Blue/Splash Laced Red Wyandottes

[FeatherTay]

Not surprised either . Luckily I have non-hatchery BLRW birds

 

[Egghead_Jr]

An easy way to think of the blue gene is that it is a dominant gene that can stack.

One copy of the gene dilutes black to blue. Two copies dilutes to splash.

 

[NatJ]

An easy way to think of the blue gene is that it is a dominant gene that can stack.

One copy of the gene dilutes black to blue. Two copies dilutes to splash.

Yes, that way of thinking works well. I believe "incompletely dominant" is the usual term (it's dominant, because you see the effect with just one copy of the gene. But that dominance is incomplete, because a second copy of the gene does give a different effect.)

 

[Egghead_Jr]

One copy expresses and two copies are twice as potent. A dominate gene that stacks. The gene is a dilutor of black. Nothing incomplete about what it's doing.

 

[NatJ]

One copy expresses and two copies are twice as potent. A dominate gene that stacks. The gene is a dilutor of black. Nothing incomplete about what it's doing.

That is what "incomplete dominance" means. You just defined it very nicely.

Complete dominance is what you get with things like rose comb: you cannot tell if a chicken has one copy of the gene or two, because the effects look the same. I think the Mahogany gene is that way too, and the blue egg gene. The not-lavender gene (black) is also completely dominant over the recessive lavender.

When one copy of the gene gives a certain effect, and two copies gives a different effect (especially a stronger effect), then that is called incomplete dominance. The blue gene does it in chickens, and the cream gene does it in horses, and the merle gene does it in dogs. In each case, one copy of the gene dilutes the color of the animal (blue chicken, palomino horse, merle dog) and two copies dilutes the color even further (splash chicken, cremello horse that looks almost white, double merle dog that looks mostly white.)

If you want another source than just me, Wikipedia gives almost the same explanation I did, except they use flowers for an example (red flower, pink flower, white flower in certain species):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_(genetics)#Dominance

(Yes, I looked it up to double-check that I was using the term right.)