Poultry Keepers Podcast

Practical Poultry Genetics Part 1

• Rip Stalvey, John Gunterman, and Mandelyn Royal • Season 2 • Episode 90

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In this episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast, your hosts—Mandelyn, John, and Rip discuss the essentials of poultry genetics. They explore key concepts such as genotype vs. phenotype, dominant vs. recessive traits, and test mating. The conversation emphasizes the importance of practical genetic knowledge for improving flocks, selecting quality birds, and making informed decisions, whether for breeding, showing, or backyard sustainability. Throughout the episode, the hosts share personal insights and experiences on topics including disqualifications, faults, and polygenetic traits, and how environmental factors affect genetic expression.

#PoultryGenetics #BackyardChickens #ChickenBreeding #HeritageChickens #RaisingPoultry #GenotypeVsPhenotype #DominantAndRecessive #TestMating #SelectiveBreeding #ChickenTraits


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Rip Stalvey:

Hey folks, and welcome to another episode of the Poultry Keepers podcast. Got a question for you. How much do backyard poul poultry keepers, how much do backyard poultry keepers really need to know about genetics? In this episode, Mandelyn and John and I are gonna break down the basics. Like what is genotype versus phenotype dominant versus recessive? What is test mating? How to identify faults and disqualifications. You're gonna learn how to apply practical genetics to improve your flock and select quality birds coming up in just a few seconds. Okay guys, I got a question for you. How much do folks really need to know about poultry genetics? What's your thoughts Manly?

Mandelyn Royal:

It depends on the one hand, if you're not breeding, you don't need to know that much about it. But on the other hand, if you have questions about the birds you have and why they may look a certain way, why they may behave a certain way, the breeding behind them can answer those questions and the genetics that you're working with. It'll answer a lot of that.

John Gunterman:

I agree. Yeah, knowing where your birds came from and what their potential was designed to be is super important. And whether or not they're appropriate for your local environment is always a consideration.

Rip Stalvey:

I learned early on that if you're showing poultry, they are judged by phenotype. In other words. What the birds look like, not what their genetic makeup is. Yeah. And you can have two birds that look really close, but they can have entirely different genetics because really there's no way to judge genetics unless you have a little D out by DNA read out. But I just wanna throw that out there, but it's why. Why breeders of po. Exhibition. Poultry don't really focus on genetics that much. Is

John Gunterman:

that that's interesting. Does that mean that people can show, say something that is not a Rhode Island red as a Rhode Island red, if it meets all the qualifications of one? Absolutely.

Huh?

Mandelyn Royal:

If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck,

John Gunterman:

its not I guess you don't have to show any sort of pedigree at a poultry shoot. No, you don't.

Rip Stalvey:

You don't. And that's why you're talking about Rhode Island Reds. We have Rhode Island Reds and Rhode Island whites, Uhhuh. Now you know why they're treated at shows as two separate breeds and not a variety

Mandelyn Royal:

Curious.

John Gunterman:

But they leave. It's because they had different ancestry.

Rip Stalvey:

Exactly. They were developed from entirely different kinds of birds,

John Gunterman:

but in the same area. Thus the name, yes. Crossover.

Rip Stalvey:

But anyway, I digress yet. And there's

John Gunterman:

the cushion comb white I've heard about, which if you're not careful, could look strikingly similar to a CH Claire if that. If she has small waddles.

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh, that's true.

Rip Stalvey:

Absolutely. They even had cushion comb rocks at one point.

John Gunterman:

That's right. You told me about that. Okay. So that, that can happen. But is that bad? Is that faking? Is it a no-No. Is it accidental on purpose?

