The "What Color Is My Chicken?" thread! Calling all color experts!

[Henk69]

Dominant white is dominant to smokey and the dun alleles.

The smokey allele is incompletely dominant to the wild type allele.

Do not know the relationship between smokey and dun.

Tim

Is there some new research that I missed?

 

[WyoChickenMamma]

Well this little chick, Nellie, was solid black when she came a week and a half ago. Well she did have a little white feathering in her bowtie and a bit on her face. This morning she was in the sunlight and I noticed some red coming in on her wings. The first pic is of here at one week old, the next two are ones I took today at 1.5 weeks with the red coming in on her. Any ideas of what I can expect her to feather out into as an adult? Really hoping this doesn't mean she could be a he! I ordered only pullets, but we all now how that can go awry sometimes. Fingers crossed.
Here she is with her friend Nala...see the white on her face and chest.


Here is a close up of the color changing going on in her wing.



Here is a shot of her full body, you can see the reddish brown feathering coming in on the top of her wings. I hope someone here might have an idea of what she will look like as an adult. I am trying to decide which ones I will keep. TIA.

 

[draye]

Looks like she maybe coming in a Partridge.

 

[alohachickens]

I^D (dun) isn't sex linked, but choc (chocolate) is and to make matters confusing both the dun color and the chocolate color can be referred to as dun. However, either of these two different genes can result in this color. In this case, with alohachicken's roosters, I think we are talking about I^D. However, alohachickens posted previously that both parents had black and that would rule out dun I *think*. If that is the case it brings the discussion back around to the dreaded color variations of "buff"

So . . . the fact that none of Pumpkin's babies look like him . . . that means this can't be a simple dominant gene, right?

Here are two photos of the breeding pen. You can see the hens he was crossed with. Some are pure Sussex, some are this new unknown Aloha bloodline, those hens are related to him.





And Dun is a simple dominant, correct? So if it was Dun, half the chicks would look like him?

Some of his chicks are in this group photo (note there are also other lines/breeds) but so far, none look just like him:



And about the Buff variation thing . . . I suppose that yes, it could be some odd form of Buff.

But, I also have a Buff Barred Mottled roo here, and he clearly is Buff. (Also notice the black tail feathers.) Pumpkin and Butterscotch both look SO different from this guy:



Above: Buff Barred with Mottling (note black tail feathers)
Below: Pumpkin, one of two "mystery color" chickens in question:



Why the deep orange red color on a Buff? Or is it just the Barring that is making the other Buff mottled rooster look so much lighter?

Please note the Buff Barred mottled roo has a touch of black on his tail tip. Meanwhile, I haven't found a speck of true black pigment on Butterscotch, so far?

Should I test breed these "mystery" roos over Buff hens? So far, when bred to Sussex hens, the chicks look like Sussex. No effect on Black, which is what we'd see if this was simple dominant Dun gene at work, right? Because Dun dilutes Black?

If this color is a variation of Buff, what would be the result if I crossed these roosters over Buff hens? All Buff chicks?? And if the chicks were not all Buff when he's crossed with Buff hens, would that tell me that it is something else entirely? (In other words, is Buff recessive? So Buff x Buff would only make more Buff.)

I wish we had color DNA tests for chickens!

 

[alohachickens]

I found this pic of a Buff Leghorn Bantam. Could this be the color I see on my roosters, and if so, how do I make more like this rooster? Use Buff hens? (I'd like to keep the color dark like this for the Mottling to show up, if it is simply a dark form of Buff.)

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/hh16/Arie_nl/P1030439.jpg

I noticed this rooster doesn't have black in his tail feathers, either?

 

[Meara]

Quote:

Some of his chicks are in this group photo (note there are also other lines/breeds) but so far, none look just like him:

I'm curious about the brown crested bird in the center. Is that a Sizzle? That is an interesting chocolately color. I see the tail of another brown colored bird in the background. Are those birds part of your breeding project? Can you post some pictures of them? That brown color could be dun.

 

[tadkerson]

Is there some new research that I missed?

No, the information I posted was from Ziel and Hollanders paper " Dun, a new plumage-color mutant at the I-locus in the fowl (Gallus gallus)"and " The Dominant white, Dun and Smoky color variants in chicken are associated with insertion/deletion polymorphisms in the PMEL17 gene. I posted wild type- it was wild type at the dominant white locus not the E locus.

[FONT='times new roman', serif]Tim[/FONT]

 

[alohachickens]

Quote:
I'm curious about the brown crested bird in the center. Is that a Sizzle? That is an interesting chocolately color. I see the tail of another brown colored bird in the background. Are those birds part of your breeding project? Can you post some pictures of them? That brown color could be dun.

Yes, the crested chick, it is a Dun, but is not related at all to the rooster in question! Those are Laree's eggs she got from someone else (sorry, can't remember the other person's name.) So we do have a "true dun" colored chick to compare, and so far, none of the rooster Pumpkin's chicks have looked like the true Dun chicks. None have looked like him at all, so far!

Here is a baby picture of the rooster, Pumpkin, with his brother. You can see the similarities and the differences between the chicks. This is when I noticed his color was something new:



It was like the body color was the same, but his tail is clearly light (the sun is shining through it) while his brother's tail was black! So interesting.

This is a photo of the dad. I thought his tail just had too many white feathers for me to see the black colors, but you can see in this pic, the dad doesn't really have any visible black, either.



Neither the dad or the son really struck me as "buff" however. They both looked very red???

 

[Meara]

Quote:

This is a photo of the dad. I thought his tail just had too many white feathers for me to see the black colors, but you can see in this pic, the dad doesn't really have any visible black, either.



Neither the dad or the son really struck me as "buff" however. They both looked very red???

The dad almost certainly has a dose of dominant white.
Buff comes in myriad shades depending on which E allele it is based on and what modifiers are present. But that red is probably caused by autosomal red leaking through and even though the dad has it Pumpkin didn't inherit it. That's my "best guess"!

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
Laree got some dun birds from me, and those certainly have the same look. I am pretty sure she hatched some of their eggs. If she got eggs from somewhere else, though, they aren't from my birds.