Opal legbar (lavender) x black Ameraucana question

[ChickyPants]

Hey everyone!

I just want to make sure I understand this properly. I'm going to be buying some opal legbar eggs And I would love to use them to create an Easter Egger that has the color of the opal leg bars.

So if I take opal leg bar roosters and breed them with black ameraucanas these chicks will all be split to the lavender / opal gene. And then I take these chicks and breed them back to their father. This second generation will give me 50% opal coloration and 50% black. Is this correct?

Will they keep their barring or will some have lost it? Not sure how that works

And if I breed the splits together I get 25% opal colouring?

Has anyone tried this mix before? I would love to see what the birds end up looking like!

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

Opal and lavender are two separate things— lavender is a simple recessive gene that dilutes a chicken’s coloration, opal is a combination of gold duckwing, barring, and lavender. Opal legbars are probably also supposed to have the cream gene, but I’m not sure how much that impacts their coloration.

You will get 50% lavender if breeding the offspring back to a lavender bird, and 25% lavender if you breed the splits together. However, getting the opal coloration itself will probably take longer unless you hatch a lot of chicks.