Mandelyn Royal:

It depends on what circle you're in because there are purists out there and then there are people who think it, it looks correct. So to me, it doesn't really matter unless there are certain genetic traits within a breed that are supposed to be there. Like for my flock with the American breast, we're supposed to have intramuscular fat. And so if you got a white chicken with blue feet. Is it still a breast if it doesn't have the fat? Because the genotype is different than the phenotype and it's this whole can of worms.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. And there show a lot of factors that can affect expression of the phenotype. Absolutely. And I've often said you could take the same dozen eggs and have hatch'em and raise them a mile apart under different care and have very distinctly different chickens. Yes. Result, right?

Mandelyn Royal:

That genetic expression can be influenced by not only their feed, but their environment. Husbandry methods. The same genetics in different locations can do dramatically different things.

Rip Stalvey:

Okay, let's cut to the chase here. How much does the average poultry keeper need to know about genetics? Do you need a degree in genetics? No. No, I don't think so. But I also think, I think you need to

John Gunterman:

know that you've got a good foundation and have a working

Rip Stalvey:

knowledge. Yes, absolutely.

John Gunterman:

Know that you're starting with good genetics. Yeah. You need to know enough about genetics to ask the right questions of your breeder and know you've got a good starting point, and then, oh, just the basic knowledge of, how to keep it alive. It's not hard. We've been doing this for 3000 years as farmers.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, just the rudimentary of the basics within the breeds you wanna work with, because it's not gonna be knowledge that you can attain quickly. And if you do have a degree in it, how specific is it to poultry? Or was it just the college overview and then it doesn't, that's enough. Doesn't go into breed By breed either. So knowledge of the breed you're working with. Really helps.

John Gunterman:

If you're starting with a pure line that's all you need to know is the basic college stuff. What is a punt square? What is Mandel's hierarchy of inheritance and you're good to go. It doesn't need to be, that's actually in my day, we learned that in ninth grade science, but I understand it's taught at a college level now.

Rip Stalvey:

I think what confuses a lot of people and they. Going down the wrong path is they think that poultry genetics works the same as mammalian genetics and not even close poultry genetics are very different. So yeah, a good working knowledge will take you a long way, and it depends on what you're breeding for too. A mandolin breeding for productivity. Some folks breed for exhibition, right? And some folks, and she's

John Gunterman:

also breeding for line development.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah. And some folks are breeding just for backyard sustained abilities, what we call Barnard. So each one has a, each has a slightly different perspective about how they approach genetics and breeding. So you know, one's not right more than the others, and one's not wrong more than the others. So just whatever you're working on.

John Gunterman:

I believe it goes back to what are your goals?

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, for sure. And if you put 10 breeders into a room with the same group of birds, they're all gonna make different breeding decisions. And some of them are gonna wanna know the genetics going back generations and others are gonna say, I don't care about the genetics. Show me the bird in front of me. It just depends.

Rip Stalvey:

And I'm glad you brought up breeding goals because like I said, some folks are focused on different things, egg production, meat quality, temperament, our show standards. Madeline, I know you've been down this road before, but I. How do you feel? No, not How do you feel? How would you explain that some traits pop up unexpectedly in hatching projects?

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh, that's a fun question. So the more diverse your flock is, the more variables you're gonna see them express. The more individual birds you hatch from. Each individual bird is gonna bring its own genetic profile into that incubator or the booty hen, however you're hatching'em. So let's say for example, you've got one male and four females. Each of those four females are gonna produce different results, and if you put all of them together and hatched them as a group. And you start seeing maybe foot color's a little weird on this one. Maybe there's some feather colors. Sneak it out on these other ones. Maybe the comb did something. Maybe the structure was different. The growth rate was different. And this is just a small group of five birds total, but you're seeing a range of expression and that's gonna tell you two different things. If the birds themselves were pretty similar. You're getting results all over the board. That means they were not consistent when you started and they were still holding a lot of variables within there. The other thing is gonna tell you is you should have been pair hatching so that you can pin those results down to the pair and know which female was producing the better results and which females were giving you less than desired results. The more birds you're using, the more variables you're probably gonna see. And that's gonna tie directly into the level of breeding work that was done with them before you got'em.

