Sexlink Hybrid question: ISA Brown hen x OE roo = Sexlink chicks?

[flockofdovz]

Does anyone have any first-hand experience crossing an ISA Brown hen with another non-sex-link rooster? We just had 2 eggs hatch that are ISA Brown hen x cream Olive Egger rooster. His mom was a BCM and dad was a Buff Ameraucana. The chicks, to my surprise, seem to follow the sexing images I pulled up online. I'm shocked because the chicks appear to be pure bred ISA Brown. One is white with a faint stripe on the back (male) and the other is buff/orange (female). I guess I thought the chicks would be crested or have more cream from their father. Just finding it very interesting that the chicks still appear to be sexable by color despite being only 50% ISA Brown. Have you crossed and ISA Brown with a non-sex-link roo and had 1st gen hybrid chicks that were sexable by color? Note: this same OE roo mated with our Blue Olive Egger hen and the chick is hatching today is appears to be a clone of him. It's cream with a few dark feathers.

Photos show our 'white' chick that I assume is male and then 3 screen shots of red sex link sexing info I found online. Our female chick looks like the 2nd red chick in the screenshot at the top far right for sexing females.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

ISA brown hens don't have the appropriate genes to make a gold-silver sexlinked cross like what those pictures are depicting. The resemblance in your chicks is coincidental. They just happened to inherit a combination of genes that made them those colors unrelated to their actual sexes.

You mention expecting the chicks to be crested from this cross, though. ISA browns don't have crests and a BCM x Buff Ameraucana shouldn't have one, either, so I wouldn't expect any of their chicks to... Wondering where that thought came from? You also describe him as cream, which is intriguing based on that cross. Do you have any pictures of the olive-egger rooster and his parents that you could share? Maybe of the ISA brown as well, just to cover all bases?

 

[flockofdovz]

ISA brown hens don't have the appropriate genes to make a gold-silver sexlinked cross like what those pictures are depicting. The resemblance in your chicks is coincidental. They just happened to inherit a combination of genes that made them those colors unrelated to their actual sexes.

You mention expecting the chicks to be crested from this cross, though. ISA browns don't have crests and a BCM x Buff Ameraucana shouldn't have one, either, so I wouldn't expect any of their chicks to... Wondering where that thought came from? You also describe him as cream, which is intriguing based on that cross. Do you have any pictures of the olive-egger rooster and his parents that you could share? Maybe of the ISA brown as well, just to cover all bases?

The cream Olive Egger roo was part of a breeding project from a breeder who also has a long line of Cream Legbars integrated into their 'blue egg' breeding pen, so that's how he ended up with a crest. She has 1 BCM hen in that breeding pen to get Olive Egger chicks. His brother (Buff Ameraucana hybrid in photo) also has a crest. The cream OE roo is the alpha and is the one who likely mated with our small flock of hens that includes some ISA Brown hens. Note, we have 2 Blue Olive Eggers (grey feathered) and he mated with them, and both eggs hatched looking identical to him as a chick with 95% white and 5% dark feathers. That's why I'm so stumped that his OE x OE chicks look identical to him despite having dark grey mothers, but his ISA Brown eggs look 100% like red sex link chicks.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Oh, okay, I think I misunderstood about the father, then.

So, he appears to have dominant white, and your description of his chick down and the chicks he has had with the other olive-egger add more confirmation to this. Dominant white is a gene that turns the black parts of a feather to white, but it doesn't have much if any impact on reddish or gold parts of the feather. ISA browns also have dominant white, which is why the hens are mostly red but have white accents such as in their tail and sometimes in their neck feathers. Dominant white tends to be a little leaky, though, when a bird only has one copy of it, often letting little flecks of black through here and there. This is why you're seeing the flecks of black in some of his offspring. As the name implies, dominant white is dominant, so expresses even when only one copy of the gene is present, so many of his chicks will end up expressing it.

The blue olive-egger does not have dominant white, or else she would be mostly white. So, her chicks with a dominant white rooster are more likely to be that flecky yellow rather than pure yellow because they are only getting dominant white from their father and one copy of dominant white tends to be leaky like that. You should also get some non-yellows from them, specifically blue and black chicks, as you hatch more out of them.

The ISA brown, however, can pass on dominant white as well, so some of their chicks will inherit it from both parents and be that paler yellow without flecks. Some may also be yellow with flecks. Others, inheriting the right combination of genes from the parents, will be more reddish because dominant white lets that red color come through. You could even get a few chicks that are darker, brownish or blackish, as you continue to hatch more. Both parents are crosses, so they are heterozygous, or split, for many genes and thus there are many possible gene combinations in their offspring. As I said before, none of the chicks will be sexlinked, it's simply coincidental that your first couple chicks were yellow and red like sexlinks.

 

[flockofdovz]

Oh, okay, I think I misunderstood about the father, then.

So, he appears to have dominant white, and your description of his chick down and the chicks he has had with the other olive-egger add more confirmation to this. Dominant white is a gene that turns the black parts of a feather to white, but it doesn't have much if any impact on reddish or gold parts of the feather. ISA browns also have dominant white, which is why the hens are mostly red but have white accents such as in their tail and sometimes in their neck feathers. Dominant white tends to be a little leaky, though, when a bird only has one copy of it, often letting little flecks of black through here and there. This is why you're seeing the flecks of black in some of his offspring. As the name implies, dominant white is dominant, so expresses even when only one copy of the gene is present, so many of his chicks will end up expressing it.

