One or both of your hens is silver penciled (not autosomal barring). I would say your hen or hens carry two patteren genes. What was the color of the chicks down? The penciled pattern is usually expressed in birds that are brown at the E locus. Chicks that are homozygous brown at the E locus can have a down color similar to a birchen chick that carries the dark brown gene.
As chicks did they have a broken pattern on their head.
The two hens you lost to predators had a secondary color pattern called autosomal barring. They carried the pattern gene and the dark brown gene.
Your male- is he penciled as in straight bars on the feathers or does he have feathers that are laced? In either case it is unusual because males do not normally show secondary patterns on the body ( males that are silver pencilled or autosomal barred). There are exceptions for certain secondary patterns- spangling is one.
No one on this forum has posted comments concerning my suggestion for a double pen system. One pen would produce males and females that are carrying the genes for autosomal barring the other pen would produce birds that carry genes for silver penciling.
You would then cross a silver penciled male ( he will not be penciled on the body-some penciling in wing )but basicly a white bird with silver lacing on a black tail with an autosomally barred female. (or vise versa) The females will be autosomally barred and penciled. Which will be expressed to a greater degree- I would expect the autosomal barring to be expressed to a greater degree.
The males will not express the secondary color patterns because males ( autosomally barred/penciled) do not normally express secondary color patterns. I would expect the breast of the male to show some white tipping on the black breast feathers. There are modifiers that can cause the males breast to be white ( more like an autosomal barred male and less like the penciled male). To get males that look like the females the henny feathering gene would have to be introduced to the breed.
The problem with this system is that the males would be very different from the females.
A double pen system that may work in producing a secondary pattern on the male is a pen that produces single laced birds and a pen that produces autosomally barred birds. You would cross a single laced male ( good lacing on the breast) with an autosomal barred female. The offspring should be interesting. If the autosomal barred birds carry a modifier- the breast of the offspring males may only be white.
If anybody has silver single laced wyandottes cross a male wyandotte with a silver penciled female and see what happens.
Thank you Wappoke for the information. I got these Iowa Blues around 3 weeks ago so unfortunately I don't know what the chicken down color of them was at hatching. The male looks to have more of a straight barring pattern with a breast that is becoming more black with white spangles. I will be keeping a very detailed records information on the chicks that I hatch with toe punch & pictures showing their chick down at hatch then weekly pictures showing how each chick feathers out. My goal is to get my future Iowa Blues breeding to the color pattern that Glenn Drowns from "Sand Hill Preservation" believe to be the original color pattern.
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