Rip Stalvey:

When I was first getting into poultry, I was taught that is, they used the term refining the flock. And it's just getting rid of the junk and keeping the good stuff.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. And you have to hatch and seed to figure out who's throwing the junky ones. Yes. Because the parem birds may look pretty decent themselves.

Rip Stalvey:

Oh, absolutely. But they may not

Mandelyn Royal:

produce what you were hoping to see from'em.

Rip Stalvey:

And a lot of folks think to eliminate a problem from a flock, if you got a cross going there and you don't like, suddenly you have a wild card pop up. And they think that the way to get up get rid of it is just keep removing those wild cars, birds from the flock. Really, the way to get rid of it is to remove the wildcard from the flock, but also the parents that produced the wildcard because they're carrying some recessive genes.

Mandelyn Royal:

And it's those recessives that'll sneak out.

Rip Stalvey:

Ooh. Becauses recessive gene.

Mandelyn Royal:

We should explain what a recessive gene is. Oh yeah.

Rip Stalvey:

We got, we, I got one more thing I want to get into and then we're gonna talk about dominance recessive and polygenetic traits. Yeah. But, and we banded around genotype and phenotype, but we really haven't explained very much what that is. No,

John Gunterman:

we haven't. We jumped right into it

Rip Stalvey:

is genetic makeup, it's what's in the DNA, including hidden traits. What's the bird

John Gunterman:

capable

Rip Stalvey:

of? Yes. Genetically phenotype is a physical traits that you can see. It's what you actually see in a burden is what it looks like. You can have two birds with the same phenotype, but they may have very different genotypes. That's why you can mate together two really good looking birds and get a bunch of junk in the offsprings. Okay. Dominant recessive and polygenic traits. Share your thoughts with us on that. Man. Dominant.

Mandelyn Royal:

So dominant means, hold on. Lemme go back to the beginning. In my brain

it's, let's say

Mandelyn Royal:

you've got a pair of birds and one of'em has a lot of dominant traits. For example, a rose comb is a dominant sort of comb.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes.

Mandelyn Royal:

The other comb types are more recessive, and that recessive part means they have to have two copies to get the expression of that into their phenotype. But if they're with a bird that carries dominant traits, those dominant traits are gonna win out over everything. That's a recessive trait.

Rip Stalvey:

In other words, a single copy of a gene is enough to cause it to express in the offspring.

Okay.

Rip Stalvey:

A recessive trait means that it takes two copies of the gene, one from mom, one from dad, for the trait to express in the offspring thank recessive traits are things like white skin chocolate coloration. Those are two that come to mind down

John Gunterman:

on chicks. Something I'm looking for

Rip Stalvey:

now, polygenic or polygenetic traits. They are things that are controlled by multiple genes, and this is where it's really easy to get into the weeds on this, but things like body size, egg production, the amount of leg feathering, if they're feathered legged breed Or the intensity of the eggshell color are all multi-gene genetic traits, polygenetic traits. And best example I can give you is that if you look at coachings, bras and lang sands, which bird has the most profuse leg? Feathering?

Mandelyn Royal:

I'd say the cochin.

Rip Stalvey:

The cochin? Yeah. And if I remember correctly, and I'm, I may be wrong, but there's three genes that ex that control expression of the degree of leg feathering. They have all three of'em. The one that's sorta of in the middle of the road is the bras. They have two copies of that gene. And the ones that have the least amount of leg feathering or lang hands, they have one copy of the genes.

Mandelyn Royal:

I wonder if that's true for the Marins too then, because they're just supposed to have just a light little trail of feathers down the leg.

Rip Stalvey:

They're sparsely feathered by mine. I wouldn't say. The standard defines Morans as feather legged. It defines lang hands as lightly feathered. Which means that the Morans have much less feathers.

John Gunterman:

When I think of. Polygenetic traits. The classic example to me is the Cornish Cross, as repulsive as it is as a poultry keeper, and it is literally designed through, how many layers of generation to get the final Cornish cross. And it requires a very specific combination of polygenetic traits to produce that bird in the end. And if any one of those is not present, the cross can't exist. Correct. In a spinal

Mandelyn Royal:

form. It's fascinating.

