Pumpkin Hulsey feather color

[cubakid]

Our Pumpkin Hulseys are dun. Like most everyone says, they'll throw a range of colors... Although I hear Larry Carter(I think that's his name) has some that breed true... But they are outside most people's pay range, being several hundred per cockerel.

 

[redneckgranny]

How much do you want for them?

 

[graciel57]

Nice to see these long running threads.

I just wanted to add to the pot on Pumpkin Hulsey colours: I had some that were off spring from Greenfire Farms birds. Most were the white version, and I ended up losing all of the roosters before the next spring (not that hardy here in the North, I thought, or maybe it was just bad luck with those individual birds). Anyway, I was certain I was looking at wheaten based birds from the few "colour" birds that I had, and used a Wheaten Marans rooster on them. The WM had at least the Db gene, so he was not a "pure" bird, but he was what I had for a wheaten. And before anyone goes screaming about mixing up birds, my whole desire in the first place was to figure out what the genetic make up of that Pumpkin colour is, not to raise Hulsey games.. The Marans had the additional advantage to me of knocking out a lot of the "game" in these birds, since the Marans tend to be rather docile.

Offspring in that F1 were all over the map, none of them were white. I may as well tell you I was convinced before I started that these Pumpkin birds HAD to have had Dun in the them. I mean, I KNEW it. When I saw no white birds on the F1, I thought for sure I had been right, they carried I^D and the white birds had been Khaki with other stuff. Figured for sure I was dealing with a wheaten based dun buff type of bird.

Next year or so I did F1 x F1 crosses, and came up with a large variation of gingery birds. I know Games aren't bred for colour in particular and was prepared for a lot of stuff in there, and it's true, there's some extra things in there: One of my three original hens had to be carrying blue, because that showed up in a few of the offspring. There were other "self barred" type birds, and that is pointing to Db (Dark Brown) that I know was in the Marans rooster, but also suspect was in one of these hens because of the amount that turned up.

Next year (this year) I did another cross but a lot of these birds were F2 birds (as well as some of the older F1 hens). And now I finally have some "white" birds again. Didn't think too hard about them other than "Hmm, recessives popping up" because they've kind of become a minor side project that keeps going only by the skin of its teeth in the barn.

But the other day I was looking through Sigrid Van Dort's book Genetics of Chicken Colours that I've had since it came out, and
it suddenly struck me that what I have been looking at in my birds were variations of buff birds on wheaten with Di (Dilute), i^g (creme) and Cb (Champagne Blonde). Add those things together and you get a colour called Lemon (Citrus) that is known in European Silkies, which is essentially a very slightly off white bird with tinges of brown, just like these "white" Pumpkin Hulseys. There is also a colour called Sand which the author describes as "Lemon without the i^g". I am convinced without a shadow of a doubt right now that this is the genetic combinations that make up the birds that I have. I'm sure you can get to the pumpkin colour from other directions, but to get the white version of this bird, it's wheaten with the market basket of those three alleles. It explains the "white" and it explains why there is so much variation in the different F levels I've hatched that maintain a version of "pumpkin": It's all degrees of red restriction and dilution caused by three genes in a whole lot of combinations.

I may start over with the three white birds I hatched and cross into Brown Leghorns next year and see how much of this I can recreate.

Anyway, I thought I'd toss that out there for others to chew over. There's probably no right answer to everyone's birds, but I think if you are working with them you might consider these alleles as being in the mix.