BBS breeding and dilute / white splash

[NatJ]

I agree with @pipdzipdnreadytogo about what genes the rooster likely has. I wasn't sure what to think about the hen, but I see no reason to disagree there.

His sons would also inherit this gene but not lay eggs, of course, so it'll be hard to tell which did or didn't inherit it without testcrossing them to see what their daughters lay, a very time-consuming endeavor.

For the blue egg gene, there is now a test (probably cheaper than test-mating, considering the cost of feed to raise the daughters to laying age.)
https://iqbirdtesting.com/blueegg

For the current rooster, I agree that he is likely to have either one or two copies of the blue egg gene, which would cause either half or all of his daughters to lay blue eggs. If he has only one copy of the blue egg gene, it is more likely to be linked to the pea comb gene, and less likely to be linked with the not-pea comb gene. If he has two copies of the blue egg gene, there would be one linked each way (probably tracing back to an Ameraucana ancestor for the pea comb/blue egg linkage, and a Cream Legbar ancestor for the not-pea comb/blue egg linkage.)

 

[2ndTink]

Easter-eggers are tough because they generally have many heterozygous gene pairs and potentially have recessive genes hiding under more dominant genes. I do agree that he is blue, but to my eye he looks gold/silver split, or heterozygous for silver, S/s+, not homozygous gold, which would be s+/s+. He is also likely heterozygous for the pea comb gene based on the height of his comb, meaning he has one gene for pea comb and one gene for single comb, P/p+, and he appears to be split for the beard gene as well, Mb/mb+, but that's tricky to be certain of just on looks. He for certain has at least one beard gene, however.

Beyond that, I suspect that he has a reddening gene like mahogany or autosomal red due to the depth of red he has in some spots, and he looks like he could be duckwing or wheaten based, but it's hard to say which just from looking at him... If you have any pictures of him as a chick, that would help to determine which, but for the purposes of crossing him to Black Australorps, that likely won't make much of a difference in the offspring.

With Black Australorps, I would expect you to get 50% blue chicks and 50% black chicks. Yes, most likely they will have color leakage, the actual color of which depends on what gene the Australorps carry at the s-locus. His daughters should be about equal numbers of gold and silver leakage, as they inherit the gene for gold or silver only from their father and he has both. His sons, however, will inherit one copy from him and one from their mother, meaning that either way about half should have 'golden' (the term used to describe gold/silver split coloring) leakage, and the other half will either have gold or silver leakage depending on what the mother provides.

With single-combed mothers, you should also expect about half of the chicks to be single-combed and half to have a taller pea comb like their father. And if he is split for the beard gene as I suspect, about half will have a beard and half won't.

Note that all of the traits mentioned so far are completely independent of one another. In other words, you could have a blue chick with silver leakage, a beard, and a single comb, or a blue chick with gold leakage, a beard, and a pea comb, or a black chick with silver leakage, no beard, and a pea comb, etc.

Being an Easter-egger, though he does not lay eggs as a rooster, he also is likely to have the gene for blue egg shells that he could pass on to his offspring. If he's pure for that gene, then all of his daughters should lay greenish eggs (blue shell from him plus brown coating from the Australorp mother makes a green-colored egg). If he's split, then about half of his daughters will lay greenish and the other half some shade of brown. There is some linkage between the pea comb gene and the blue egg gene, so it's more likely that any of his daughters with pea combs will be the ones to inherit the blue shell gene and lay greenish eggs versus the ones with single combs, but it's not necessarily impossible for the single-combed daughters to do the same as well, so that'll mostly be a wait and see trait. His sons would also inherit this gene but not lay eggs, of course, so it'll be hard to tell which did or didn't inherit it without testcrossing them to see what their daughters lay, a very time-consuming endeavor.

The brown egg coating, for the record, is a polygenic trait, meaning multiple genes control it, and the rooster could have some of these genes as well, so it's hard to say exactly how much of a brown shell coating they will get from this combination.