John Gunterman:

It is. And it's designed inherently to be non-self reproducing as part of Yes. Because yeah it's a fascinating but scary world of genetics sometimes. Because we have an entire industry, or pretty much a world now dependent on this very specific genetic combination, and if any single part of it fails,

Rip Stalvey:

things happen. And there's basically two breeding farms that control all the genetics, which is even scarier than me. But mandolin, talking about polygenic traits. Have you discovered any of those in breast?

Mandelyn Royal:

Oh yeah. There's a lot of differences in growth rates that can be observed within the breed, and I'm still going through the process of learning what kind of birds produce, which result with the other types of birds.'cause the first thing my little squirrel brain did was push'em to the genetic variables.'cause I wanted to know what all is in here. Oh, there's a lot in there actually, as it turns out. So now I'm going through finding how the genetics play off of each other and how to do the selection. And I've been working on a double mating situation between different sizes and that's giving me some neat results. And then I have to do it again to confirm what I think I know, but I don't have that genetic DNA. Paperwork on'em. It's not like I sent blood tests to the lab asking what all is in here. I'm doing it by phenotype, and then makes an imagine to see what I get from the genetics within the flock.

Rip Stalvey:

Do you know of anybody that's done genetic testing on breast

Mandelyn Royal:

only for color so far.

Rip Stalvey:

Okay. Okay. And that's another can of worms. But yeah,

Mandelyn Royal:

there has been interest in getting'em tested for the fat marbling because it is a recessive trait and having that testing if there's labs performing the certain tests for the certain genes first, they have to be mapped though to even have that data available.

Rip Stalvey:

Has that been done? And that can get pricey. I don't

Mandelyn Royal:

think so. Not that I've heard of, but it'll be pretty neat if they do.'cause then everyone can go what's your test results say about your flock?

John Gunterman:

Somebody's got the money to pony up for some CRISPR time.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah.

Rip Stalvey:

Test results. That brings up another topic test. Manly. I know you've done a lot of that, John, you've done some of it. Sure. John, what's been your experiences with it? What are you trying to do with testate and how are you working that

John Gunterman:

I, pedigree mate very specifically, so I put a rooster and a he together, or at least up until this year, it's been a single rooster with. Two hens in a single pen, but I can tell their eggs apart. So I knew, what genetic combination was. What, and if it was working and throwing great chicks and they looked good a generation down the line, then I know that was good. And if not hopefully you have a way to backtrack out. But it's all about test meeting is Yeah. Seeing what they throw. I'm looking for silver down chicks specifically. So I'm looking for the magic combination where I put this rooster with this hand and I'm getting a hundred percent silver down chicks. That's who I want to hatch from this year.

Mandelyn Royal:

Test meeting to me is telling me who's carrying what, that I can't see. See, and it does take keeping a bird that shows the trait you're wanting to test for. Like early on in my breast flock, there was a big issue with slip wing to where it was almost half of the hatch results. And I'm like, what is this sloppy wing thing? So I did research on the trait. I found out it was a problematic recessive trait and I needed to keep birds that showed it so I could test the birds that didn't show it. And now years after that, I hardly see it at all anywhere. As I systematically worked through the birds and not seeing it, man, that's a relief. And it was mating that showed me who my closet carriers were.'cause while that bird itself didn't show it, it still passed it.

Rip Stalvey:

Those recessive traits and those recessive genes. They can be the dickens to breed out of the line.

John Gunterman:

It takes generations sometimes they won't show that they're there for

Mandelyn Royal:

at least three generations.

Rip Stalvey:

Exactly. Exactly. Have you done any test m for silver and gold?

Mandelyn Royal:

No, but I need to,

Rip Stalvey:

yeah.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yep. And base color underneath the dominant white. I need to start checking for that too.

