene pool or what other breeders would say locking the genes simply means minimising the unpredictability of undesirable genes pairing up. 

We will tackle dominant and recessive genes next instalment as they come under Homozygous and Heterozygous.  Bear with me as we get all the technical terms out of the way and we are nearly there.

So just to recap, we now understand that there is hierarchy among genes. We know that there are dominant and recessive genes. And that the each trait is controlled by those genes. We also learned that dominant genes don’t have to pair up to show their traits and the recessive genes have to pair up for their traits to show( generally speaking). Knowing this is particularly important when you are breeding for leg and plumage colour. 

Now this where we go into Heterozygous and Homozygous….

If the paired genes are identical to each other, they are called “homozygous” (homo from the Greek word meaning “same” and zygous from the word “zygote”. So a PP bird will be homozygous and a Rp or rP as opposite will be “heterozygous”. When the genes in a pair differ from each other, the pair is called “heterozygous” (hetero from the Greek work meaning “different”).

So basically the more like to like you breed the more Homozygous your birds are…… and here is what you need to remember – “Homozygosity determines prepotency”…….. so when I say pure I mean as homozygous as I can get the bird without affecting its fighting ability. So if you ask me if there is a pure blood the answer is Yes. Pure not in name but in breeding. But breeding for pure blood for the sake of it, is the pitfall of many uneducated breeders. Do not breed pure to the point that it affects their form. – Remember we talked about form and function. 

The paragraph above, if understood deeply and properly should be all you need to be a good breeder. 

Now before I go to Prepotency, I want to talk more about pairing genes…

In the example using the comb trait, it is possible to continue to breed a family of pea comb birds for many generations and not one straight comb come out. You can continue to carry rrPp (hetero) for many generations and it is only until you cross it to another pea combed family that also carries the rrPp or rrpP that you mathematically might get a straight comb bird….

So how can you determine whether a bird is Homozygous or Heterozygous? …..For this you need to understand Genotype and Phenotype……

Basically Phenotype is what the bird presents outwardly. So what you see is what it is, if you see a pea combed bird then it is Phenotypically a pea combed bird (rrPp or rrPP) and it carries the pea comb gene, but it’s only a clue to its Genotype.

What the bird carries in it’s”gene packet” is it’s Genotype….technically a bird might show pea comb Phenotypically but might carry the rose, walnut or in the absence of all them the Straight single comb Genotypically….. This is why Phenotype and Genotype is important. This is a simple concept that you need to understand before we continue with our journey…

Let me give you a story why the above is important……A few years back I had a conversation with somebody very upset about a claret hen that he got from me… He said that the hen I got from you 5 yrs ago threw Blue legged pullets(mind you this is after 5 yrs)….I suggested that it could be his broodcock and he said that “Im not stupid, my family has been breeding the Clarets for 20 yrs and never have we had a blue legged come “out”.  Now I was going to educate his little brain but I resisted…If he understood simple mendellian theory, as Blue legged is recessive in the hierarchy of leg colors, I could be breeding white legged for as long as he has (20 yrs in his fantasy world) and both of us could be carrying the Green legged gene (yes green or black due melanin layers ) and it will only show up when both of our recessive gene paired up. In this case however, the cock had to be “not pure” in leg color for the pullets to turn out blue legged. So it was his cocks fault and not my hen….. (sex linkage- another topic) I’ve attached a leg color chart for reference.