Mine are so blue....lol. That porcelain is such pretty colors. Well, my friend was a joy and so are her birds anyhow! Can't wait to hatch some to see how they breed cause surely they can't breed true no matter what she thought. Wondering if the charcoal hen she had as lavender is actually a black or a splash then. They're all splash but, you know. It's the only hen that dark marked lavender.
Lol...that makes sense eh. There's so many recessive genes that can mask all other colors when paired up, like white in ducks. Blue must not be that way since it throws mixed babies and lavender must be that way because it breeds true? Sorry if that's a stupid question...I haven't read about color genetics in years and years now and have forgotten most of what I had learned.
There could be a few birds that carry it, and you wouldn't know until they were bred to each other and an all-white chick showed up. But you're right, if no white chicks ever show up it's a fairly safe bet there is no recessive white.
Correct, if all birds show reasonable amounts of black or blue, you probably do not have Dominant White. Since it is dominant, there is no way for it to hide and pop out later.
Correct, if all birds show some amount of red/yellow/brown, there should no silver in the flock. Since it is also dominant, there is no way for it to hide.
Yes.
Not-recessive-white would be CC, and also breed true.
Yes, except Dominant White is II, and not-Dominant-White is ii.
(A not-white chicken is probably CC and ii, because it is not recessive white or Dominant White. But it could be Cc ii, carrying recessive white.)
Yes, they are very pretty!
They have some interesting (complicated) genetics, too.
Here's an article that talks about what genes they've got:
https://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGP/Phoen/ReederRedShGenetics.html
It's a rather complicated mixture!
Oh, I think I see what must have happened.
A white chicken can ALSO carry the blue gene, without it being seen.
Black is diluted to blue, but then Dominant White or recessive white makes the chicken look white.
I've read that White Leghorns usually breed true for Dominant White (on an otherwise black chicken), but they also have blue and barring and maybe mottling as well. So if you cross them to other breeds, and interbreed the offspring, you start getting other colors (barred, blue, blue barred, etc.)
I think those diagrams are trying to show black, blue, and splash-- but they are saying "white" when they should say "splash." Maybe they think splash are dirty whites??
I also do not know why they are using a C with a superscript letter to indicate the genes, because that is NOT the standard abbreviation for that gene in chickens.
Other than the mis-labeling, that is a fine diagram for black/blue/splash.
C should be not-recessive-white, with c being recessive white (capital vs. lower case letters.) No, that diagram is not referring to either kind of white. It's just mis-labeling splash as "white" and using weird letters.
Yes, if the original whites were also carrying the blue gene (even though the breeders didn't know if was there until they got blue offspring.)
Blues come from any of the following matings:
splash x black (100% blue chicks)
blue x blue (50% blue chicks, 25% black, 25% splash)
splash x blue (50% blue chicks, 50% splash)
black x blue (50% blue chicks, 50% black)
Black can get complicated.
I would say black is mostly what happens when no other genes interfere.
Every chicken who lacks the blue gene is "black" (not-blue)
Every chicken who lacks the lavender gene is "black" (not-lavender)
Every chicken who lacks the Dominant White gene is "black" (not-Dominant-White)
And so on for not-chocolate, and not-barred, and not-recessive-white, etc.
But of course not all of those chickens actually look black.
A chicken might be lavender (two copies of the lavender gene) but not-blue and not-Dominant-White (so "black" as regards those two genes.)
Each gene has a physical location on the chromosome. That spot is called the "locus" (Latin word for "place.")
At the blue locus, the chicken can have the gene for blue or not-blue. There are only two choices. Each choice is called an "allele." Blue is one allele, not-blue is the other. A chicken gets one from each parent, for a total of two.
But there is a spot called the e-locus that has at least FIVE alleles. They all affect how the black and red are distributed on the chicken. Of course, a chicken can only have two of them at a time, because it gets one from each parent.
At the e-locus, the most dominant allele is called "Extended Black," with the abbreviation E. That gene spreads black over the whole chicken, instead of letting it have a pattern of black and red. ("Extends" the black.) Of the alleles at the e-locus, Extended Black was identified and named first, so all the others have abbreviations that begin with "e" to indicate that they are at the same locus.
The other alleles include E^R, e^Wh, e^b, e+ (and various others-- people keep finding new ones, then discovering that some "new" ones are the same as the already-known ones but others are not.)
If you want to read about the e-locus, it's discussed on both of these pages:
http://kippenjungle.nl/sellers/page3.html
http://kippenjungle.nl/sellers/page2.html
But if any single gene deserves to be called a "black" gene in chickens, it's probably Extended Black.
Of course, a chicken can have the Extended Black gene, and actually be blue all over, or have white barring, or white dots from mottling, or be all white because of Dominant White, or can have any other appearance that is caused by genes affecting black.