Rip Stalvey:

I tell you, white can hide so many other colors.

Mandelyn Royal:

White can hide everything. Yes.

Rip Stalvey:

I inadvertently created some barred leggins one time.

Mandelyn Royal:

That sounds fun

Rip Stalvey:

because I. Commercial white lis or hiding. Barring.

Mandelyn Royal:

Huh. Now, sometimes the recessive traits aren't a bad thing. They can bring a whole new variety out because you found something neat and then bred those together. Like sometimes there's a silver lining to finding weird stuff. It can spin off. Oh, absolutely. Something else entirely.

Rip Stalvey:

It's how you now whether this is right or not, this is the way I explain it a lot. It's when you take some recessive and breed it over and over again till it actually works like a dominant genetic trait.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yes. Like frizzles.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes.

John Gunterman:

Allele stacking.

Mandelyn Royal:

Or single combs.

John Gunterman:

Fun stuff. So what about lethal gene carriers?

Mandelyn Royal:

I was thinking about asking that because I'm not familiar with what those are in poultry.

Rip Stalvey:

Probably the best known one that I'm aware of is Japanese bantams, and it's another one of those polygenetic traits. And when you know, they're fairly short legged birds. If they don't have that gene, they've got long shanks. Okay? If they do have one copy of it, they have short shanks, but for some reason, when the chick is carrying two copies of the short-legged gene, it dies in the shell.

Mandelyn Royal:

Whoa. So that's some serious breeding strategy to get your desired result without doubling down on it. Yeah.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. A lot of these, mutations,'cause basically that's what people have done is they've selected genetic mutations. But if they're put together in certain combinations, it can definitely produce some lethal results. High mortality rates in the shell, a failure to develop, failure to hatch severely deformed chicks.

Rip Stalvey:

You don't run across a lot of instances of that, but it does happen when let, when the lethal gene are at play. It's a recessive characteristic and two copies of it is, like I said, is lethal.

John Gunterman:

Yep. And as we mentioned before, the Cornish Cross is, that's part of its design.

Mandelyn Royal:

One of the recessives within the Cornish cross is the dwarf gene.

John Gunterman:

Shorten those, I guess. They have the dwarf gene I believe twice, which is, makes it inherently lethal. And there's another gene combination that also makes it inherently lethal and I can't think of that right now. And because

Rip Stalvey:

I think it was a double

John Gunterman:

breast gene as well.

Mandelyn Royal:

Double muscle gene. Yeah.

John Gunterman:

Yeah. I, sorry, I didn't do my homework fully.

Rip Stalvey:

I know that when they're, one of the things when you breed corn is crossed together, you get about 25%, 20 to 25% or dwarfs, all of'em are dwarf that dwarfs.

Mandelyn Royal:

And there goes the grocery rate.

John Gunterman:

I just can't, I can't fathom keeping a Cornish cross pair alive long enough to mate.

Rip Stalvey:

Some people have done it but they don't keep'em confined either. They're allowed to get out and roam around.

John Gunterman:

Oh, see, every Cornish cross I've ever seen has been incapable of movement after about. Week 16. They should have been harvested a long time ago. Yeah. And it's almost becomes an animal cruelty issue for me to see a bird that old.

Mandelyn Royal:

And definitely don't keep'em on a hillside. I'll

John Gunterman:

just roll on down to the bottom. They get down to the bottom eventually and they can't get back up. Yeah. It's,

Rip Stalvey:

gosh, that sounds like me with my back sometimes.

John Gunterman:

I hear you my friend. L four.

Rip Stalvey:

Let's talk about. Identifying faults, flaws and disqualifications.

John Gunterman:

Yes. Especially from a judge's perspective. I need that. That's

Rip Stalvey:

that's a big problem for folks. And if you look up in the standard of perfection, it lists disqualifications and it false. And I'm constantly asked is the disqualification a recessive trait? Or is it a polygenetic trait or is it dominant? Most of the disqualifications, all of the disqualifications are dominant genetic traits, and they're considered disqualifications because they're things like skeletal deformities, like right tail. Okay. Once you get that established. There's no getting

Mandelyn Royal:

away from it.