Goodness, I had to do a double-take on this gal! She looks so similar to one of my EE hens, Endymion, that I thought you might have paid my chicken yard a visit for those pictures!

View attachment 3732137

Looking at your bird, I don't see dun or any brown dilution of black, I see a silver-partridge type pattern with a reddening gene like the ones I mentioned before. The red and silver is kind of sprinkled throughout her plumage and that's what gives her a sort of gray-brown tone. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

Must re-read again... but I just have to say, WOW, your Endymion is gorgeous and her face and neck does look a lot like Maple!

My thought on hatching a few of the EExBA mixes is that they should be good egg layers and hearty, egg color isn't important to me on this one. I'm assuming the EE is heterozygous on the blue / white shell and likely carries some brown pigmenting genes. Of the 5 EE hens, one laid a brown egg, the blue shell the others have is not a heavily colored blue, it's fairly pale.

I'm happy that you think the offspring will likely be 50/50 on blue and black, the hubby likes blue birds so it will be easier to creep the layer flock number up when they are a color he likes I may keep anything blue no matter of comb, and sell off any black chicks, just as I'm thinking of doing with the eggs from Chonkers pen.

I also have quite a few purebred eggs from breeders I will be putting in the incubator, so my test hatching eggs will fill in whatever empty spots are left over which may not be many. I'm trying to balmace my new interest in the "what if" with being a responsible chicken owner and carrying on purebred lines.

I have so much to learn, I'm excited and hopeful that I'll be ale to pick this info up and really retain it!

I'll see if I can find a chick photo of Fiz Bang.

 

[2ndTink]

Here he is

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I agree with @pipdzipdnreadytogo about what genes the rooster likely has. I wasn't sure what to think about the hen, but I see no reason to disagree there.


For the blue egg gene, there is now a test (probably cheaper than test-mating, considering the cost of feed to raise the daughters to laying age.)
https://iqbirdtesting.com/blueegg

For the current rooster, I agree that he is likely to have either one or two copies of the blue egg gene, which would cause either half or all of his daughters to lay blue eggs. If he has only one copy of the blue egg gene, it is more likely to be linked to the pea comb gene, and less likely to be linked with the not-pea comb gene. If he has two copies of the blue egg gene, there would be one linked each way (probably tracing back to an Ameraucana ancestor for the pea comb/blue egg linkage, and a Cream Legbar ancestor for the not-pea comb/blue egg linkage.)

Shoot, I always forget about the DNA testing!

Here he is
View attachment 3732228

View attachment 3732230

Oooh, what a pretty baby he was! He looks like e+/e+ duckwing with other genes adjusting the appearance slightly to me, maybe e^b/e+ though I'd expect that to look just a tiny bit different. As mentioned before, with the Australorps supplying the dominant E extended black gene, regardless of what e-locus genes he has likely won't make much of a difference in the offspring.

 

[2ndTink]

I only have two Fizzy x BA eggs to set tomorrow, they seem to have decided to slack at just the wrong time! I plan to set more eggs early March too, so I can try a few more then.

As this cross may produce 50% blue, I've seen "blue" range from what visually looks darn near black to me, to light grey colors. What determines the shade of blue feathering? If you had super dark blue chickens, what would you do to lighten them? If you cross a dark blue to a light blue (BBS) the 50% blues that hatch, what shade would they take after?

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

I only have two Fizzy x BA eggs to set tomorrow, they seem to have decided to slack at just the wrong time! I plan to set more eggs early March too, so I can try a few more then.

Ah, chickens! Sometimes it feels like they know we have plans and actively work against us!

As this cross may produce 50% blue, I've seen "blue" range from what visually looks darn near black to me, to light grey colors. What determines the shade of blue feathering? If you had super dark blue chickens, what would you do to lighten them?

