Paint Project

[MumsyII]

Creating a Paint pen using just one Paint male. I will share the journey here and hope those that have crossed Paints onto other varieties or are breeding Paints will share their experiences too.

I hatched one Paint chick out of a batch of Catdance eggs a year and a half ago. He languished by himself in the Silkie bachelor pen until this Spring. I didn't plan on using him because I thought I needed a Black or Paint hen to get Paint offspring.

As a project, I put him with a quad of recessive White hens that were not being used in other White pens. I had the space and thought, what the heck? Give the boy a chance and see what happens.

This is what happened between him and a couple white hens that were laying at the time.

All colored chicks! Holy Carp! Two of them were clearly dominate white with tiny black visible spots!


This is Daper Dan. My one and only Paint male. Hatched from a Catdance egg.

He is rough and dirty with a trimmed bum. He is a rowdy and ready guy that is not pampered.


He has an even distribution of spots over his body but one large black spot across his back. Partially hidden by his heavy hackle.


His comb is slightly light but nicely shaped. His beard and muff are straggly. The hens like to pick at his beak and face. He loves the ladies.

His F1 are a test mating. I love what he produced with those two hens so he is back with three of my best Recessive Whites now.


First three to hatch. Two chipmunk marked and one Paint.


Last five to hatch. Two more chipmunk marked, two Black, and one more Paint.

At three weeks old they now are getting juvenile feathering.


First Black chick is turning Charcoal or Smoky. Or is this Blue?


Orange zip. Nice chick. Lacks middle toe feathering.


Second black chick with a pink zip.

Also a nice chick.


Chipmunk colored chick looking silver partridge. Blue zip

Nice chick. That lack of middle toe feathering is going to be hard to fix in further F pens.


Second chipmunk colored chick with a green zip. Darker version of the silver partridge looking chick.


Third chipmunk colored chick has brown coming in.

Pink zip on this little one.


Forth chipmunk colored chick is brown and silver. Interesting. It did not want to sit still...

...And then PLUNK. It decided to take a rest. Nice chick with a yellow zip.

I'll post images of the two Paint chicks later on. They are slow to feather.

Eventually I will breed my Paint cock to a quality Black hen but for now, these babies are giving me a lot of joy.

 

[MumsyII]

Paint is dominant white. You can take a paint and cross to a black that has never been from a paint breeding and get paint offspring, the gene is at least incompletely dominant.

If you cross a recessive white to a black, all of the offspring should be black.

If a black bird carries two dominant white genes the black is usually completely covered so you get a white bird and not a paint.

paint x paint results in about 1/2 paint offspring, some white offspring and some black offspring

paint x white ( dominant white) results in about 1/2 paint and 1/2 white

white (dominant white) x black will be paints ( birds carrying one dominant white gene can be solid white)

white (recessive white) x black (carries recessive white) = 1/2 white and 1/2 black ( NO PAINTS ARE PRODUCED)

Silkies can carry dominant white or recessive white or both and that is true for most white birds.



This is some of the information on Paint breeding I have saved while doing Google searches. It is a very small description of an incredibly mysterious phenomena in this project variety.

Much is unknown about the Paint genotype.

 

[MumsyII]

Last year someone on the forum, I think DragonLady mentioned my recessive white chicks were carrying gold or red because of the color of the down. At the time I had no idea what this meant because both of my White pens were from reliable Silkie breeders and my Whites were WHITE for generations. Now I know a bit more what recessive means.
Maybe that explains why some of the Partridge colored chicks came out of this test mating with gold and brown in their down? At least I think that's where it came from. Recessive white hides a lot of stuff. There were no dominate whites in my flock until the Paint male was used.


A sampling of my day old White flock from Sheryl Butler and Catdance white breeding.




Those chicks in the grow out pens. Their crests are dirty from free ranging. All are recessive white.

 

[Fur N Feathers]

Daper Dan is quite daper. And his chicks are nice. Does the lack of middle toe feathering come from the hens? I can't tell for sure but it looks like he has it in the top picture. I read that lack of middle toe feathering is only 2 points off in the point system for showing. I believe it was Sonoran that said she doesn't worry much about that feathering on the middle toe. Relying on my Swiss cheese memory, so if this wasn't Sonoran my apologies.

That is a gorgeous flock of whites!!!

Again relying on my memory, when I bought my eggs from Karen (I think we must be the same time frame), she had her original paint rooster over recessive white hens. Her cockerel at that time was purchased from Deb Steinberg at Fawke's Feathers and she had put him with her best white hens including the reserve champion pullet from that year's western nationals.

