Blue partridge Brahma rooster, which colours would be best to put to him to get true colour?

[Gabby189]

I have a blue partridge Brahma rooster, and at the moment an assortment of hen colours , blue, blue buff and lemon Pyle, I have 1 partridge hen. I wanted to try and breed colour groups. Will he be suited to any of these or am I best just keeping some roosters of the specific colours? Also are there good books on colour genetics I’d like to learn a bit more about it!

 

[NatJ]

I have a blue partridge Brahma rooster, and at the moment an assortment of hen colours , blue, blue buff and lemon Pyle, I have 1 partridge hen. I wanted to try and breed colour groups. Will he be suited to any of these or am I best just keeping some roosters of the specific colours? Also are there good books on colour genetics I’d like to learn a bit more about it!

You can definitely breed the Blue Partridge with the Partridge. They should produce about 50% chicks of each color.

The Blue Buff will probably work best bred to a Buff or to another Blue Buff.

If the blue is blue all over (not the blue version of some other pattern), it will do best bred to black, blue, or splash.

Lemon Pyle should probably just be bred with other Lemon Pyles.


I'm not sure what books to recommend about color genetics.

This website may help a bit:
https://kippenjungle.nl/sellers/page0.html
It has links to several pages: one about basic genetics, one about some specific chicken genes, one with a table of genes and a little bit about each one.

If you already know a bit about genetics (for any animals or plants), that will make chicken genetics easier to understand. If you are starting with no genetics knowledge at all, I don't know whether those pages will be helpful, or whether they will be too advanced.

You could also try playing with the chicken color calculator:
https://kippenjungle.nl/chickencalculator.html
You can change the genes in the dropdown boxes and see the changes in the chicken images. It isn't perfect, but does give a good idea of what effects can be caused by many of the genes.


As regards specifically the blue gene:
A chicken can inherit the blue gene from the father or from the mother or from both of them.

If a chicken has one copy of the blue gene (inherited from just one parent), that changes all black on the chicken into blue. If a chicken has two copies of the blue gene (inherited one from each parent), that changes all black on the chicken into splash.

Because the blue gene affects just the black on the chicken, it leaves the rest of the pattern alone. So a solid black chicken becomes blue or splash all over. A Partridge chicken becomes a Blue Partridge or a Splash Partridge. A Buff Brahma becomes a Blue Buff or a Splash Buff.

Interbreeding the splash, blue, and normal versions of one color is fine, because they are genetically the same except for the blue gene.

splash x splash = 100% splash
splash x blue = 50% splash, 50% blue
splash x black = 100% blue
blue x blue = 25% splash, 50% blue, 25% black
blue x black = 50% blue, 50% black
black x black = 50% black

All of these apply to the part of the chicken that would otherwise be black, not to the other-colored parts of the chicken. So a Partridge Brahma is "black" for this purpose because it shows black, not blue. Breeding a Partridge Brahma to a Blue Partridge Brahma will give 50% black (normal Partridge) and 50% blue (Blue Partridge).

 

[Gabby189]

Thank you so much! Ok I will get some other roosters, as I’m quite keen to keep the colours true and didn’t want them to start being a mix of two things. I’m just getting into chicken genetics so I probably need to read about the basics first. I’ve learnt a bit about ducks but they seem a bit more simple to get my head around

 

[NatJ]

Thank you so much! Ok I will get some other roosters, as I’m quite keen to keep the colours true and didn’t want them to start being a mix of two things.

Sounds like a good plan

I’m just getting into chicken genetics so I probably need to read about the basics first. I’ve learnt a bit about ducks but they seem a bit more simple to get my head around

If you understand some duck genetics, then you have a good start. Many of the basic things are the same (like the idea of genes coming in pairs, with one inherited from each parent; and the idea of dominant vs. recessive genes.)

With chicken color genes, I would say they fall into a few main groups:

--some affect how the colors are distributed on the chicken (in the chicken calculator, these include the first 5 dropdown boxes of genes, and interact in various ways with each other.) I find these ones to be the most confusing to learn about.

--some change individual colors (black becomes blue or white or chocolate, gold becomes red or cream or silver). I find these ones the easiest to understand.

--some put white in specific places on the chicken, over-riding what the other genes are doing (barring adds white lines, mottling adds white dots, recessive white makes a chicken white all over.)