Worm94
Songster
- Mar 17, 2024
- 113
- 322
- 146
So last summer I had this genetic mystery pop up with my birds, where my blue rooster and a black barred hen gave me yellow chicks. Through a lot of help via these forums I was able to learn more about what had happened and it sent me down a rabbit hole where I got to learn about chicken genetics too. I can Mostly use the chicken calculator now, yay!
Anyway it got me thinking and I want to try to do some projects starting in February if I'm able and I figured I'd write out some of my thoughts here while I solidify those (the chicken math is inevitable and I keep seeing adorable fluff balls on various threads and I cannot wait for spring).
This winter I also almost lost my poor blue rooster (and the forums came through for me and helped me save him) and it was terrifying but I've decided for certain I love and want more blue chickens and especially ones from him in case anything happens. That and whatever color those yellow chicks turned out as (so far I've been pointed in the wheaten direction), I think it's beautiful and would like to see more of it in my flock in general.
I'll post a lot of pictures here as I work through my thoughts and ideas and eventually put out what I want to test (I don't want to jump to any conclusions yet, there's test breeding to be done and I'll definitely post when the eggs are gathered and when they hatch for that one. I plan on that being around March/April).
Anyway here are the two that hatched from pairing my blue rooster and one of the black barred hens (I am not 100 percent certain as to which hen but I will be using one of them for test breeding for sure. Unfortunately there is only the one left anyway, as they'd been overweight when I acquired them and only one was able to lose enough weight for it not to end up being fatal. They were sweet birds and I did my best as long as I could but there wasn't much past a certain point. I suspect they were meat bird crosses of some kind).
Moving on, the above hen (Cherry) as a chick.
And beside it a picture (the best I could find, unfortunately I did not take many pictures of him) of Mr. Dumpling as a chick. He's the light mottled-looking one, he ended up barred.
Onto the parents:
(This second picture is one of my favorites ever. Mr Goose, Matilda (barred hen), and their presumed daughter Cherry all hanging out together). The silver wheaten hen back there is Buttons, a result of our Easter Egger boy and again, one of the black barred hens. Because Monkey (Easter Egger boy)has a distinct pattern himself, I'm pretty sure that'd be dominant wheaten there.
Cherry, if it's indeed the wheaten gene that she has, might be more likely to be recessive (This is speculation, because I'm still learning).
Here's Monkey, though he's mostly unrelated to the test breeding I'd like to do (I've posted this picture before but I just love when they collapse in the sun, and it shows his colors pretty well).
Anyway my thought is that I want to pair Cherry and Mr. Dumpling together. Based on the breeding chart for blue I'll get some black chicks, some blue and some splash (That I am the most excited for, in all honesty). Because Mr. Dumpling is barred and Cherry is not, I won't get sex-linked chicks but I'll get to see what Cherry would have looked like barred and what Mr. Dumpling would have looked like without. This will help me to see which version I like better, to see if I want to continue with barring at all.
Mr. Dumpling has also shown incredible growth. He was 8 pounds at four months, and whether that's because his mother was some type of meat bird cross, or hybrid vigor because of whatever Goose is, I don't know. Cherry is also quite large, 7-8 pounds or so at the moment and Mr. Dumpling is now 13 pounds. I am curious to see if their chicks will be large too, it would be nice but it's not absolutely necessary.
There is one more thing I am curious about. When paired with the buff brahmas specifically last year, Goose produced a little blue hen who had what I can only describe as lemon-yellow type feathering as opposed to the buff and orange colors of the others. I have to wonder then, if I've mistaken his gold leakage for lemon. My other reason to wonder is because (and I could be wrong) I think I read somewhere that the gene responsible for changing gold to lemon also makes it so that red leakage roosters commonly get is no longer visible. Aside from the gold/yellow leakage on Goose, he has no red shoulder patches or anything else and is solidly blue (At least I think he's blue) throughout the rest of him. He was a very light blue as a chick, so light I half-wonder about lavender instead of blue but I am not certain of anything there either.
Regardless it didn't show up on Mr. Dumpling who quite obviously has red, or Cherry.
My thoughts are then, from what I remember reading, that it is a recessive and once Goose has his prosthetic leg and is doing better, I may see if he and the buff brahmas create a bird like that again. They are hatchery quality, so there may very well be genes I don't know about in them since none of them meet the Brahma standard for one reason or another. I do still really love them, of course.
