- Oct 16, 2014
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I crossed my rescued farm brown shaver hens with my purebred lavender araucana rooster. I have hatched around 2 dozen eggs from this cross. All the chicks are black down with an orangey face. This is ehat I expected because lavender is recessive underneath lavender is black.
However, I did get one chick that hatched that had all yellow down with a few black specks. Very unexpected. At first I thought it started feathering out white, but after 3.5 weeks since hatch, I can see now that it's actually a diluted colour like lavender, but it almost looks like a cream colour like a dilution of what the mother hens were, rather than a dilution of black. This little chick also has a few black feathers coming in, like what you would expect in a splash.
Does anyone have any insite as to why this outcome has occured? I don't understand how its possible to have the dilution effect at all. Below are photos of the parents and the chick taken this morning.
However, I did get one chick that hatched that had all yellow down with a few black specks. Very unexpected. At first I thought it started feathering out white, but after 3.5 weeks since hatch, I can see now that it's actually a diluted colour like lavender, but it almost looks like a cream colour like a dilution of what the mother hens were, rather than a dilution of black. This little chick also has a few black feathers coming in, like what you would expect in a splash.
Does anyone have any insite as to why this outcome has occured? I don't understand how its possible to have the dilution effect at all. Below are photos of the parents and the chick taken this morning.
