Blue Paint Austra White?

[Not-so Slick Chicken]

Photos are the best I can get at this time

*please note that the Blue? chick in question unfortunately did not make it. Therefore, I cannot take better pictures. (The older chicks are not the "blue" chick.)

So I have a young flock of birds (currently 7 months old) and some of my pullets went broody and hatched some eggs.

The bird I'm primarily interested in asking about is my Austra White pullet.
The hatchery says their Austra Whites are a result of Black Australorp and White Leghorn (which is what "Austra White" is known for).

My AW pullet appears that she MIGHT have blue dilution, instead of being a black paint? I originally figured maybe there's just some variation in how the black leaks through with Dominant White. I've never been around a "paint" chicken before.

But then, she hatched her egg. And the chick looked like it might be a blue paint?
I cannot guarantee the egg is hers. However, I'm fairly certain it was. I've been trying to take note of who lays what. And the egg matched hers. Plus, no more eggs like hers have been produced since she first went broody. (At this point, that's been about 6 weeks. Every pullet has produced eggs, and anybody who isn't broody IS laying regularly. And I know most of who lays which eggs.)

I know for a fact that the "blue" chick is NOT from any of my Splash pullets. Their eggs look very different, and I have not hatched any of their eggs. (2 Splash Marans, 1 Splash Ameraucana. She's pictured with the three chicks.)

I have 1 cockerel. (Only male that's ever been in the flock.) He's a Black Ameraucana. I also know he's the father of the chicks because the only way any of them could inherit beard and muffs is from him.
(*none of the hatched eggs were from hens with beard and muffs)
Based on the cockerel's appearance, I do believe he is black like he's supposed to be. Though you'll see in pictures that he has some random light feathers on his neck.

 

[JedJackson]

The Austra white looks like blue paint to me. Which means her chicks would be half black and half blue when crossed with a black rooster. Half would carry the dominant white gene and be paint, and half would be solid black or blue. Which means 25% of your chicks should be blue paint in that cross. I'm not an expert at color genetics, but that is my understanding.

I feel like it's entirely possible that a blue Australorp was used instead of a black one to account for why your Austrawhite is blue paint rather than black paint. Blue Australorps are pretty common these days.

 

[Not-so Slick Chicken]

The Austra white looks like blue paint to me. Which means her chicks would be half black and half blue when crossed with a black rooster. Half would carry the dominant white gene and be paint, and half would be solid black or blue. Which means 25% of your chicks should be blue paint in that cross. I'm not an expert at color genetics, but that is my understanding.

I feel like it's entirely possible that a blue Australorp was used instead of a black one to account for why your Austrawhite is blue paint rather than black paint. Blue Australorps are pretty common these days.

Before posting here, I contacted the hatchery and they specified black australorp. But I do think there's something else going on (and the people answering questions won't have access to the full info of hatchery breeders, of course)

I have seen other hatcheries list Blue Australorps.
I do know that the place I ordered from only lists Black Australorps.
However, they also no longer list White Leghorns (they removed them from their website I think last year?)
So they could have had other colors, or are using other varieties, and just don't list them for sale for some reason.

They do have plenty of BBS stock, just not BBS Australorps.

 

[JedJackson]

The hatcheries have a good idea of what the people breeding their chicks are doing, but they don't know or control everything. IDK, it looks blue paint to me. Doesn't look black paint or lavender paint.

 

[Not-so Slick Chicken]

The hatcheries have a good idea of what the people breeding their chicks are doing, but they don't know or control everything. IDK, it looks blue paint to me. Doesn't look black paint or lavender paint.

The hatcheries should
I should have specified that the regular employees will only have the info presented to them.
The hatchery website also says it's Black Australorp and White Leghorn (read before ordering. Re-read now) and that this is a first generation cross.

It's unlikely that she's lavender simply because it's unlikely that my cockerel is lavender split.
I do have a Lavender Orpington (one of the black chicks is hers). If I hatched a bunch of her eggs, and any were lav, then I could prove he's split.

If I had gotten the Chocolate Orpington cockerel I was originally going to (*didn't because he'd be too large for smaller birds) I could have had some chocolate paint pullets and mauve paint pullets. That would have been cool.