That's something I'm working against in my silkied Cochin bantams, super dark Blues that are almost indistinguishable from the Blacks. From what I've gleaned from reading, asking questions, and a bit of personal experience as well, there are a few factors to the shade of blue; other genes like melanizers, e-locus allele, a supposed accumulation of the blue dilution gene, etc. Silkied feathering also seems to make blue appear darker, quite possibly just due to it scattering that darker edging that blue feathers get so that it's not just concentrated to the edge of the feather, so deeper shades of blue that are desirable in smooth-feathered varieties end up looking super dark in silkied varieties.

Melanizers are genes that darken plumage and add more black to the feathering when there otherwise might be a pattern. For example, E extended black does as the name says, extends the black coloring across the body. But without melanizers, gold or silver color often leaks through. Another example, E^R birchen causes a mostly black coloring, but with red/gold or silver coloring in the neck of hens and the neck and saddle of roosters (think of Black Copper Marans as a common example of that coloration). With melanizers in addition to it, E^R produces a solid black coloration as well.

Many unicolor Blue varieties are based on E extended black with the blue dilution gene, but some are based on meanized E^R birchen with blue as well. From my understanding, E^R produces Blues with better edging on their feathers, giving them that nice blue lacing that you see in some breeds. But I have had E^R pop up in my Cochins as well, and from my experience it does not always darken the shade of blue, but many of my E^R Blues are a lot darker than my E Blues. So, if you have Blues that are based on E^R instead of E, they may end up being darker as well. You can usually determine which e-locus allele a unicolor Blue or Black bird is by how their chick down looks, with E generally being the sort of 'penguin' white belly and dark back, and E^R usually having more of a dark smoky/smudgy color overall without the white belly.

Outside of that, breeding Blue to Blue over generations is supposed to gradually lighten the shade of Blue due to some accumulation effect that happens with the blue dilution. Some breeders recommend outcrossing to Black occasionally as a result of this, so that your Blues don't get too pale. So, in theory, that would mean that not doing that outcross to Black should cause your Blues to lighten more and more over generations. This is what I'm trying in order to lighten my Blues in one of my pens, but I'll only be on generation 2 of Blue to Blue with my birds this year, so too early on for me to say for sure how true that is from experience.

If you cross a dark blue to a light blue (BBS) the 50% blues that hatch, what shade would they take after?

My understanding is that in this case you'd get an intermediate shade, but again not much personal experience to say for sure on that.

 

[2ndTink]

Ah, chickens! Sometimes it feels like they know we have plans and actively work against us!




That's something I'm working against in my silkied Cochin bantams, super dark Blues that are almost indistinguishable from the Blacks. From what I've gleaned from reading, asking questions, and a bit of personal experience as well, there are a few factors to the shade of blue; other genes like melanizers, e-locus allele, a supposed accumulation of the blue dilution gene, etc. Silkied feathering also seems to make blue appear darker, quite possibly just due to it scattering that darker edging that blue feathers get so that it's not just concentrated to the edge of the feather, so deeper shades of blue that are desirable in smooth-feathered varieties end up looking super dark in silkied varieties.

Melanizers are genes that darken plumage and add more black to the feathering when there otherwise might be a pattern. For example, E extended black does as the name says, extends the black coloring across the body. But without melanizers, gold or silver color often leaks through. Another example, E^R birchen causes a mostly black coloring, but with red/gold or silver coloring in the neck of hens and the neck and saddle of roosters (think of Black Copper Marans as a common example of that coloration). With melanizers in addition to it, E^R produces a solid black coloration as well.

Many unicolor Blue varieties are based on E extended black with the blue dilution gene, but some are based on meanized E^R birchen with blue as well. From my understanding, E^R produces Blues with better edging on their feathers, giving them that nice blue lacing that you see in some breeds. But I have had E^R pop up in my Cochins as well, and from my experience it does not always darken the shade of blue, but many of my E^R Blues are a lot darker than my E Blues. So, if you have Blues that are based on E^R instead of E, they may end up being darker as well. You can usually determine which e-locus allele a unicolor Blue or Black bird is by how their chick down looks, with E generally being the sort of 'penguin' white belly and dark back, and E^R usually having more of a dark smoky/smudgy color overall without the white belly.

