Chick colours.

[Mel35]

Hey guys,

So I have a bit of a breeding colour question!! I have 2x RIR hens & a 1x Barbu d'Uccle rooster. My girls are the standard "red/brown colour" and my rooster affectionately known as "Nugget" is a beautiful black colour with splashes of green and sometimes what looks like purple. I recently incubated some eggs of theirs and got a nice mix of colours but in the 8 that I hatched 4 of them are completely white I'm wondering if someone can please help me understand where the white comes into the mix, is it from the RIR's. Nugget does have a couple white feathers on his feet but it's not dominant in his body colour could it have come from him

Any information or knowledge on this topic would be incredibly helpful.

Cheers

 

[MysteryChicken]

Hey guys,

So I have a bit of a breeding colour question!! I have 2x RIR hens & a 1x Barbu d'Uccle rooster. My girls are the standard "red/brown colour" and my rooster affectionately known as "Nugget" is a beautiful black colour with splashes of green and sometimes what looks like purple. I recently incubated some eggs of theirs and got a nice mix of colours but in the 8 that I hatched 4 of them are completely white I'm wondering if someone can please help me understand where the white comes into the mix, is it from the RIR's. Nugget does have a couple white feathers on his feet but it's not dominant in his body colour could it have come from him

Any information or knowledge on this topic would be incredibly helpful.

Cheers

Pictures of the parents, & chicks please?

 

[Mel35]

I don't have their photos on me at the moment but I will upload a photo in the morning

 

[MysteryChicken]

I don't have their photos on me at the moment but I will upload a photo in the morning

No hurry.

 

[Mel35]

So these are the photos I was able to get this morning. The ones of the "Babies" are not really clear as we are having wild weather here in Aus at the moment so I have them inside out of the stormy weather. If there is anything you can tell me that would be helpful.

 

[MysteryChicken]

The hens are Red Sex-links not RIRs.

The Columbian Barred chicks, & barred chick can't be from that pairing.


The only chicks that were most likely from the pairing is the red speckled one, & the whites.

 

[Chive]

I agree with @MysteryChicken. I think that the RIR hens you have are actually Red Sex-links. I believe Red Sex-links actually carry a dominant white gene (if I am wrong, please correct me someone).
So, I think that all the white ones and the reddish-brown one are from that cross. But I don't believe that the Barred and the Columbian Barred are from that cross. Do you have any other breeds that could have possibly been mixed in?

 

[Mel35]

Yeah the little dark one is a mixture of red/brown and black and he is the only one in the batch with feathers on his feet (like his dad) which I could tell was definitely from this pairing. It's funny that I am now just leaning that they are not RIR because that's what they were sold to me as. I am still new to learning what chicken breed is what! So if my girls only have nugget as a pairing partner, how would it be possible that the other babies didn't come from this pairing when I have had them for a year?

 

[Mel35]

I agree with @MysteryChicken. I think that the RIR hens you have are actually Red Sex-links. I believe Red Sex-links actually carry a dominant white gene (if I am wrong, please correct me someone).
So, I think that all the white ones and the reddish-brown one are from that cross. But I don't believe that the Barred and the Columbian Barred are from that cross. Do you have any other breeds that could have possibly been mixed in?

I do not. I have pure white ones that I think you might be able to see in the background of one of the other photos. I was told their parents were RIW but they have since died so the little guys are the only ones I have of that breed. But I don't think those are at sexual maturity yet anyway.

 

[NatJ]

It's funny that I am now just leaning that they are not RIR because that's what they were sold to me as. I am still new to learning what chicken breed is what!

Rhode Island Reds are red with a black tail.

Many hybrids have one Rhode Island Red parent and one parent of another breed, and end up red with a white tail.

The white tail is caused by a gene called Dominant White, that turns black into white. It affects all black on the chicken.

My girls are the standard "red/brown colour" and my rooster affectionately known as "Nugget" is a beautiful black colour with splashes of green and sometimes what looks like purple. I recently incubated some eggs of theirs and got a nice mix of colours but in the 8 that I hatched 4 of them are completely white I'm wondering if someone can please help me understand where the white comes into the mix, is it from the RIR's. Nugget does have a couple white feathers on his feet but it's not dominant in his body colour could it have come from him

What probably happened with your white chicks:

The father gave them genes to be completely black
The mother gave them the Dominant White gene, which turned all the black into white
So those chicks are completely white.

if my girls only have nugget as a pairing partner, how would it be possible that the other babies didn't come from this pairing when I have had them for a year?

Do you have any other hens?
Is there any chance you mixed up eggs from some other hens? Maybe eggs from someone else?
Any chance of some other rooster coming to visit, and mating with your hens?

The Columbian Barred chicks, & barred chick can't be from that pairing.

I don't believe that the Barred and the Columbian Barred are from that cross. Do you have any other breeds that could have possibly been mixed in?

I agree that those chicks should not be possible from the parents in the photos.

The "barred chick" is the one with black and white lines all over it. Genetically, it is a black chicken with white lines, but the barring gene (white lines) should be making white lines on one parent as well (but it clearly is not.)

The "Columbian Barred" chicks would be the ones with white bodies, and black/gray on their tails and their heads & necks. The Columbian part could happen from those parents (white body with black/gray at both ends of the bird), but the barring (white lines across the darker areas) is from the barring gene (same probablem as the barred chick has: at least one parent should be showing white barring.)

@MysteryChicken @Chive
Could one of the red hens have white barring? I know it is harder to see barring on red than on black, but I really cannot see any at all in these photos.

It looks like at least two of the chicks with barring are males, so they could have a barred mother or a barred father. A pullet with barring would need to have a barred father, and would be a bigger puzzle, because I am even more sure the black-based rooster is not showing any white barring (he's got white mottling, but not barring.)