black hen with age-related vlitigo or a swedish flower hen??

[greenback]

here’s my sweetie Celeste, she’s a very sweet and mellow temperament ~2 yo hen.
we got her about a year ago and since she has started to molt she has an insane amount of white compared to a year ago. See photos
does she have vlitigo or is she a swedish flower hen or some other breed??


currently

before

 

[MysteryChicken]

here’s my sweetie Celeste, she’s a very sweet and mellow temperament ~2 yo hen.
we got her about a year ago and since she has started to molt she has an insane amount of white compared to a year ago. See photos
does she have vlitigo or is she a swedish flower hen or some other breed??


currently
View attachment 3723801

before
View attachment 3723802

Was she solid black before this? Before, the before picture?

I have a project/experiment I'm doing with color changing chickens.

 

[greenback]

Was she solid black before this? Before, the before picture?

I have a project/experiment I'm doing with color changing chickens.

@MysteryChicken
No, I don‘t believe so.
I got her as a ~1 year old laying hen in a flock of about 200 maybe?
Don‘t know a whole lot about her.

 

[Perris]

is she a swedish flower hen or some other breed??

My SFH hybrids show more white mottles with each moult, so she could be that. My pure SFH, by contrast, seem to grow a little more black splatter with each moult.

edited to add: what colour are her eggs? SFH are tinted.

 

[MysteryChicken]

@MysteryChicken
No, I don‘t believe so.
I got her as a ~1 year old laying hen in a flock of about 200 maybe?
Don‘t know a whole lot about her.

Could possibly ask the previous owner, too be certain?

I got my original hen from hatching eggs from a person who has no history of this happening in their flocks. They've got lots of birds as well.

 

[MysteryChicken]

Here's one of my hens, before, & after pictures.

Mother: Smarty Pants.
2020: Before

2022: Before 2023: After

Continued

2024: Now

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Looks pretty typical of the presentation of vitiligo. Loss of pigment not only in the feathers but in the eyes and skin as well from what I can see in those pictures. She's about the age where I've seen most cases trigger, too. Were her shanks the same color before or were they darker?

Vitiligo is a polygenic trait, so you could have a flock breeding and producing birds for generations and never once see it. It takes just the right combination of genes being inherited, along with the 'trigger' function, to express, so it's pretty rare and complicated to breed for.

Birds with mottling can get more and more white after each molt over time, but her before picture doesn't look like typical mottling, and the change seems a bit too drastic for one molt if it was whitening due to mottling, at least in my opinion. The difference from one molt to another tends to be pretty gradual with mottling.

 

[greenback]

My SFH hybrids show more white mottles with each moult, so she could be that. My pure SFH, by contrast, seem to grow a little more black splatter with each moult.

edited to add: what colour are her eggs? SFH are tinted

her eggs are a medium colour brown

 

[Perris]

her eggs are a medium colour brown

that would be consistent with her being a hybrid or more varied mix

 

[greenback]

okay.