Best way to introduce buff color into a flock? (New chicken breed)

[Alicia Manolas]

My wife and I came across this photo on Instagram and we were wondering how we’d achieve this color?

Notice how the tail remains blackish, I thought that dominate white was responsible for such a light color. Also has some penciling? Dilute and cream genes?

Either way, amazing bird!

Hi,

I would start with Old English Game Bantam breed, and use the colours Clay hen or Black tail Wheaten hen, and cross them under a Blood Pyle cock, aka Red Pile (basically cock bird is white with blood red wing patches) to get that colour.

Also try in reverse, Cock bird black breasted, black red (the standard pair to the wheaten/clay hens) over a Blood Pyle / Red Pile hen.

No idea what kind of bitsa the accompanying rooster would look like that you would of course breed, statistically speaking, in order to get the gorgeous hens you want, some kind of mixture black, white and red Party Splash at a guess? But, you would be able to name the new colour, and possibly register it with your National OEG Club If no one has done it before, properly.

Only other closest natural colouration I know of is the super rare Butterscotch- taken from 1800s manuscript description, for cock bird see my thumbnail, hens not far off that pic of yours.

Wishing you the best of luck, an please keep us updated on your project!

Hoping this has helped.

Dr Alicia Manolas
(OEG Bantam Breeder) Avian Specialist Trainer

Pics-
1x Butterscotch vs
1x Black Tail Wheaten
I think you will need the Pyle colour crossed in, to bleach out the hackle white. Just choose your starter hens carefully for their suitable colour, for the Pyle cock to cover.

 

[Enigmatic Gale]

Hi,

I would start with Old English Game Bantam breed, and use the colours Clay hen or Black tail Wheaten hen, and cross them under a Blood Pyle cock, aka Red Pile (basically cock bird is white with blood red wing patches) to get that colour.

Also try in reverse, Cock bird black breasted, black red (the standard pair to the wheaten/clay hens) over a Blood Pyle / Red Pile hen.

No idea what kind of bitsa the accompanying rooster would look like that you would of course breed, statistically speaking, in order to get the gorgeous hens you want, some kind of mixture black, white and red Party Splash at a guess? But, you would be able to name the new colour, and possibly register it with your National OEG Club If no one has done it before, properly.

Only other closest natural colouration I know of is the super rare Butterscotch- taken from 1800s manuscript description, for cock bird see my thumbnail, hens not far off that pic of yours.

Wishing you the best of luck, an please keep us updated on your project!

Hoping this has helped.

Dr Alicia Manolas
(OEG Bantam Breeder) Avian Specialist Trainer

Pics-
1x Butterscotch vs
1x Black Tail Wheaten
I think you will need the Pyle colour crossed in, to bleach out the hackle white. Just choose your starter hens carefully for their suitable colour, for the Pyle cock to cover.

Wow those are some beautiful birds!

Thank you again for the wealth of information and guidance. We are actually looking to only use Shinji and Fye going forward with the project. I really love the buffs we have (Chesterfield, Hugh and Sandy) but their mom did lay brownish eggs and the body type isn’t there for me atm.

I also ordered a couple of surprises that should help the project out quite a bit, which honestly I should have started with from the beginning.

I’ll update the post as soon as I have the surprises and I have a clearer path forward in the breeding project. I’m thinking about implementing the foundations of the bird first and then focusing on the color. But colors are always so cool that I can’t help but sharing

 

[Alicia Manolas]

You

Wow those are some beautiful birds!

Thank you again for the wealth of information and guidance. We are actually looking to only use Shinji and Fye going forward with the project. I really love the buffs we have (Chesterfield, Hugh and Sandy) but their mom did lay brownish eggs and the body type isn’t there for me atm.

I also ordered a couple of surprises that should help the project out quite a bit, which honestly I should have started with from the beginning.

I’ll update the post as soon as I have the surprises and I have a clearer path forward in the breeding project. I’m thinking about implementing the foundations of the bird first and then focusing on the color. But colors are always so cool that I can’t help but sharing

You are welcome!

Would love to see pics of your three!

The Black Tail Wheatens and the Blood Pyle would be in those breeds too, so you will have plenty of options, and yes, often it's a matter of picking a good foundation bird within a breed, with your preferred colour, and going from there.

Look forwards to seeing the results here as they hatch!!

Cheers,
Alicia

 

[Enigmatic Gale]

You are welcome!

Would love to see pics of your three!

The Black Tail Wheatens and the Blood Pyle would be in those breeds too, so you will have plenty of options, and yes, often it's a matter of picking a good foundation bird within a breed, with your preferred colour, and going from there.

Look forwards to seeing the results here as they hatch!!

Cheers,
Alicia

I have a lot of thoughts/ideas running through my head for the different breeds to use for the buff color. Currently I’m reading up on Buff Minorcas, Lemon Fresian Gulls and Golden Neck Old English Game. They all seem to have white eggs, which would do well in keeping the egg color blue. I’m trying to absorb as much information as possible, as they’ll be taken into consideration further down the project to introduce the buff color.

As for the surprises, a hint; Genetics!

 

[Amer]

My wife and I came across this photo on Instagram and we were wondering how we’d achieve this color?

Notice how the tail remains blackish, I thought that dominate white was responsible for such a light color. Also has some penciling? Dilute and cream genes?

