Lavender Orpington project .... - Page 9

I only brought it up cuz the PP mag mentioned it. Certainly i want nice looking birds, but just wondered with all the breeding and trying to develop to the standard if anyone was keeping track of the the important things like eggs and meat. I think the heritage breeds were developed for the utilitarianism of the birds. I'm not sure if they took into consideration a standard appearance. Does anyone know? 

Also does anyone know when the "rosecomb" RIR's were developed?  Does anyone here have them?  What if anything can you tell me about them?

Back to the orps. I only have two hatchery girls and one has gone broody. Everyone likes their looks. Buff's of course but even they are nice birds.

Oh and the new Practical Poultry is out.

TSC carries it here.

I am gonna try with this question one more time:  Maybe it is too dumb to ask here...

Black chicks are born with varying amounts of white/yellow down on their chest and face regardless of being split or not. if they they are black as chicks they will be black as adults. Lavender chicks are lavender when born. True mottled chicks are born  yellow with varying amounts of lavender and  black spots. I have posted pics of all three.

The bigger issue is which roo is conformation-ally correct, not which has what color as a chick if you are considering breeding.
all three

lav babies

mottled and black

Mottled and lav

When the mottled chicks are grown they are black and have white splotches but they are yellow when born.

flgardengirl - if these chicks came from my line, my "mottled" chicks did not look black at hatch.  They were a cream color with a speck of black on the head and back (which can be seen on my web site).  I would say what you are seeing are quite typical chick down for black birds (not mottled).  Black chicks often hatch with varying degrees of whitish down on the belly/chest and even grow in initial feathers tipped with some white.  These are shed as they get their mature plumage.  As long as the white disappears in your adult birds, you are fine to use either male.  JMO

eta - we were typing at the same time.  Thanks for sharing those pics.  Actually, typical mottled do hatch black with a lot of white around the face, neck, chest and wings, however in this particular line that did not occur.  A lot about mottling is unknown in how it acts with other genes.

We were typing at the same time!

And yes, I'm showing chicks that have come down from Jody's lines so that is why they look the way they do.

Thank you for the clarification Jody! You are the best!

Thank you both very much for your replies. That does make sense about the adult color and the traits of the breed being most important.  Here are a few of my pics. Now that I see the true mottled (mostly yellow chicks) pics I can see that my 2 had way less yellow but I guess I was confused because they had quite a bit of yellow on thier faces.

Roo #2 as a chick --dh named him Mr. T  because of his mohawk lol, but now he is just a big ol' black rooster.



This is a baby pullet from the same batch less yellow than roo#2 but still a little more yellow than the other 2 more normal looking chicks in the batch.


2 normal blk/splits (one is roo #1 and the other a pullet)

I can see why that would be confusing. Maybe Jody can chime in again on the first chick. The others look like I expect mine to look. Do you have pics of the first chick grown? and how old is he?