Outside of that, breeding Blue to Blue over generations is supposed to gradually lighten the shade of Blue due to some accumulation effect that happens with the blue dilution. Some breeders recommend outcrossing to Black occasionally as a result of this, so that your Blues don't get too pale. So, in theory, that would mean that not doing that outcross to Black should cause your Blues to lighten more and more over generations. This is what I'm trying in order to lighten my Blues in one of my pens, but I'll only be on generation 2 of Blue to Blue with my birds this year, so too early on for me to say for sure how true that is from experience.




My understanding is that in this case you'd get an intermediate shade, but again not much personal experience to say for sure on that.

Sorry for taking so long to respond! I've read this a few times, went back and questioned if my black silkies were actually blue, decided they are black but likely silver based (homozygous silver?), they came from a paint pen a breeder had, so that would make sense. And I've been counting my chicks before they hatch and already planning test pairings to see if I can locate what is impacting the blue shade, and at least understand it in my flock I have a couple splash silkies that are about 2 1/2 months old, genders still a guess at this point, but two have lighter splashes and 1 in particular has very dark and definite splash markings, I'm wondering if the expression of the splashing can impact the shade of blue? Some little piece of their genes causing darker or lighter splashes that would affect the Blbl expression? I have several black chicks from the same breeder that are unrelated to the splash, so whichever way the genders go it should be similar genes in all the blacks to make a decent test of the different splash expression on the offspring blue shade outcome.

Also, the BAs that I have in with the EE rooster (BTW, I have 3 eggs total from them in the incubator, and 1 BR egg) they were supposed to be Blue Plymoth rocks, but they are jet black. I'm fairly confident they are Black Astralorps and not Blue Plymoth rocks, but, they lay a cream tinted eggs while my other BAs (sold to me as EEs, I was so excited about having baby chicks I didn't notice the OBVIOUS differences for 3 days ) lay a brown egg that is the same color as the RIR and BRs.


The other thing I'm pondering now, is if you had a black with silver leakage, would that mean they have less melanizer and may produce a lighter blue chick? If this is the case, the black chickens you'd want to show, would be different from the black chickens you'd want to use to produce blues?

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Sorry for taking so long to respond! I've read this a few times, went back and questioned if my black silkies were actually blue, decided they are black but likely silver based (homozygous silver?), they came from a paint pen a breeder had, so that would make sense. And I've been counting my chicks before they hatch and already planning test pairings to see if I can locate what is impacting the blue shade, and at least understand it in my flock

No worries on response time! It's a pretty hard to grasp topic because there are so many factors that seem to impact it. I hear you on going back and forth on silkied birds being Blue or Black, my Cochins about drive me nuts with this!

I have a couple splash silkies that are about 2 1/2 months old, genders still a guess at this point, but two have lighter splashes and 1 in particular has very dark and definite splash markings, I'm wondering if the expression of the splashing can impact the shade of blue? Some little piece of their genes causing darker or lighter splashes that would affect the Blbl expression? I have several black chicks from the same breeder that are unrelated to the splash, so whichever way the genders go it should be similar genes in all the blacks to make a decent test of the different splash expression on the offspring blue shade outcome.

I have read that Splash with more melanizers have more splashes than those with fewer, but that's another one that I don't have any personal experience with so can't say for sure. At a certain point, there are some melanizers that have to be present or you'd start seeing color leakage, so it seems to be like a delicate balancing act getting the right ones to block leakage and avoiding the ones that will darken the plumage too much.