My foundation paint also came from my first CatDance hatch. She was my one and only paint. I now have 5. I have sucessfully shown both she and her oldest daughter. These are all pictures of my original paint Momma:

Please overlook the ruggedness and dirt. She doesn't like tape on her head and I refuse to trim that lovely crest, so she is a face dunker - as is her daughter. She has extreme foot feathering, crest, and lovely cushion. My chickens are chickens first, and show birds second. I think this keeps them happy.

 

[Fur N Feathers]

Now this is probably going to make the purists cringe, but this is what I did. I did not have a really, really good rooster that I thought was the quality that I wanted to mate with my original Momma. Soooooooo, I mated her with my CatDance lavender rooster that was her hatch mate out of the same batch of mixed eggs. I wanted type and quality first and really didn't worry much about color. The babies would be paint or any other color split to lavender. Since I didn't have a lavender female, I thought I could breed the split pullets back to Dad and possibly get a lavender baby or two. With lavender being recessive I felt his color would have a minimum impact on color. This is he:

I do sell eggs, and I always tell my egg buyers if their batch are split to lavender.

 

[MumsyII]

There is a large percentage of my Silkies, all pens that lack in the middle toe feathering. I get frustrated when type is so good on a bird and that is what I notice first. I think it is because I don't show but try so hard to pair my best birds and still get that sparse foot feathering.

I agree. Chickens get to be chickens first. My birds get free range time every day except for dirty weather. I lock them up in the barn every night since the horrible predator attack a few months ago.

Your Catdance pullet looks like a full sister to my cock. He has a large black spot in the same place on his back! His foot feathering is messed up. He has been free to scrounge around in the dirt since he was hatched.

I am hatching more chicks in the incubator right now from Dan from a trio of my best whites. First chick has a huge vault, all white and mostly pink skin! She has slate beak and feet and some black skin in patches. Because the recessive white hides so much, each egg is like a special surprise. I have no idea what to expect. I took pictures of the two paint chicks from the first test mating. Their spots are unmistakable. I am already guessing they are both male.




First paint chick pink zip.




Second paint chick orange zip.

The black feathers are small but easily seen. They are showing more spots at this age than Daper Dan.

I think your Lavender male is gorgeous. I hope my female will start laying again. I would be happy to get Lav splits no matter what color.

 

[Fur N Feathers]

This is the first daughter of the pairing above. She has a very large spot on her back right on top of her cushion with numerous smaller spots overall. Larger and more than her mother. Notice her messy wet face.

Next to her here is her full same age sister who has spots, but small ones. I'll post more pictures of her later.

This is a grouping of most of my paints.

 

[MumsyII]

I really love the group shot. That large spot on the cushion is my favorite. I would like to get a paint from my male with at least one big spot visible like that.

Another chick hatched. It is like none I've had. Silver down. A perfect blend of dark grey and silver. I need to document each chick so I can keep track of which recessive white hens produce the prettiest offspring. I have ten chicks and every one of them is different except the two paint chicks. Very interesting results so far though in a very limited amount.

 

[Fur N Feathers]

That spot there seems to be something she often passes along. Here are pictures of the first boy I got out of the above pairing. A full brother, he is my only male so far. He has more spots than are really visible and more on one side than the other. I will be mating him with two white unrelated (to him - they are full sisters) females to see what I might get. He has slight champagne hackles that is often seen in the paint males. I will be showing him this fall to see how he does.

I notice Daper Dan is very clean and white and I wonder if I can breed that hackle color out. I personally don't mind it at all, but I think the bright white is more desirable.

The two white pullets you can see parts of in this shot are the two I will be pairing him with.

 

[MumsyII]

I am interested to see if specific spot placement is passed on too.

Dan looks almost silver white. He is well over a year old and except for some sun scald, has no hackle leakage. I didn't plan on breeding or showing him and he ran wild in the main flock his whole life. He ate corn scratch and played in the sun. Yet he has remained almost totally white. Old time breeders used to call that the "stay white' factor. I've never had it in a white bird until him.

I like the Champagne leakage but I like pure white too. Actually, I'm just so happy to have any Silkies at all, I would keep them all if I could.

The two chicks are dry and out of the incubator. The white chick with vaulted skull and pink skin is whiter than my recessive white chicks are at day old. You can't tell from looking at her now that her body skin is pink. She has good middle toe feathering! So does the silver looking chimpmunk marked chick. It has e+ by the looks of the one eyeliner mark on one side.

Using my best recessive whites with this x has given better foot feathering. Yay!


Chick #1 from Project F1 pen 2. White chick, vaulted skull, Light skin. Better middle toe feathering. I am curious if this will be a dominate white.


Chick #2 from Project F1 pen 2. Chipmunk marking with e+ eyeliner mark on left side of face. I would describe this color as greyish silver. Good toe feathering as well. Slate beak and skin.


There are patches of black skin on the white chick. One patch is the front of the vaulted skull. It will be interesting to see if this chick develops Paint spots or not.