Color leakage- how did it come into existence?

[Anonymous__]

Hello! I am looking to learn more about color leakage on chickens but there isn't very much information I can find. Does anyone know how color leakage came into existence and anything about this type of genetic?

 

[NatJ]

"Leakage" on chickens just means some color in a place we don't want it. It's particularly noticeable on solid colored chickens, or when red appears on a chicken that is supposed to be black and white.

The wild ancestors of chickens are not solid colored. They have black and several shades of red/brown/gold distributed in various ways on their bodies.

Solid colored chickens come from combining a gene that allows more of one color, and a gene that removes some of another color, and another gene that affects color on a different part of the body, and so forth. If the chicken has just the right combination of genes, they look the same color all over. If they have a not-quite-right combination of genes, it allows some other color to show ("leak") on some part of their body. (I'm not naming specific genes, because different solid colors require different genes and combinations.)

So the leakage didn't really "come into existence." The solid colors and precise patterns did come into existence with careful breeding, and "leakage" is a way to describe a certain kind of not-quite-right.