The blue olive-egger does not have dominant white, or else she would be mostly white. So, her chicks with a dominant white rooster are more likely to be that flecky yellow rather than pure yellow because they are only getting dominant white from their father and one copy of dominant white tends to be leaky like that. You should also get some non-yellows from them, specifically blue and black chicks, as you hatch more out of them.

The ISA brown, however, can pass on dominant white as well, so some of their chicks will inherit it from both parents and be that paler yellow without flecks. Some may also be yellow with flecks. Others, inheriting the right combination of genes from the parents, will be more reddish because dominant white lets that red color come through. You could even get a few chicks that are darker, brownish or blackish, as you continue to hatch more. Both parents are crosses, so they are heterozygous, or split, for many genes and thus there are many possible gene combinations in their offspring. As I said before, none of the chicks will be sexlinked, it's simply coincidental that your first couple chicks were yellow and red like sexlinks.

Thanks for your in-depth explanation! We no longer have the cream OE rooster, but we kept his brother, the Buff Ameraucana hybrid. Our eggs finished hatching and we ended up with 2 ISA Brown hybrids and 2 OE hybrids. Of the OE hybrids, one looks identical to the cream OE rooster and the other one is a gorgeous light grey (blue). Our 2 Blue Olive Eggers are quite dark and the chick looks lighter, as if the cream and grey mixed to make a lighter grey. I'm curious to see what combinations of colors will come from crossing our Buff Ameraucana hybrid roo with our ISA Browns, Australorps, and Olive Eggers. Do you know what colors result if you cross a Buff x Grey? I've seen photos online of hybrids that are half orange and half grey. Lol.

 

[flockofdovz]

Just wanted to update this thread. I have since hatched various groups of chicks from:

#1. Buff Ameraucana/Cream Legar Hybird roo x ISA Brown hen
#2. Buff Ameraucana/Cream Legar Hybird roo x Blue Olive Egger hen

The chicks resulting from:

#1 pairing were reddish rooster, cream/white hen with peacomb and green legs that lays green eggs, and a reddish hen with green legs that laid green eggs. Sadly, we lost 1 ISA Brown hen and the reddish daughter this week to a fox who dug under a fence line that had never been breached. The 2 had lingered in our aviary after the auto door shut to the main enclosed run with hardware cloth, and the 2 foxes dug under the aviary fencing to get to them roosting.

#2. 1 black crested rooster with orange leakage around the neckline, 1 cream crested rooster, 2 cream/white created pullets with blue legs and some grey feather undertones on the head, 1 crested partridge hen that's split orange and dark grey with blue legs, 1 partridge rooster, 1 crested grey/orange pullet, 1 splash white/black rooster

Our rooster tends to manifest buff (aka, orange) leakage in the neckline of most chicks with the Blue Olive Egger.

Overall, the genetics charts online are correct and all of his daughters lay eggs that are green or blue hued.

Photos attached of my favorite resulting female from #2 pairing. She has the short, blue legs of her father and the feathers are combination of the 2 breeds. Her crest is bigger than her father and mother's. As a chick, she had chipmunk coloring with a stripe down her back and thick eyeliner like Cleopatra, which is what I call her.

Also, it's worth noting that that pullets from pairing #1 started laying early, like 4.5 months old while the ones from #2 started around 6 months old. I love how the ISA Brown gave some of the high production egg genetics to her green-egg-laying daughters, of which we only have 1 right now due to the loss to the fox.

 

[ChookaPete]

Just wanted to update this thread. I have since hatched various groups of chicks from:

#1. Buff Ameraucana/Cream Legar Hybird roo x ISA Brown hen
#2. Buff Ameraucana/Cream Legar Hybird roo x Blue Olive Egger hen

The chicks resulting from:

#1 pairing were reddish rooster, cream/white hen with peacomb and green legs that lays green eggs, and a reddish hen with green legs that laid green eggs. Sadly, we lost 1 ISA Brown hen and the reddish daughter this week to a fox who dug under a fence line that had never been breached. The 2 had lingered in our aviary after the auto door shut to the main enclosed run with hardware cloth, and the 2 foxes dug under the aviary fencing to get to them roosting.

#2. 1 black crested rooster with orange leakage around the neckline, 1 cream crested rooster, 2 cream/white created pullets with blue legs and some grey feather undertones on the head, 1 crested partridge hen that's split orange and dark grey with blue legs, 1 partridge rooster, 1 crested grey/orange pullet, 1 splash white/black rooster

Our rooster tends to manifest buff (aka, orange) leakage in the neckline of most chicks with the Blue Olive Egger.

Overall, the genetics charts online are correct and all of his daughters lay eggs that are green or blue hued.

Photos attached of my favorite resulting female from #2 pairing. She has the short, blue legs of her father and the feathers are combination of the 2 breeds. Her crest is bigger than her father and mother's. As a chick, she had chipmunk coloring with a stripe down her back and thick eyeliner like Cleopatra, which is what I call her.

Also, it's worth noting that that pullets from pairing #1 started laying early, like 4.5 months old while the ones from #2 started around 6 months old. I love how the ISA Brown gave some of the high production egg genetics to her green-egg-laying daughters, of which we only have 1 right now due to the loss to the fox.

View attachment 4048500View attachment 4048501

Awesome!




I'm thinking to experiment with trying out my own sex-linked hens by breeding strongly coloured roosters with my Hy-Line hens.


My idea is that a lot of the genes responsible for high egg-laying rates will carry over. I don't mind if the resultant hens lay a little less than their mothers, as I am currently SWAMPED by eggs!