Breeding out yellow soles in Australorp? Please help.

[Siana]

Last year I bought Australorp eggs from several breeders (I am in Uzbekistan). They have beautiful flocks, but egg quality was horrendous, I only obtained about 12 birds from 50 eggs. Okay, I decided to work with what I have. I am not happy with overall vitality and sturdiness, but I do my best to ensure great living conditions and support health of my birds. I thought I'd build a stock eventually and find some decent breeders here (found one so far, this spring I had a good hatch with his eggs).

I hatched about 65 chicks from our own eggs. The older ones are 3.5 months now, beautiful strong adolescents. However, what irks me is that about half of them have yellow soles on black feet which is a typical coloring for Jersey Giants. Australorp should have black or gray feet, possibly with pinkish/whitish soles. Their parents that I own are all black-footed, some with pinkish sholes. I am attaching videos of parents and chicks, you can't see the feet well but at least you can hopefully see that they are typey Australorp, and I know that there are no yellow soles on parents.

The question is: obviously I won't use the yellow-soled ones for breeding, but how do I use the black-soled ones? I was going to start selling hatching eggs next spring but now I feel quite unsure about those feet, I don't want people to complain. Conformation-wise they are all beautiful Australorp, but the sole color is off. I am going to buy a couple of young roosters in the autumn. Do you think I will get rid of the yellow soles eventually?

I did try reading on feet color genetics, and I haven't succeeded in understanding it; it is my understanding that yellow soles are recessive but I have a lot of them? So I am not sure what to do and will appreciate advice from experienced breeders. We have very poor choice of breeders here, no shows, nothing, and it is difficult for me to just discard my chicks and replace them with better ones.

Thank you!

 

[chooki]

I have, what I think is an Australorp hen, she too has yellow sole.

This chicken:

 

[Siana]

@chooki, thank you for sharing! She's lovely. I am referring to the breed standards, it says no yellow on the feet.

 

[Amer]

Yellow soles are a disqualification. Since they are recessive, chances are, some of the white soled birds carry the yellow skin gene. To get rid of it, you must test breed them against a known yellow skinned bird. If any of the offspring have yellow skin, the parent is carrying yellow skin and is no good for breeding.
You have to find two bird that are homozygous for white to breed from.
If I bought Australorps but they carried yellow skin I'd be upset.
I am currently doing this test breeding in one of my projects. It is tedious because it takes a while for the yellow skin to develop in chicks.

 

[Siana]

@Amer, thank you very much! Yes, I am somewhat upset by this, too. The parents are not related, but obviously both sides carried yellow gene, thus the outcome. I will follow your advice, much appreciated!