11 Week Easter Egger - mixed signals

[eclectic-em]

hello!

i’m aware easter eggers are a surprise “mutt” but i hatched a green egg and got georgie. i’ve called him a boy from day 1 just to mentally prepare for a rooster although the idea of georgie being a george grew on me and now i hope he really is a he.

but anyway, he’s fun looking and i am not sure what breed(s) he may have been crossed with to get his coloring and pattern so any input would be so appreciated.

also all signs point to boy except his comb is barely existent. and it doesn’t even look like a normal peacomb for an 11 week old. i know the easter eggers have them in all different shapes and sizes but it’s just like totally smooth and flat, which i can’t find similar looking ones online and am relatively new to chickens still.

on my knee around 10 weeks

georgie and sophie. she is 1 day older than him and a delaware x leghorn. he’s bent so this picture doesn’t compare their sizes well enough.

TLDR: i have 3 questions about this dude
-does his pattern or coloring look like any particular type of breed he may have been crossed with?
-is he really a he?
-why is his comb so flat and smooth? and not just if he is a pullet, even if so, it seems different.

 

[eclectic-em]

I agree with other posters. He looks to be a cockerel, though not as obvious as some are by this age!

this is probably because i hung photos of hens that i edited to be famous women in science and gov so that georgie had strong fem-hen-ists to look up to! probably should have done it for a rooster and some inspirational man too lol. and no.. i’m not kidding

we have the congresshen katie poultry and then it’s hard to see but rhos-island franklin, for rosalind franklin as a rhode island white hen in his brooder. should put these up in the coop too

 

[FuzzyCritters]

He does look like a cockerel to me. His comb is a cushion comb.

 

[EmmaRainboe]

Definitely male. He’s a real cutie.

 

[eclectic-em]

oh yes, it’s a boy he has been dating (well attempting to mate) his chickhood stuffed dinosaur. i think it’s because sophie isn’t laying yet and i think he’s being supportive (he tried to show her how to nest yesterday) and waiting or i just raised him like a hooman and he doesn’t know what to do.

he’s still a sweetheart besides being frustrated.. er.. you know. still wants to sit on my lap in the evenings while sophie is on my shoulders and only tried to mate with my arm once. awk.

oh and later in the spring or early summer when sophie is laying well, the gal who hatched sophie said she would incubate george x sophie eggs to see what kind of monster they make hehe.

just thought it would be a fun little update for all y’all who we’re so helpful on this thread!

 

[eclectic-em]

Definitely male. He’s a real cutie.

YAY! i was hoping a male since i raised him solo before growing the flock, so he’s incredibly sweet and funny!

 

[FuzzyCritters]

thank you!! see i just discovered all the types of combs last night googling it when i realized it wasn’t what i was expecting. any idea where it would come from?

Being and EE, he could have just gotten the lucky mix of genetics that gave him a cushion comb. Or maybe his has some more breeds than just EE in him. Cushion combs have pea comb genes, rose comb genes, and smooth comb genes, so he maybe he got the rose comb genes from another breed (because EEs already have pea comb genes).

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

If he hatched from a green shell, that makes him at the very least an F2 cross.... unless the Araucana or Ameraucana hen that laid his egg came from a line that laid green eggs instead of blue ones. Green-laying purebred Ameraucanas are something that's frequent enough in Canada that I look twice at their breeders before buying chicks, but if you're in the USA it shouldn't be too much of a problem, as they prefer their girls to lay blue.

Gold leakage happens most often in sex-linked crosses, in the male chicks. But I'm pretty sure there's one type of white plumage that can also leak gold, but I don't remember which one it is...

I wish I could help you more with finding the possible parentage of your cockerel. Maybe you could post pictures of your EE on this thread? His parentage may be unknown, but if someday someone posts pictures of an EE matching yours and knows what chicken breeds went behind its creation, that could potentially solve your mystery

His coloration, which looks like mixed gold/silver split columbian, isn’t exclusive to sex-linked crosses. Gold/silver split males, which are usually silver with yellowish feathering and often red leakage, can result from many crosses. Gold hen x silver rooster, silver rooster x gold hen, gold/silver split rooster x gold hen, gold/silver split rooster x silver hen, and silver rooster x silver hen (with autosomal red) can all produce gold/silver split male offspring or ones that appear to be gold/silver split (in the case of autosomal (non-sexlinked) red). All but one of the above crosses is sex-linked.

I'm guessing his mom was an EE, but his dad is a different breed because of his white legs and cushion comb (not common in EEs). It's too bad there are no breed tests for chickens yet

Agreed.

I suspected sex-linkage too, and it's nice to see my hunch confirmed The best breed test that can be done is to have the breeder keep track of which birds he breeds together, so whoever buys the resulting chicks knows what the parents are if they want more of that cross.

@InterestingChickens - the muffs are on the sides of the chicken's cheeks, while the beard sprouts over the throat. I spotted cheek feathers but no throat feathers on OP's EE, so that's why I said Araucana over Ameraucana for a possible parent xD (then again, ten weeks old is still young, maybe the EE hasn't fully grown its beard yet.)

@sourland - What makes you think the EE is a pullet? Is it its eyes?

Araucanas have ear tufts, completely different from muffs. Unless they’re tailed araucanas, which have muffs and crests.

 

[Pentatonchix]

@EmmaRainboe @Eelantha @black_cat @FuzzyCritters @TheOddOneOut

 

[Rhodebar Lover]

I agree, he's a cockerel!