Golden Laced Polish x Lavender Orpington Hen

[Friskybinx]

Last fall I hatched some eggs from my Golden Laced Polish rooster and Lavender Orpington. I didn’t realize that the lavender wasn’t a dominant gene, so I was quite sad when all three babies hatched black.

I have two hens and one rooster now. See pics below. My roo is mostly black with some gold leakage.

My question is - do they all carry the recessive lavender gene? Is there a possibility if I hatch eggs from my roo now to different colored chickens they could have some lavender coloring? Can I breed back to my lavender hen? I also don’t understand line breeding and how that works.

Sorry if I’m not explaining this properly - genetics are a whole new world and I’m just trying to hatch some really cool looking chickens

 

[NatJ]

Last fall I hatched some eggs from my Golden Laced Polish rooster and Lavender Orpington. I didn’t realize that the lavender wasn’t a dominant gene, so I was quite sad when all three babies hatched black.

I have two hens and one rooster now. See pics below. My roo is mostly black with some gold leakage.

My question is - do they all carry the recessive lavender gene?

If they had a lavender parent, then yes they each inherited one copy of the lavender gene.

Is there a possibility if I hatch eggs from my roo now to different colored chickens they could have some lavender coloring?

If the rooster is carrying the lavender gene (inherited from his lavender mother), then his chicks can show lavender color IF they inherit lavender from him and also from their mother. If the other hens do not show or carry the lavender gene, then no chicks will show lavender.

A "lavender" chicken has the lavender gene on an otherwise black chicken. For chickens with a different base color (not solid black), the lavender gene dilutes the colors to make Porcelain or Isabella or various other colors (they all look like pastel versions of whatever the base color was.)

Can I breed back to my lavender hen?

Yes, and about half the chicks should be lavender. The other half will carry lavender.

If you breed him to his sisters, about 1/4 of chicks should show lavender, 1/2 should carry lavender but not show it, and 1/4 will not have the lavender gene at all. Among those chicks, some will not be solid black or solid lavender, but will have a pattern of other colors (maybe like the Polish rooster, maybe some other pattern.) Those could appear among the chicks that show lavender, or among the ones that don't show lavender.

I also don’t understand line breeding and how that works.

I don't fully understand how people use the term either (and not everyone uses it the same way). But yes, you can breed a rooster to his mother or his sisters or to any other female relative. Chicks will usually be fine. There is some chance of eggs that do not hatch well, or chicks that grow more slowly, or are a bit less healthy, or don't lay as many eggs. If you notice any of those problems: don't repeat the breeding, and do try breeding to unrelated or less-related chickens.

 

[Friskybinx]

@NatJ this was an absolutely amazing response. Thank you so much for going into such detail and explaining all of this. It’s so fun learning about genetics but I realized today how much I have to learn.

So just to make sure I understand - if I were to breed my polishxorp roo to my salmon faverolle hen, would they have the potential to be diluted? Or no because the SF has no lavender gene?

Is there a good book about chicken genetics I can read? LOL

 

[NatJ]

So just to make sure I understand - if I were to breed my polishxorp roo to my salmon faverolle hen, would they have the potential to be diluted? Or no because the SF has no lavender gene?

Salmon Faverolles are not expected to have the lavender gene, so there should not be any diluted (lavender) chicks.

Is there a good book about chicken genetics I can read? LOL

Um, I'm not sure about "good."

There's one called Genetics of the Fowl, by H.B. Hutt, published in 1938.
Last time I looked, it was available to read for free on the internet.
But it is not easy to read, and some parts are not accurate (people have learned things since it was published.)

There are a few chicken genetics books that have been published more recently, but I have not personally read them, so I don't know how good they are.

There is some information here:
https://kippenjungle.nl/sellers/page0.html
It has links to a page on basic genetics, one that discusses some specific chicken genes, and one with a table of genes (tells a little bit about each gene.)
Since I was not a beginner when I found it, I don't know if it is actually a good starting point, or if it is written at the wrong level.

You can play with the chicken calculator here:
https://kippenjungle.nl/chickencalculator.html
I find it helpful for modeling the effects of genes: change the genes in the dropdown boxes, and the picture of the chicken changes too.
For lavender, find a box that says "Lav+/Lav+"
That tells that a chicken has the dominant not-lavender gene (capital letter because it is dominant, + at the end because it is the orginal form found in the wild jungle fowl.)
Change it to Lav+/lav to represent a chicken that carries the lavender gene (no change in the image, because lavender is recessive.)
Change it to lav/lav to represent a chicken that is pure for lavender, and shows the effect (the image changes from a red-and-black chicken to a cream-and-gray chicken.)

To model a black chicken, the top dropdown box gets changed from e+/e+ (the wild-type form that came from wild junglefowl) to E/E (Extended Black). Or you can change it to E/E^R (split for Extended Black and Birchen, which is what your half-Sebrights probably are.)

A black chicken with lavender (E/? with lav/lav) will be lavender.

The default settings, when you first go to the page, are the wild-type form of each gene (the one found in the wild Red Jungle Fowl.) They are marked with + (which is handy if I cannot remember what it said before I changed something!) All the others are mutations, with capital letters mostly indicating dominant genes and lowercase letters mostly indicating recessive genes. I say "mostly" because some genes are incompletely dominant (one vs. two copies of the "dominant" gene have a different effect), and some genes have many options that do not have a simple order of dominance (the e locus, top dropdown box with E and E^R and e+ and others, is probably the worst of these.)


With chicken color genes, I would say they fall into a few main groups:

--some affect how the colors are distributed on the chicken (in the chicken calculator, these include the first 5 dropdown boxes of genes, and interact in various ways with each other.) I find these ones to be the most confusing to learn about.

--some change individual colors (black becomes blue or white or chocolate, gold becomes red or cream or silver). Lavender dilutes black to gray and red/gold to cream. I find these ones the easiest to understand.

--some put white in specific places on the chicken, over-riding what the other genes are doing (barring adds white lines, mottling adds white dots, recessive white makes a chicken white all over.)