Also, the BAs that I have in with the EE rooster (BTW, I have 3 eggs total from them in the incubator, and 1 BR egg) they were supposed to be Blue Plymoth rocks, but they are jet black. I'm fairly confident they are Black Astralorps and not Blue Plymoth rocks, but, they lay a cream tinted eggs while my other BAs (sold to me as EEs, I was so excited about having baby chicks I didn't notice the OBVIOUS differences for 3 days ) lay a brown egg that is the same color as the RIR and BRs.

Are these hatchery birds? If so, which hatchery? I don't know of any hatchery that actually has true Blue Plymouth Rocks, but several have a sexlink hybrid that confusingly they decided to name 'Plymouth Blue Rock' or just 'Plymouth Blue', which if I remember right is a hybrid between a Splash Andalusian and a Barred Rock to make blue sexlinks. If that's what they were supposed to be, then there definitely was a mix up as you shouldn't get anything but Blue from that cross!

A lot of people end up with these so-called 'Plymouth Blues' from hatcheries or feed stores and think they are true Blue Plymouth Rocks, then breed them and sell them as such. If you got them from another chicken keeper rather than a hatchery, maybe they were mistaken about Plymouth Blues being a hybrid and bred them, and you just happened to get two Blacks out of such a Blue x Blue breeding? That would explain the paler egg color as well.

Or, if they were from a breeder who actually has Blue Plymouth Rocks, you could have also ended up with two Blacks from Blue x Blue breedings there as well.

What color are their shanks? True Plymouth Rocks should have yellow legs, perhaps with a bit of dark cast on them. Australorps should have slate legs with whitish or pink soles. I believe the 'Plymouth Blue' hybrids would have the same as the Australorps, but I could be mistaken on that. Breeding those hybrids together could result in a variety of leg colors. But, if they are yellow shanked or slate shanked with yellow soles, then that would rule out Australorp at least.

The other thing I'm pondering now, is if you had a black with silver leakage, would that mean they have less melanizer and may produce a lighter blue chick? If this is the case, the black chickens you'd want to show, would be different from the black chickens you'd want to use to produce blues?

My understanding is yes, leakage in solid Black would generally be the result of missing a melanizing gene in there. So maybe, but you'd also run the risk of having color leakage in the offspring. With silkied feathering, if it's specifically silver leakage, that tends to blend into blue plumage and not be as obvious. It's actually pretty common in Silkies to have silver leakage that just blends into the surrounding colors from what I've seen. So that could possibly work for lightening Blues as well, as long as you're careful not to get so much color leakage that it's overtly leakage. I do not know if that's something Silkie breeders necessarily find acceptable or not, however.

 

[2ndTink]

No worries on response time! It's a pretty hard to grasp topic because there are so many factors that seem to impact it. I hear you on going back and forth on silkied birds being Blue or Black, my Cochins about drive me nuts with this!




I have read that Splash with more melanizers have more splashes than those with fewer, but that's another one that I don't have any personal experience with so can't say for sure. At a certain point, there are some melanizers that have to be present or you'd start seeing color leakage, so it seems to be like a delicate balancing act getting the right ones to block leakage and avoiding the ones that will darken the plumage too much.




Are these hatchery birds? If so, which hatchery? I don't know of any hatchery that actually has true Blue Plymouth Rocks, but several have a sexlink hybrid that confusingly they decided to name 'Plymouth Blue Rock' or just 'Plymouth Blue', which if I remember right is a hybrid between a Splash Andalusian and a Barred Rock to make blue sexlinks. If that's what they were supposed to be, then there definitely was a mix up as you shouldn't get anything but Blue from that cross!

A lot of people end up with these so-called 'Plymouth Blues' from hatcheries or feed stores and think they are true Blue Plymouth Rocks, then breed them and sell them as such. If you got them from another chicken keeper rather than a hatchery, maybe they were mistaken about Plymouth Blues being a hybrid and bred them, and you just happened to get two Blacks out of such a Blue x Blue breeding? That would explain the paler egg color as well.