(Um, I did say black is complicated....)
You're welcome! Yes, I enjoy the calculator too!
If you want to play with the genes that are easier to understand in the calculator: start at the BOTTOM of the list. The top few are the ones that affect how the black & red are arranged, and they interact in ways that can be confusing. But further down the list are ones that just change the shade of black, or change the shade of red, or make white lines across the chicken, or something else that is fairly easy to understand.
(Note, I see that "mottled" does not change the picture-- a pity, since it's one of the ones you are most interested in!)
Um, I don't know for sure. I'm pretty bad at sorting out different patterns.
But wild-type hens (also called Duckwing or Black Breasted Red) usually have stippling (little black dots) on the feathers. And wild-type chicks are striped like chipmunks, too.
I'm afraid I don't know how to tell them apart.
You could post that picture and question in this thread:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/the-ask-anything-to-nicalandia-thread.1509343/
I think that person is fairly good at recognizing patterns, and might be able to tell you what pattern the chicken has to go with the mottling.
Yes, that would have been great!
Ok...let's see if I'm understanding. So dominant white and recessive white are two different alleles and a bird can carry both. Dominant white is not C...it's I or i. Recessive white is C or c.
There could be a few birds that carry it, and you wouldn't know until they were bred to each other and an all-white chick showed up. But you're right, if no white chicks ever show up it's a fairly safe bet there is no recessive white.
Correct, if all birds show reasonable amounts of black or blue, you probably do not have Dominant White. Since it is dominant, there is no way for it to hide and pop out later.
Correct, if all birds show some amount of red/yellow/brown, there should no silver in the flock. Since it is also dominant, there is no way for it to hide.
Yes.
Not-recessive-white would be CC, and also breed true.
Yes, except Dominant White is II, and not-Dominant-White is ii.
(A not-white chicken is probably CC and ii, because it is not recessive white or Dominant White. But it could be Cc ii, carrying recessive white.)
Yes, they are very pretty!
They have some interesting (complicated) genetics, too.
Here's an article that talks about what genes they've got:
https://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGP/Phoen/ReederRedShGenetics.html
It's a rather complicated mixture!
Oh, I think I see what must have happened.
A white chicken can ALSO carry the blue gene, without it being seen.
Black is diluted to blue, but then Dominant White or recessive white makes the chicken look white.
I've read that White Leghorns usually breed true for Dominant White (on an otherwise black chicken), but they also have blue and barring and maybe mottling as well. So if you cross them to other breeds, and interbreed the offspring, you start getting other colors (barred, blue, blue barred, etc.)
I think those diagrams are trying to show black, blue, and splash-- but they are saying "white" when they should say "splash." Maybe they think splash are dirty whites??
I also do not know why they are using a C with a superscript letter to indicate the genes, because that is NOT the standard abbreviation for that gene in chickens.
Other than the mis-labeling, that is a fine diagram for black/blue/splash.
C should be not-recessive-white, with c being recessive white (capital vs. lower case letters.) No, that diagram is not referring to either kind of white. It's just mis-labeling splash as "white" and using weird letters.
Yes, if the original whites were also carrying the blue gene (even though the breeders didn't know if was there until they got blue offspring.)
Blues come from any of the following matings:
splash x black (100% blue chicks)
blue x blue (50% blue chicks, 25% black, 25% splash)
splash x blue (50% blue chicks, 50% splash)
black x blue (50% blue chicks, 50% black)
Black can get complicated.
I would say black is mostly what happens when no other genes interfere.
Every chicken who lacks the blue gene is "black" (not-blue)
Every chicken who lacks the lavender gene is "black" (not-lavender)
Every chicken who lacks the Dominant White gene is "black" (not-Dominant-White)
And so on for not-chocolate, and not-barred, and not-recessive-white, etc.
But of course not all of those chickens actually look black.
A chicken might be lavender (two copies of the lavender gene) but not-blue and not-Dominant-White (so "black" as regards those two genes.)
Each gene has a physical location on the chromosome. That spot is called the "locus" (Latin word for "place.")
At the blue locus, the chicken can have the gene for blue or not-blue. There are only two choices. Each choice is called an "allele." Blue is one allele, not-blue is the other. A chicken gets one from each parent, for a total of two.
But there is a spot called the e-locus that has at least FIVE alleles. They all affect how the black and red are distributed on the chicken. Of course, a chicken can only have two of them at a time, because it gets one from each parent.
At the e-locus, the most dominant allele is called "Extended Black," with the abbreviation E. That gene spreads black over the whole chicken, instead of letting it have a pattern of black and red. ("Extends" the black.) Of the alleles at the e-locus, Extended Black was identified and named first, so all the others have abbreviations that begin with "e" to indicate that they are at the same locus.
