Barred rock easter egger cross

[FolkSonginC]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this but I think this has the most to do with genetics... I just hatched a chick that's a mix between my EE rooster and my barred rock, and the chick is gray. Here are pics of the parents and chick. I'm wondering if the chick would be sexlinked with this cross, so would the dot on its head mean it's a male? I'm mostly curious as to what it will look like when it's fully feathered, will it just be barred?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yes, with a barred mother and a not-barred father, the boys will be barred and the girls will not. So it passes that part of the sex-linked test. The other part of the test is whether you can see the spot with the down color. With that chick it looks like yes, so it should be a boy.

That rooster looks like it has pretty mixed up genetics, not unusual with an EE rooster. It's possible you will not always be able to see the spot because of down color, but with that BR hen I'd think you should most of the time if not always. When you breed chickens with mixed genetics you can never be sure of what you will get, they are not always consistent. So I cannot give you any guarantees but I think you will have a real good chance of being able to tell the sex of the offspring from that pair.

In theory the chick should be black barred but something is making it gray. So probably gray barred. My first thought was that the rooster had a copy of the Blue/Black/Splash gene but his black feathers look Black, not Blue. Maybe he is a Splash so all his offspring with that BR hen will be gray? I don't know, there is always another possibility with genetics.

So while the theory is that it will be gray barred, there is a real good chance of some other colors showing up in some places. What we call leakage. That could be some feathers of a different color showing up at random places or it could be patches of color showing up somewhere. As long as they are not white you should see the barring in those patches or individual feathers.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Congratulations, it's a boy!

I'm with Ridgerunner that it will have leakage. My thought is red leaking on shoulders.

 

[Frazzemrat1]

Agree with above completely. That's a little cockerel! Any siblings that don't have the head spot will be pullets.