Either way, amazing bird!

Hi,

I would start with Old English Game Bantam breed, and use the colours Clay hen or Black tail Wheaten hen, and cross them under a Blood Pyle cock, aka Red Pile (basically cock bird is white with blood red wing patches) to get that colour.

Also try in reverse, Cock bird black breasted, black red (the standard pair to the wheaten/clay hens) over a Blood Pyle / Red Pile hen.

No idea what kind of bitsa the accompanying rooster would look like that you would of course breed, statistically speaking, in order to get the gorgeous hens you want, some kind of mixture black, white and red Party Splash at a guess? But, you would be able to name the new colour, and possibly register it with your National OEG Club If no one has done it before, properly.

Only other closest natural colouration I know of is the super rare Butterscotch- taken from 1800s manuscript description, for cock bird see my thumbnail, hens not far off that pic of yours.

Wishing you the best of luck, an please keep us updated on your project!

Hoping this has helped.

Dr Alicia Manolas
(OEG Bantam Breeder) Avian Specialist Trainer

Pics-
1x Butterscotch vs
1x Black Tail Wheaten
I think you will need the Pyle colour crossed in, to bleach out the hackle white. Just choose your starter hens carefully for their suitable colour, for the Pyle cock to cover.

Those are gorgeous and that is excellent advice but not for producing the color pictured. I’m glad you shared though, because I’ve never gotten to see those before.

The hen is a silver wheaten. The whitish hackle is caused by the silver gene while the reddish back is caused by autosomal red. This is very much like salmon Faverolles, but they have the addition of mahogany, which the pictured hen doesn’t have. The silver allows you to achieve white hackles but keep the black tails.
This hen could be produced by crossing a silver duckwing male with a wheaten hen, then breeding the offspring together. That would produce golden duckwing or golden duckwing/wheaten males, golden wheaten males, gold duckwing chicks, gold duckwing/wheaten chicks, silver duckwing chicks, silver duckwing/wheaten chicks, and silver wheaten chicks.
Or you could cross a silver duckwing and a wheaten and then breed one of the sons back over the wheaten so that the pullets will be gold duckwing/wheaten, gold wheaten, silver duckwing/wheaten, and silver wheaten.

 

[Amer]

Oh, to add, Alicia Manolas, the rooster in your avatar is very beautiful. He exhibits the silver gene, mahogany, and autosomal red in the same bird. He also has the addition of the darkbrown/ginger gene however. I love him!

 

[Enigmatic Gale]

Those are gorgeous and that is excellent advice but not for producing the color pictured. I’m glad you shared though, because I’ve never gotten to see those before.

The hen is a silver wheaten. The whitish hackle is caused by the silver gene while the reddish back is caused by autosomal red. This is very much like salmon Faverolles, but they have the addition of mahogany, which the pictured hen doesn’t have. The silver allows you to achieve white hackles but keep the black tails.
This hen could be produced by crossing a silver duckwing male with a wheaten hen, then breeding the offspring together. That would produce golden duckwing or golden duckwing/wheaten males, golden wheaten males, gold duckwing chicks, gold duckwing/wheaten chicks, silver duckwing chicks, silver duckwing/wheaten chicks, and silver wheaten chicks.
Or you could cross a silver duckwing and a wheaten and then breed one of the sons back over the wheaten so that the pullets will be gold duckwing/wheaten, gold wheaten, silver duckwing/wheaten, and silver wheaten.

I just did a google search of silver wheaten and this was the result.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/gallery/silver-duckwing-x-wheaten-pullet.6278141/

Indeed a beautiful bird! The male version is a bit lacking from what I could gather :/

Maybe the introduction of the Dun/Fawn gene would make the male a more interesting color.

I’m still sticking to the buff color btw, I just love seeing all these other cool colors!

 

[Amer]

I just did a google search of silver wheaten and this was the result.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/gallery/silver-duckwing-x-wheaten-pullet.6278141/

Indeed a beautiful bird! The male version is a bit lacking from what I could gather :/

Maybe the introduction of the Dun/Fawn gene would make the male a more interesting color.

I’m still sticking to the buff color btw, I just love seeing all these other cool colors!

Lacking? I don’t know, they would look like your average silver duckwing with red shoulders but genetically would be wheaten. Sounds pretty enough to me.

 

[Amer]

But the audition of fawn would be very pretty.

 

[Enigmatic Gale]

Niederrheiner chicks!
Male is Niederr x Buff Rock
Female is Niederr x Phoenix. (Hatched wild type pattern, not wheaten unfortunately :/ )

Thought I’d keep them to see what genes might be at play. Would that be the cream gene on the neck of the female or dilute along the body?

The three wild type “blue egg long tails”.

I’m think about keeping the bottom one (amazing feather quality and amazing sheen to them) and the middle one. They both have Phoenix characteristics to them. Top one seems to have a lot of Cubalaya in her, like Cornilius.

Here we can see the 3 buffs in order of color quality lol.
Sandy in front, Hugh in the middle and Chesterfield at the end. If I had to keep any, it’d be Sandy for sure.

Fye and her sister.
Fye has the whiter tail, while her sister has a lot of black in it. Fye is also lighter throughout, as you’ll see in the next photo.

Fye behind her sister.

Shinji guarding the flock.