The other alleles include E^R, e^Wh, e^b, e+ (and various others-- people keep finding new ones, then discovering that some "new" ones are the same as the already-known ones but others are not.)
If you want to read about the e-locus, it's discussed on both of these pages:
http://kippenjungle.nl/sellers/page3.html
http://kippenjungle.nl/sellers/page2.html
But if any single gene deserves to be called a "black" gene in chickens, it's probably Extended Black.
Of course, a chicken can have the Extended Black gene, and actually be blue all over, or have white barring, or white dots from mottling, or be all white because of Dominant White, or can have any other appearance that is caused by genes affecting black.
(Um, I did say black is complicated....
You're welcome! Yes, I enjoy the calculator too!
If you want to play with the genes that are easier to understand in the calculator: start at the BOTTOM of the list. The top few are the ones that affect how the black & red are arranged, and they interact in ways that can be confusing. But further down the list are ones that just change the shade of black, or change the shade of red, or make white lines across the chicken, or something else that is fairly easy to understand.
(Note, I see that "mottled" does not change the picture-- a pity, since it's one of the ones you are most interested in!)
Um, I don't know for sure. I'm pretty bad at sorting out different patterns.
But wild-type hens (also called Duckwing or Black Breasted Red) usually have stippling (little black dots) on the feathers. And wild-type chicks are striped like chipmunks, too.
I'm afraid I don't know how to tell them apart.
You could post that picture and question in this thread:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/the-ask-anything-to-nicalandia-thread.1509343/
I think that person is fairly good at recognizing patterns, and might be able to tell you what pattern the chicken has to go with the mottling.
Yes, that would have been great!
It's the only chicken species I've had where the starter chicks I received had some birds with problems like that. I culled those as soon as the problems showed but assumed it was caused by a narrow gene pool in the US. I've tried to mitigate it by ordering from multiple places. Unfortunately there's no one else here raising them so my only choices are mail order. I'm very curious to know if it is about a narrow gene pool or if it's about the genes that set their colors. They're such lovely birds but they're more yard art then utility birds. Still...I love em
They're born with these great temperaments. Friendly, curious and easy going even if you never handle them except to catch and move them. Catching them just requires you to stand nearby and act interested in anything... they'll come right up to see what you're up to and stare you in the eye while you bend over to pet them or pick them up. My Dodo chickens...lol.
Yes, those diagrams are incorrect the way they are.
Aaaa!Yes.
Yes.
Yes
Um, sort of.
The dominant allele gets a capital letter, and the recessive one gets a lowercase letter.
So you just list whichever is present, the dominant or the recessive trait.
Example with blue:
Bl/Bl is splash (two copies of the blue gene, which is dominant.)
bl/bl is black (two copies of the not-blue gene, which is recessive.)
Bl/bl is blue (one copy of the blue gene, and one copy of the not-blue gene.)
Example with Dominant White:
I/I is pure for Dominant White.
I/i has one copy of the Dominant White gene, and one copy of not-Dominant-White
i/i is pure for not-Dominant-White
With many of the genes, we have a name for the mutation (blue, Dominat White, recessive white, etc.) But we don't have a good name for the other form of the gene, the original wild-type form.
I've settled for calling them not-blue, or not-Dominant-White, or not-recessive-white, just to point out that they are a gene at that place, but it's the gene for not having that trait. (I don't know of anyone else who habitually refers to them that way, but people seem to understand well enough what I mean, so I've kept doing it.)
Sometimes the mutation is dominant (Dominant White, Blue) and sometimes it's recessive (recessive white, mottling, lavender.)
I had a few Yokohamas at one point, too. Mine were all females. I liked them quite well, except that they made a LOT of noise (egg song too many times a day). I gave them to some friends, where they flew out of their pens and got killed by various predators (many other breeds of chickens were staying safely IN the same pens.)
So the Yokohamas I had didn't rate too high on survivability!
Incomplete dominance means that one copy of the blue gene has an effect (turns black to blue) but two copies of the blue gene have a stronger effect (turns black to splash.)
Complete dominance is when one copy of a gene (not-recessive-white) has the very same effect as two copies of that gene. You cannot tell by looking at the chicken whether it carries one copy of the recessive white gene or whether it is pure for not-recessive-white.
I think they had splash birds, and mistakenly thought they had white birds. (So they crossed a splash with a black and got blue-- no surprise there!) That is the simplest explanation that covers the "facts" in the story.
Or they had a bird that was splash, but looked white because it also had one copy of the Dominant White gene. So when they crossed it with a black bird, they got some white chicks (Dominant White, also genetically blue but you can' t see the blue) and some blue chicks (no Dominant White, so you are able to see the blue.)
