Breed check- 7 wk old "red leghorn" pullet

[Kiki]

Cackles description of this breed can be read here:
https://www.cacklehatchery.com/easter-eggs.html#product_tabs_description_tabbed

notice the pictures they have posted on their website for this breed...the second pic looks very similar to one of yours.

 

[CDcluck]

Cackles description of this breed can be read here:
https://www.cacklehatchery.com/easter-eggs.html#product_tabs_description_tabbed

notice the pictures they have posted on their website for this breed...the second pic looks very similar to one of yours.

Pic 12 has a similar color type as my yellow pullet. Pic 2 I'm not convinced, the pics of their brown leghorn pullets look more like my brown pullet. All their EE show puffy faces, which these 2 girls definitely don't have.

I'm totally willing to believe a chipmunk chick ended up in the wrong box at the hatchery. It happens. I'm wondering if anything other than "EE" could be a possibility.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

Thank you @KikisGirls for the vote of confidence, however, this won't be as easy as the other thread in regards to the EE crossing as the breed choices are much greater for the EE crosses used at Cackle (per their breed statement for EE's....they breed from a wide variety to offer many different feather types.)

First, I agree the green legged bird is likely an EE, almost certain if it has a pea comb (I can't tell in the photo, the comb fades out), since it is a classic EE partridge pattern (for pullets no less) and has green legs....and Cackle carries EEs.

I also think the yellow legged bird is a Brown Leghorn...the chest is too dull to be a Welsummer, ditto with neck hackle color....and Cackle carries Brown Leghorn.

Feed stores, and in particular TSC, are notorious for mixing the chick bins (and shipping boxes) and not knowing what they've got on hand. Feed store help simply sell product and are no experts in the product. They should be accurate that they get the chicks from Cackle Hatchery (but I've also had them tell me the wrong hatchery name too).

Let's assume Cackle is correct. EE's, Brown Leghorns, Welsummers, OEG, RIR, and a number of other breeds have similar chipmunk appearances, especially to inexperienced eyes...and all can be found at Cackle.

As to the possibility of the EE heritage, since (per their EE breeding statement) Cackle Hatchery carries a LOT of different breeds and varieties of birds, this makes the breed background of the EE pretty impossible to tell as there are so many that Cackle carries without dominant factors to leave clues.

All we could do is work through the Cackle selections, removing anything that has heavy leg feathers (as that usually leaves traces in the chicks) and any dominant colors (such as White Leghorn which is dominant white), or black as it is dominant (therefore remove the Black and Blue Ameraucanas, carried by Cackle, blue produces either black or blue) as well as any comb type that would over ride the pea comb or change it to another pattern.

Now about that comb. I assumed a pea comb, but can't verify it with the photo. @CDcluck ...could you get a good, clear, comb shot? That could give us a really big clue. It is so wide, it suggests a rose comb...if it is, it will look like a horseshoe with indent such that the luck runs down the beak.

If that is a rose comb, with gold partridge, green legs, but no beard, muff, then I think it likely is an EE mix with Wyandotte (since the green legs can't be better explained for Cackle than EE). Cackle carries Wyandottes. Wyandottes have rose combs. Their breeding stock EE should have pea comb (if they want to be honest and attempt to breed forward the blue shell gene...pea comb and blue shell are close on the gene strand and you generally get one with the other) but it could be a single comb EE.

The genetics get a bit complicated, but you could have Pp rr in the EE parent (pea comb, no pea comb, no rose, no rose) and Rr pp in the other parent (the Wyandotte, Rose comb, no rose, no pea, no pea), and by Punnett Square math end up with a pea comb chick from a pea comb and rose comb parents (Rrpp...Rose, no rose, no pea, no pea)....actual math works out 25% walnut (both pea and rose genes), 25% pea, 25% rose, 25% single (absence of both pea and rose genes).

If the EE parent was single comb, then rose is dominant and all offspring would have rose comb.

My educated guess then IF that is a rose comb on the chick is EE/Wyandotte. If it isn't, then it is *likely* EE cross with another EE cross since there is so little beard and muff, and it didn't come out black or blue (which Black Ameraucana and Blue Ameraucana would have created)...it should have a pea comb or even possibly single comb then.

LofMc

 

[Kiki]

Thank you Lady of McCamley !

 

[drumstick diva]

If parentage is important buy, from a breeder and ask to see the parents. Too many mixups from hatchery to store and they just don't care.

 

[Kiki]

In the beginning of my "chicken raising life"
I did not know many things...I quickly learned you can not trust "stores" period...they will claim they have certain female only breeds when they really do not.
It happens...a lot...

 

[Lady of McCamley]

Ha ha. so true.

I once had a feed store owner (who had been in business many years) tell me to my face that Red Sex Link chicks are not sexable.

I had to show him on my smartphone the different down colors of the male and female chicks, and he still didn't believe me!

He still kept throwing all the similar down chicks into one bin.

LofMc

 

[CDcluck]

Thank you @KikisGirls for the vote of confidence, however, this won't be as easy as the other thread in regards to the EE crossing as the breed choices are much greater for the EE crosses used at Cackle (per their breed statement for EE's....they breed from a wide variety to offer many different feather types.)...
LofMc

Thank you for all of your input! I have tried to get some better pics.

Although feed stores are notoriously error-prone, I doubt it was a feed store error in this particular instance. It's a small store with a small, dedicated long term staff that only carries two breeds at a time, and the two breeds that were in store at when I got these girls were Leghorns and Barred Rocks. It's not like the more typical TSC setup where there are 6 or 8 bins of chicks, dozens of employees, and not a lot of investment in individual customers. All that said, while this pullet may have some Leghorn ancestors, there is definitely something else in the mix!

Part of my curiosity about her background is because I really love her color! The feed store chicks were a semi-impulse buy when I went to pick up supplies for the chicks we had recently hatched, I wanted to "stack the deck" towards us ending up with a variety of hens. The hatched babies ("real" EEs with the fluffy faces mostly) ended up hatching out mostly very dark, and I like a colorful flock!

Here are some hopefully better pics.

 

[CDcluck]

Some baby pics, because why not?
The first two are the Yellow Pullet, then the Brown Pullet, then a group pic of all the feed store babies, all pics at about 5 days old (give or take, I don't remember which day I took pics).




Yellow at a few weeks old


Yellow was always an "incomplete/pale chipmunk" for lack of a more technical term. She was picked because she was the lightest, in the hopes of being able to tell the two chipmunk chicks apart. Well, that plan definitely worked!