Or, if they were from a breeder who actually has Blue Plymouth Rocks, you could have also ended up with two Blacks from Blue x Blue breedings there as well.

What color are their shanks? True Plymouth Rocks should have yellow legs, perhaps with a bit of dark cast on them. Australorps should have slate legs with whitish or pink soles. I believe the 'Plymouth Blue' hybrids would have the same as the Australorps, but I could be mistaken on that. Breeding those hybrids together could result in a variety of leg colors. But, if they are yellow shanked or slate shanked with yellow soles, then that would rule out Australorp at least.




My understanding is yes, leakage in solid Black would generally be the result of missing a melanizing gene in there. So maybe, but you'd also run the risk of having color leakage in the offspring. With silkied feathering, if it's specifically silver leakage, that tends to blend into blue plumage and not be as obvious. It's actually pretty common in Silkies to have silver leakage that just blends into the surrounding colors from what I've seen. So that could possibly work for lightening Blues as well, as long as you're careful not to get so much color leakage that it's overtly leakage. I do not know if that's something Silkie breeders necessarily find acceptable or not, however.

Based on your description of the Plymoth Blues I think they are indeed Black Astraulorps. The bottoms of their feet are pink. I don't know what hatchery these came from, we got them at a local-ish co-op, but the last few years they haven't been carrying chicks. These girls have been wonderful, I need to go back there and see if they can tell me what hatchery they used to use.



My brown egg laying BAs came from Mt Healthy, two are ginormous, and one is this spritely little thing with a huge attitude who loves to go broody.

There was a little article on FB that a silkie breeder posted about telling Blue from black, it was great and one trick was to take a photo of the birds with the flash on, the blues showed up a little muted and the blacks as a true black, pretty neat. My silkies did not appreciate the multiple photos I took


If all goes as planned, by this time next year I'll have black and splash silkies from two separate breeders with each color pen being unrelated even for each breeder, I can play with crosses to see what shades of blue I can get. And hopefully somehow keep track of each test hatch to follow what crosses produce the shade I want and what may be leading to the super dark blue. I'm really thinking my current Blue silkie chick is a cockerel, it's started sparing with two other ones I'm pretty sure are cockerels as well, they are already growing little starts of wattles as 4 weeks old. Here is the little floof

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Based on your description of the Plymoth Blues I think they are indeed Black Astraulorps. The bottoms of their feet are pink. I don't know what hatchery these came from, we got them at a local-ish co-op, but the last few years they haven't been carrying chicks. These girls have been wonderful, I need to go back there and see if they can tell me what hatchery they used to use.
View attachment 3736279
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My brown egg laying BAs came from Mt Healthy, two are ginormous, and one is this spritely little thing with a huge attitude who loves to go broody.

Sounds like they're most likely Australorps, then! Lovely birds! The things like size and egg color likely are just line differences. Different hatcheries selecting their breeding birds differently, in other words.

There was a little article on FB that a silkie breeder posted about telling Blue from black, it was great and one trick was to take a photo of the birds with the flash on, the blues showed up a little muted and the blacks as a true black, pretty neat. My silkies did not appreciate the multiple photos I took

Ooh, thanks for the tip! I'll have to try this with some of my birds!

If all goes as planned, by this time next year I'll have black and splash silkies from two separate breeders with each color pen being unrelated even for each breeder, I can play with crosses to see what shades of blue I can get. And hopefully somehow keep track of each test hatch to follow what crosses produce the shade I want and what may be leading to the super dark blue. I'm really thinking my current Blue silkie chick is a cockerel, it's started sparing with two other ones I'm pretty sure are cockerels as well, they are already growing little starts of wattles as 4 weeks old. Here is the little floof

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Best of luck with your test crosses! I'm definitely interested in the outcomes. I have no idea whether that chick is a cockerel or pullet, but what a gorgeous shade of blue!! I'd so love to see more of that in my Cochins!