Will these gray chicks keep their color? BA roo Partridge Rock hens.

[la dee da]

I sent Sandhill an email explaining the lavender chicks, and I asked them if they know what could've happened.

 

[la dee da]

Forgive the rooster’s comb; it got damaged during winter.

 

[la dee da]

All the australorps look black (even with the green sheen) when I look at them. My husband and I have never questioned they’re color, so I don’t think they’re dark blue.

 

[ShrekDawg]

Hmmm this is a mystery lol

 

[la dee da]

Sandhill replied that they’ll look into it. Here’s hoping they’ll figure it out!

 

[Frizzle and Friends]

Yeah, I was asking about the breed because Orpingtons are the only breed I've seen sold as split to lavender and wondered if this could have been a lucky TSC accident. Since they're from Sandhill, I've got no clue on where the color came from.
It would be really cool if you ended up with some birds from a Lavender Australorp project. The only other explanation I thought of would be a Lavender Orpington rooster did some fence hopping there. They are close enough to Australorps (white skin, looser feathering, and single comb) that the offspring would pass as black Australorps easily.
Pretty confident the color isn't from Partridge Rocks, since they shouldn't have any genes to cause it. For some reason, my brain went partridge=plymouth when first reading this and I immediately thought all offspring were Australorps since there are no head spots from barred mothers. The only difference between the Rock crosses and the Australorps would be leakage once they are older.

Also, a bit of a random request. There's a few chicks with very white heads in the picture, could you update on those too? They have more white than I would typically expect on an extended black chick so I was curious to see how they'd grow out. Probably they'll just be normal blacks and lavenders, but they're just different enough for me to wonder if there's something else going on as well.

 

[la dee da]

I hadn’t even realized that the black and white chicks could be odd. Their parents also had black and white along with the black and yellow (I looked back at last year’s pictures to confirm it). Could the black and white ones be the parents of the lavender/gray chicks? I took some more pics of this year’s chicks, though my camera couldn’t get too accurate with the colors (the chick with an all-yellow head sometimes looks white). I’ll post the pics once they upload.

 

[la dee da]

The lighting changed because I used an LED flashlight to try to get more accurate colors.

 

[la dee da]

Lol I just realized one of the itty bitty babies got in the photo. They aren’t runts; they’re just a week behind the others. I didn’t expect Ms. Broodie to actually hatch more when I let her keep sitting on the eggs that didn’t hatch (it’s been too busy to try breaking her), and I had to pull the chicks to get them food and water. I’ve been keeping a close eye on them, and so far the older ones are doing very well with them.

 

[Frizzle and Friends]

I hadn’t even realized that the black and white chicks could be odd. Their parents also had black and white along with the black and yellow (I looked back at last year’s pictures to confirm it). Could the black and white ones be the parents of the lavender/gray chicks? I took some more pics of this year’s chicks, though my camera couldn’t get too accurate with the colors (the chick with an all-yellow head sometimes looks white). I’ll post the pics once they upload.

If the parents had that much white and yellow as chicks, then it must just be a fluke. It's normal for black chicks to have yellow or white bellies and chins, it's just not that common for it to extend up to the top of their heads.
I don't think it has anything to do the the lavender, they just looked suspiciously like mottled chicks with the white and yellow heads so I'd though you might also want to pay attention to those. Mottling would be another gene that would hide in the parents since it's recessive, but again, if the parents showed the same coloration then I would say it's just individual variation.