Rip Stalvey:

And once you get it, and the reason it's a disqualification is because back when the standard was written, there was a lot of emphasis on production qualities of what the carcass looked like. Man, you'd be familiar with that. And what if you start getting all those crooked tails and crooked spines? The public doesn't want it. Nope. That's why they make it a disqualification.

Mandelyn Royal:

Which is good too, because even with the bird walking around the yard, it's not pretty to look at.

Rip Stalvey:

No. We talked about flaws. Flaws are I tend to think of flaws as more cosmetic issues,

Mandelyn Royal:

like a lot of the comb stuff like single combs. Can have a lot of different little things from side sprigs to conjoined spikes to the blade hugging on the back of the skull instead of coming off in a nice straight line.

Rip Stalvey:

See. The side sprig is a dq. That's

John Gunterman:

how

Rip Stalvey:

That's the dominant It's coming

Mandelyn Royal:

off sideways.

Rip Stalvey:

No, because poultry used to be sold with their heads on.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah.

John Gunterman:

The breasts still are sold with their heads on in France. In France area to prove that their breasts, yes. And to prove their freshness. A customer will look at the eyes to see if the eyes I think a flaws.

Rip Stalvey:

And as, and you two are gonna be familiar with this, is brassiness in white birds. Yep. That's why I'm looking for silver down. That's a flaw. It's not a defect. It's a F. It's not a disqualification, it's a defect.

John Gunterman:

Still tastes fine.

Rip Stalvey:

Color faults versus structural faults, to me, the most critical ones to eliminate. And the ones that are gonna cause you the most problem are structural faults

Mandelyn Royal:

for sure.

Rip Stalvey:

Because that. Leads to problems with walking. That leads to it's, it's a direct link to body capacity

John Gunterman:

that's your viability.

Rip Stalvey:

Where just the visible little flaws here and there color flaws. They drive you nuts trying to get'em corrected. If you really want to Madeleine, if you really want a challenge, start raising you some Silver Lea wine dots.

Mandelyn Royal:

No thank you. I've been down that road.

John Gunterman:

We ride past that farm actually. My neighbor has some silver laced wine dots and they are amazing. They also have only heard Dutch spots in the United States. They had'em imported as embryos last year, but that's thing I was offered a really nice

Mandelyn Royal:

looking group of silver lace wine. And they were originally from Foley's line, but they were several owners removed from that line, and the color grabbed my attention. I was like, oh, that's a nice looking bird. But once I started looking past the feathers and past the color, then I started looking at the little bit of structure that I could see, and I saw how close together the legs were, and I saw how. Little the heads were, and I was like, no, that's not gonna be my kind of bird.

John Gunterman:

You picked the bird up

Mandelyn Royal:

fluffy.

John Gunterman:

And somebody hands me a bird. I either go, whoa, that's later. Oh, that's nice.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah. There's a certain heft that I'm looking for.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, exactly. To me you were talking about the color. Color breeding is a much bigger headache.

Alex:

Thanks for joining us on this episode of The Poultry Keepers Podcast, where we explored how understanding poultry genetics—even just the basics—can help you make more informed decisions about your backyard flock. Whether you're selecting for egg production, color consistency, or strong structure, genetics play a practical role in building a healthier, more predictable flock. If today’s episode helped clarify terms like genotype vs. phenotype, dominant and recessive traits, or gave you confidence to try test mating or selection, we’d love to hear about it. Don’t forget to subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode, and please leave a review—it helps other poultry keepers find practical, trustworthy content like this. Until next time, keep observing, keep learning, and remember—you don’t have to be a geneticist to raise great chickens.

People on this episode

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John Gunterman

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Mandelyn Royal

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Rip Stalvey

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