As to that hen I don't have many pictures of her because I did end up selling her but I do almost wish I hadn't. Here she is being a lap chicken because she was always a sweetheart, and from what I know the people who got her are incredibly fond of her.
But I think I've rambled on enough for now, so that's that until probably February in which I pair up the birds and so on till they hatch.
Anyway it got me thinking and I want to try to do some projects starting in February if I'm able and I figured I'd write out some of my thoughts here while I solidify those (the chicken math is inevitable and I keep seeing adorable fluff balls on various threads and I cannot wait for spring).
This winter I also almost lost my poor blue rooster (and the forums came through for me and helped me save him) and it was terrifying but I've decided for certain I love and want more blue chickens and especially ones from him in case anything happens. That and whatever color those yellow chicks turned out as (so far I've been pointed in the wheaten direction), I think it's beautiful and would like to see more of it in my flock in general.
I'll post a lot of pictures here as I work through my thoughts and ideas and eventually put out what I want to test (I don't want to jump to any conclusions yet, there's test breeding to be done and I'll definitely post when the eggs are gathered and when they hatch for that one. I plan on that being around March/April).
Anyway here are the two that hatched from pairing my blue rooster and one of the black barred hens (I am not 100 percent certain as to which hen but I will be using one of them for test breeding for sure. Unfortunately there is only the one left anyway, as they'd been overweight when I acquired them and only one was able to lose enough weight for it not to end up being fatal. They were sweet birds and I did my best as long as I could but there wasn't much past a certain point. I suspect they were meat bird crosses of some kind).
Moving on, the above hen (Cherry) as a chick.
Onto the parents:
Cherry, if it's indeed the wheaten gene that she has, might be more likely to be recessive (This is speculation, because I'm still learning).
Here's Monkey, though he's mostly unrelated to the test breeding I'd like to do (I've posted this picture before but I just love when they collapse in the sun, and it shows his colors pretty well).
Anyway my thought is that I want to pair Cherry and Mr. Dumpling together. Based on the breeding chart for blue I'll get some black chicks, some blue and some splash (That I am the most excited for, in all honesty). Because Mr. Dumpling is barred and Cherry is not, I won't get sex-linked chicks but I'll get to see what Cherry would have looked like barred and what Mr. Dumpling would have looked like without. This will help me to see which version I like better, to see if I want to continue with barring at all.
Mr. Dumpling has also shown incredible growth. He was 8 pounds at four months, and whether that's because his mother was some type of meat bird cross, or hybrid vigor because of whatever Goose is, I don't know. Cherry is also quite large, 7-8 pounds or so at the moment and Mr. Dumpling is now 13 pounds. I am curious to see if their chicks will be large too, it would be nice but it's not absolutely necessary.
There is one more thing I am curious about. When paired with the buff brahmas specifically last year, Goose produced a little blue hen who had what I can only describe as lemon-yellow type feathering as opposed to the buff and orange colors of the others. I have to wonder then, if I've mistaken his gold leakage for lemon. My other reason to wonder is because (and I could be wrong) I think I read somewhere that the gene responsible for changing gold to lemon also makes it so that red leakage roosters commonly get is no longer visible. Aside from the gold/yellow leakage on Goose, he has no red shoulder patches or anything else and is solidly blue (At least I think he's blue) throughout the rest of him. He was a very light blue as a chick, so light I half-wonder about lavender instead of blue but I am not certain of anything there either.
Regardless it didn't show up on Mr. Dumpling who quite obviously has red, or Cherry.
My thoughts are then, from what I remember reading, that it is a recessive and once Goose has his prosthetic leg and is doing better, I may see if he and the buff brahmas create a bird like that again. They are hatchery quality, so there may very well be genes I don't know about in them since none of them meet the Brahma standard for one reason or another. I do still really love them, of course.
As to that hen I don't have many pictures of her because I did end up selling her but I do almost wish I hadn't. Here she is being a lap chicken because she was always a sweetheart, and from what I know the people who got her are incredibly fond of her.
But I think I've rambled on enough for now, so that's that until probably February in which I pair up the birds and so on till they hatch.
