Chick Mystery: Purebred Brahma or Brahma x Wyandotte chicks?

[KyloChicken]

I have a little mystery hatch: I just successfully hatched our first chicks from our own eggs. How exciting! The possible mothers are Brahma hens (light and buff) and the possible fathers are either a Silver laced Wyandotte or a light Brahma rooster. Is there any way to guesstimate if they are pure Brahma or Wyandotte x Brahma mixes? Taking pictures was hard, sorry! Both have feathered legs! Chick A has a bit more grey to it than chick B.

There is a tiny chance that the hen might have been a buff Orpington, but they haven’t started laying when the eggs were collected (as far as I was able to tell).

Thank you for your help!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I think you can rule out the Buff Orpington hens as the mothers just by their chick down. I'd expect mostly yellow chicks without that big dark patch on them if they had a Buff Orp parent.

As far as determining their father, neither of them look like they have rose comb genes as far as I can tell in these shots, but a picture showing the first one's comb from above would help to confirm that. Rose comb is dominant, so if the father had a rose comb, the chicks very likely would have a copy of the gene as well. What that means is that most likely the father was the Brahma.

 

[KyloChicken]

I think you can rule out the Buff Orpington hens as the mothers just by their chick down. I'd expect mostly yellow chicks without that big dark patch on them if they had a Buff Orp parent.

As far as determining their father, neither of them look like they have rose comb genes as far as I can tell in these shots, but a picture showing the first one's comb from above would help to confirm that. Rose comb is dominant, so if the father had a rose comb, the chicks very likely would have a copy of the gene as well. What that means is that most likely the father was the Brahma.

Thank you so much for your detailed response! I attached a picture from above for the first chick (chick A) I can’t wait to see what they’ll look like grown up and if they turn out to be roosters or ladies

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Apologies, I just noticed I never got back to you on this! That's definitely not a rose comb, so the Brahma is most likely the father. Cute babies! Enjoy them while they're tiny--they grow way too fast!

 

[KyloChicken]

Apologies, I just noticed I never got back to you on this! That's definitely not a rose comb, so the Brahma is most likely the father. Cute babies! Enjoy them while they're tiny--they grow way too fast!

They always grow up to fast! I’ll make sure to share pictures once those 2 are grown!

 

[KyloChicken]

I think you can rule out the Buff Orpington hens as the mothers just by their chick down. I'd expect mostly yellow chicks without that big dark patch on them if they had a Buff Orp parent.

As far as determining their father, neither of them look like they have rose comb genes as far as I can tell in these shots, but a picture showing the first one's comb from above would help to confirm that. Rose comb is dominant, so if the father had a rose comb, the chicks very likely would have a copy of the gene as well. What that means is that most likely the father was the Brahma.

I thought you might be interested in a little update of what they look like now that the feathers are starting to come in and they have hit the awkward teenager phase. I’ll update again when they look like proper birds

 

[KyloChicken]

Apologies, I just noticed I never got back to you on this! That's definitely not a rose comb, so the Brahma is most likely the father. Cute babies! Enjoy them while they're tiny--they grow way too fast!

I wanted to add another update with those two actually being fully grown chick B turned out to be a rooster and just started crowing chick A turned out to be a hen! Both grew super fast and look like proper birds already!

That’s the rooster, we call him CJ (Chewie Junior after his dad)

The hen is in the middle and called Rascal