Chocolate colored chickens

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: Maybe a combination lock? Or one that is fingerprint or retina triggered? Serious, though, I m sorry for your loss, and can easily understand your need for a break. I hope your next tries are happier with less or best, no, sad events.

 

[smoothmule]

Same here, I hope you can out do the darned predators. I still say you can't beat a good pair of guardian dogs but I understand you may not be able to manage that in town. Any chance they can be inside a solid structure at night? Windows can be covered with bars that are not on a hinge or anyway to open with welded wire over that for the ventilation. Day time, good welded wire pens. NEVER use chicken wire. Chicken wire is just a joke anyway. It probably worked back when farmers had chicken pens but also had hound dogs that ran loose at night.

We have tons of predators here yet no losses from them, only to freak accidents and occasional single loss to illness or just a weak one. The only reason I know there are so many predators is the volume of dead ones that show up at night on the front porch. My older Texas Heeler was showing his age and he had lost his mate a couple of years back (a Boxer female of all things but one of the best protectors ever) so I bought a blue heeler female and located a male aussie and made a litter for myself. They're hard to come by and expensive ($250 to $300 for this crossbreed).
I kept 3 pups and sold the other 4 for $250 each and at 6 months old, we made our pick and gave one to our son who has poultry and the other to a friend for a working ranch dog (cattle). The friends say he's the best heeling dog they ever had. When my old dog passes, I plan to find another Boxer female as a companion and assistant to the younger dog who has already learned the ropes around here. They eat and drink and live with the poultry and I have a lot that run all the time without ever being penned up at night and they roost only 4 foot off the ground without worry of losing one for the past 18 years. I won't keep poultry without my Texas Heelers on guard.

Here is the old man, Sam, at 11 years old. When he really started acting like he was getting old, gimping around a bit, I started him on a joint supplement (Cetyl M) and he's a frisky as a pup again so I'm hoping he will be up to the job a couple more years so that Tex, the pup, gets enough training by the old man.

 

[juliette2009]

I am just LOVING looking at these mauves!!! I have finally produced a smooth chocolate cockeral (he's still a baby)...ALL of mine so far have been either splits, then frizzled chocolate boys...I have made the pledge to breed only chocolate x chocolate now, and I do happen to have a smooth blue splash girl I could put with one of my frizzled chocolate roos, since they're not actively in service right now...Hmmmmm...

And yes, smoothmule, my original Blue Pearl, the start of both my blue and chocolate line, was a chocolate-laced-blue hen...so neat having two genes in one bird like that!

 

[jonaedna]

Hey, I think I have a chocolate laced blue pullet.




Third picture is an up close picture. Also a chocolate pullet in the bottom picture.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Awhile back there was a discussion on whether chocolate laced blue (or maybe it was blue laced chocolate or some other variation of dilutions) was possible. Since chocolate (regardless of whether you are talking dun or choc) is a dilution of black, as is blue, you really cannot have both on the same bird. Now ALL the dilution could be a mix of chocolate coloured AND blue dilution, but having some parts of the eumelanin diluted by one gene and other parts by the other just would not work.

It would be similar to adding bleach to the washer and expecting that it would bleach out the legs on a pair of pants, but not the waistband or cuffs.

 

[smoothmule]

I am just LOVING looking at these mauves!!! I have finally produced a smooth chocolate cockeral (he's still a baby)...ALL of mine so far have been either splits, then frizzled chocolate boys...I have made the pledge to breed only chocolate x chocolate now, and I do happen to have a smooth blue splash girl I could put with one of my frizzled chocolate roos, since they're not actively in service right now...Hmmmmm...

And yes, smoothmule, my original Blue Pearl, the start of both my blue and chocolate line, was a chocolate-laced-blue hen...so neat having two genes in one bird like that!

Juliette,
Could be the lighting or coloring on my screen but your cockerel doesn't look chocolate at all to me on this end. You won't know for sure until you test breed him. He appears very blue on my screen. Chocolate laced blue is not a possible color because they can't segregate that way.

 

[smoothmule]

Hey, I think I have a chocolate laced blue pullet.




Third picture is an up close picture. Also a chocolate pullet in the bottom picture.

There is no such color as chocolate laced blue. Both blue and chocolate do the same thing to black so the result is an all over dilution of black. Blues can vary in phenotype a whole lot and some blues will fade making that lacing look brownish. I have a blue hen that is that way, you would swear she's dun or something other than blue. It's sort of a rusty brown color. I have had blues that were a pale, soft baby blue color, some that are the typical andalusian blue type and some that were really dark with no lacing. Some have had that rustiness in the neck hackles, mostly the hens, Blue is a dilution of black, which is often a very melanized "other color" so I'm figuring that the differences in blues has to do with the other genes they carry,

The pullet at the bottom doesn't appear chocolate, what breed is it? It looks to me to be a very melanised "other" color, What were the parents color?

 

[nicalandia]

There is no such color as chocolate laced blue. Both blue and chocolate do the same thing to black so the result is an all over dilution of black.

I Begg to differ my Friend...!

 

[juliette2009]

Blue Pearl (in the above picture) is a hen, not a cockeral...She has produced blues and chocolates for me, and the chocolates have been breeding true to sex-linked recessive chocolate. I am not schooled enough in the color genetics of seramas, I am only going by what has been produced...

 

[alohachickens]

Blue Pearl (in the above picture) is a hen, not a cockeral...She has produced blues and chocolates for me, and the chocolates have been breeding true to sex-linked recessive chocolate. I am not schooled enough in the color genetics of seramas, I am only going by what has been produced...

Pretty color!!! Why don't they have this on big chickens?