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.