BR/Blue Ameraucana Cross & her Pals...Question

[speckledhen]

Several people have hatched chicks from my BR roos over my Blue Ameraucana hen. I have one daughter of Zane's with Charlotte myself. She doesn't have a beard, although she did get the pea comb and white skin. Her barring is actually better than I expected from this cross, but anyway..my question is why do all the others from this cross have a beard and Panda doesn't? Is it just the luck of the draw with the combining genes? Just wondering about it. Here is a picture of Panda with her constant companions, the GLW and Shadow, my only bantam.

 

[pips&peeps]

Yep, she just got her dad's genes. The others will all carry the clean faced genes too, so if you were to breed them to other bearded chickens the possibility is still there of producing clean faced chicks.

 

[Kev]

2 possibilities. The mother was not pure for the beard gene. This pullet has a beard, however she is not showing much of it visually- small and lies smoothly instead of "puffing". That happens.

Barred is just a coincidence. Had you bred and hatched more, you would have bearded barred birds.

 

[speckledhen]

The barring was expected since all the chicks from a barred male will have barring, in some form, right? It may be possible that the beard is small and lying flat, I guess. I never even considered that. It's just not visible from any distance. I'll have to take a look next time I catch her. Thanks, Kev and Jean.

 

[Kev]

Right, barring is (sex linked)dominant.

btw, she is a looker!

 

[speckledhen]

Thanks, Kev. I think she looks pretty good for a cross myself. I dont have many crosses, but I wanted her because she is the only kid my Zane will ever produce, sadly. Never know exactly how those genes will manifest themselves, do you? Except for the sexlinked barring thing, of course.

 

[Kev]

What's wrong with Zane or did he pass away? She also looks nice due to having a nice body type.

You could have fun with sex linked matings using her.. breed her with a blue or black to start a barred/cuckoo line?

 

[speckledhen]

Guess you haven't been following Zane's story. My flock roo, Hawkeye, died back in April. Zane was just getting to the point of mating the girls then; they pushed him off the roost one day and when he hit the floor (shavings were thick, though) he acted stunned. From there, he went downhill, developed an infection in his hock joint that took till about 2 weeks ago to knock out. He has no feeling in his toes or foot on that leg and the hock is very stiff; he cant put the foot down now. We are doing therapy on the leg and giving him baby aspirin to see if we can restore some movement, enough for him to at least stand up on two feet. Right before he was hurt, he mated my Blue Ameraucana and I decided to incubate the egg under a broody I had at the time. So, that's how I got Panda. I have my doubts that Zane will ever be back with the flock, so that's why she is his only daughter.