Chicken Genetics Blog

[Amer]

Cheers thanks!


I was just searching for information on Hy-Line chickens, but just found a lot of secrecy about the genetics and the mention of red sex-link. However on the company's website I found the management guide and the picture as you can see seems obvious as to the parentage! I think Hy-Line produce other hybrid breeds too, so what their parentage is I don't know. I just know that my Hy-Lines are generally brownish in colour (with variations between each chicken), so 'Hy-Line Brown' seemed to be them.


To me the mother hen looks like a Leghorn crossed with another white bird, or as you say white silver. Somewhere I read the mothers are bred from White Plymouth rock chickens? Maybe the Plymouth with a Leghorn?

The father appears to me as a Rhode Island Red crossed with a New Hampshire.

Honestly I reckon that the lineage of each parent is quite complex!
It can't be just two pure-bred chickens forming the genetics.
THEN those two parents are kept together to breed the sex-linked chicks.



(Bonus shot of my two Hy-Line pullets, Cinnamon and Caraway, hatched from the breeder late last year. I think they might be laying soon.)
View attachment 4081540

It is possible the whites are recessive white AND dominant white, I never did consider that

 

[KF0002]

He appears to be a blue red columbian to me (Mahogany, Columbian, and Blue on a Wheaten base.) His color is practically like a New Hampshire but with the blue of course, and those are red columbian.
Mahogany is actually a weak pheomelanin extender (see Welsummer males with the red spotted breasts) which is why he has less black than say a buff sussex which are gold columbian.

Okay thank you! I didn’t breed him so I didn’t know anything about what breeds or genes may have been involved.

 

[KF0002]

@Amer , I had read that the cream gene is recessive and doesn’t have an affect with only one copy. However, this hen is a Cream Legbar and Game mix (weed hatch). The mother was a pea combed gold duckwing colored Game, and the father a Cream Legbar. I know our Games don’t carry or exhibit the cream gene and this hen only has one copy yet she is very distinctly cream. And I know the pea combed Game hen was her mother because the hen is pea combed. Sorry for the bad picture. She is very skittish. Thoughts?

 

[Amer]

@Amer , I had read that the cream gene is recessive and doesn’t have an affect with only one copy. However, this hen is a Cream Legbar and Game mix (weed hatch). The mother was a pea combed gold duckwing colored Game, and the father a Cream Legbar. I know our Games don’t carry or exhibit the cream gene and this hen only has one copy yet she is very distinctly cream. And I know the pea combed Game hen was her mother because the hen is pea combed. Sorry for the bad picture. She is very skittish. Thoughts?

View attachment 4095334

Hmm
There's two possibilities. The games really do have the cream gene (high possibility it is responsible for the "golden" Duckwing genotype which isn't gold but rather cream) or Cream Legbars don't really have ig at all but have a dominant dilution gene as well.

 

[KF0002]

Hmm
There's two possibilities. The games really do have the cream gene (high possibility it is responsible for the "golden" Duckwing genotype which isn't gold but rather cream) or Cream Legbars don't really have ig at all but have a dominant dilution gene as well.

That is interesting. I’m leaning to it maybe being more of a dominant gene because the line of Games that her mother is from isn’t golden or silver. They are all gold and some red duckwing. Occasionally the odd wheaten hen crops up out of the line but other than that, they throw pretty uniform looking birds. This is a rooster from the same line.