Or they could possibly have had birds that were white from recessive white, but also splash. Crossing those to a black bird would have given blue chickens (black x splash = blue, and recessive white x not-recessive white gives birds that are not white.) Or to use symbols, the chicks from such a cross would be Bl/bl C/c.
But I think they most likely had splash birds and were CALLING them "white."
Yes, a "white" bird created with Dominant White is genetically an all-black bird (so no red can show), and then the black is turned to white by Dominant White.
Yes, black can be complicated!
Blue is the name for an actual allele. It just happens to be incompletely dominant, so only one copy of the blue allele is needed to make a chicken look "blue."
Dominant White is a separate gene, at a different locus.
Blue is much easier if you leave Dominant White out of the picture.
Dominant genes get capital letters, whether they are completely dominant or incompletely dominant. Recessive genes get lowercase letters.
The e-locus is definitely interesting, but also complicated!
It affects the adult color of the chicken, but also the color of the down when the chicks hatch. And with at least 5 alleles, and many ways to combine them, and many other changes caused by other genes-- it can be very hard to figure out!
I've learned a lot from it too!
From what you have described of your birds, you probably do not have Extended Black in your flock.
--Extended Black chicks are often colored like little penguins, in black and yellow.
If you want to look up pictures, here are examples of some chickens that have Extended Black:
Barred Rock and Cuckoo Marans (white barring on the black)
Blue Cuckoo Marans (blue gene dilutes the black, and white barring on that.)
Mottled Ancona (mottled gene on the black)
Lavender Orpingon (lavender gene dilutes the black)
Chocolate Orpington (chocolate gene dilutes the black)
Pearl Old English Game Bantam (lavender gene dilutes the black, AND mottled gene makes white dots.)
White Leghorns (Dominant White changes the black to white. But they often have blue, barring, and various other genes too-- it's like someone stacked up every possible gene that could make black lighter or remove it in places, and put them all in the same chickens to make them REALLY white!)
Extended Black written as E means it is dominant over the other alleles at the e-locus.
Dominant White written as I means it is dominant over other alleles at the i-locus.
Recessive white written as c means it is recessive to other alleles at the c-locus.
Whether a gene is dominant or recessive at its own locus does not tell you how it interacts with genes at a different locus.
I think you are likely to be right about them being e+ or eb at the e-locus, but I'm not positive either.
I've had times when I really wanted to know what genes something had, so I certainly understand that!
Quick questions...from the little I think I know about olansdk chickens, they come in a really wide variety of colors with no solid colored birds. But there can be everything between nearly solid dark colored to nearly solid white colored.
And that's why I've said that I "sort-of" know things, and look some up to be sure.
I've done things like that too many times to count!
But over time, I do remember it more often and forget less often.
I'm glad my explanation helped!
I've forgotten where you found that phrase, but I would expect "expressed in a reduced ratio" to mean that less offspring show the recessive trait, and more show the dominant trait.
Example with recessive white:
Cross CC with cc to get Cc
Cross Cc with Cc to get 25% CC, 50% Cc, 25% cc
But when you look at those chicks, CC and Cc look alike (show color), so 75% of the chicks are colored. Only 25% look white (cc). So you're seeing a reduced number of cc chicks, compared to what you might see with a dominant gene.
It can certainly be a lot to wade through
That sounds right to me!
Yes, correct. One allele from each parent, so 2 total in the chicken.
Each locus requires at least 2 alleles to exist, or else we wouldn't be paying any attention to it. (Because if only 1 allele exists, then all chickens have that trait, so we just consider it part of being a chicken-- like having 2 legs and 2 wings and 1 head. So we don't think of it as a locus.)
But there can be several mutated alleles, like at the e-locus (5+), even though a particular chicken only has two of them. It's like having a plate with many kinds of cookies, but you're only allowed to take one with each hand, so it's impossible to try them all
Yes, I think you do have it
Definitely easy to get sidetracked, with that many fun things
I may have read that too, but I don't remember for sure.
I have no personal experience with breeding lavender.
I've read that chickens with the mottling gene will show more white as they get older (more white appearing each time they molt.)
I'm not quite sure what you're asking.
I've heard that idea before, and I think it's partly true.
I would agree with that.
If you cross to chickens from another bloodline, you might get unexpected traits popping up because of the crossing.
I would guess the "breed true" refers to overall type, not specifically the blue color, but of course I cannot be sure that's what she meant.
I agree it seems likely that she could tell blue and lavender apart, but of course there's no way to be positive about that.
Sorry, I don't know what to look for.
Oh, that makes sense. I think she's right.
