Breeding splash to non bbs colors? (Seramas)

[Bunnylady]

Guessing silver base colored bird with mottling. Not sure what other pattern genetics are going on with that one.

That was my thought, too. To my eye, the cockerel (Casper) is like the pullet (Cowabunga - my daughter named them, what can I say?), just more white and less color. Their parents were siblings, so while there may be a random mutation in the breeding stock, there's also an excellent chance of getting some recessive trait expressed, or a codominant one to really get expressed.

I know that donkey/mule genetics can cause horse spotting patterns (like Appaloosa) to express in eye-popping loud ways on mules (they call it "skewing"); I'm wondering if Seramas may have modifiers that skew the expression of otherwise well-known genes. DD tells me she has heard other Serama breeders refer to "dalmatian" birds; maybe this is like paint in Silkies?

@bullets It will be interesting to see what kind of results you get. When I have seen people talk about setting up breeding pens, 3-4 weeks is the longest I've seen anyone think was necessary to wait to be sure that the eggs being laid were fertilized by the male in the pen.

 

[junebuggena]

Paint in silkies is caused by a single dominant white gene on a genetically solid black bird. Like with the Erminette color/breed. It doesn't breed 100% true.

 

[TJChickens]

Okay, so, I've been reading to see if it is completely out of the question that the hens were still carrying sperm from their previous cockerel. Let me restate the cockerel issue:

I have a Splash Cock covering my Black and my Silver Ginger hens. They laid (first eggs started June 15th) sat (went broody June 27th) and successfully hatched 9 chicks. They have no access to any other cock. The problem is the chicks they hatched aren't all blue!
The last cockerel (black tailed red) that had access to the hens was in mid February mid March (I just went back through my texts to verify). This first cockerel was taken by a predator and 2 of my girls got away. They were stressed to the point they immediately stopped laying eggs and did not resume until mid June. 3 months, no eggs.

So either:
1) Serama genetics are as mixed up and can surprise you as much as everyone says they will
2) One or both of my hens successfully stored and utilized first cockerels sperm and hatched a few of his offspring.
or
3) All the chicks have some variation of blue expressed in them

Let me post some pics of each chick for you guys to look at and tell me what you think colorwise. I was thinking I for sure have 1 black and 2 blues, but the one that I think is black is looking like a really dark blue to me. I'll let you be the judge.

Chick #1
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Chicks #2 and #3 They're black and white, but the more I look, the more I think it's blue and white. Is that possible?
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Chick#4
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Chick #5 BLACK?
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Chick #6 BLUE
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Chick #7 BLUE
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Chick #8
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I have a pic of the 9th chick in the start of the thread. Apparently it's a duckwing.


Anyhow...is it possible all of these are expressing blue, even though they aren't solid blue? Like how blue wheatens are blue wheatens. Maybe these are blue...something or others?

Nonetheless, could any of you give me your opinion of the colors these chicks might develop into?

I think they all look like they have blue. The ones that look black are probably dark blue.

 

[bullets]

I think they all look like they have blue. The ones that look black are probably dark blue.

What do you think about the duckwing chick (barred juvenile feathering atm)? I know you can get blue duckwing, but the black in the bars are distinctly black. Suppose it could be very dark blue. Could it just be because it's the juvenile feathering? Do males and females feather out the same in the wings as chicks or might that one be a pullet?

 

[WVduckchick]

silver duckwing OEGB females usually hatch with much more crisp, defined lines than the males, but the first "for sure" indication on gender is black on the chest is male, peach/salmon color is female. comes in within 3-4 weeks. I assume it would be similar in serama?

also, i notice your chicks legs are a few different colors. Maybe some of these fine folks can comment if leg color could help figure anything out?

 

[formerchickenlass]

@TJChickens
@dotm8rix
@Glenda Heywoodo
@WVduckchick

Any of you care to weigh in on this?

I am so late to the party!!

Your cock indeed looks splash. All chicks should be blue. I hatch a fair amount of blue and you'd be surprised (or maybe not now) how many look black for the first month or two and then lighten up.

Sigrid Van Dort, who literally wrote the book on serama colors, writes "In blue chickens (of all breeds) the soft feathers are darker than the harder body feathers. Soft feathers can hold more pigment due to the structure. . . . Therefore soft hackle feathers of roosters and hens are more dark than body feathers, sometimes hackle is almost black and the rest of the chicken is blue."

What I think is happening in the chicks is that the early feathers are very soft and dense in pigment, and as the feather grows and there's more harder inner structure to the feather, you begin to see the lighter color.

All the chicks should have one blue gene, which will express anywhere there is black (recalling that some areas of soft feathering can look black).

Here's a graphic that shows one of my dark blue females at various stages. I thought she was black for at least a month.

Here's a male who also had me fooled for a few weeks.

At this point, maybe a month old? I was able to see he was a dark blue.

You can see that as an adult he's still a dark bird, and even has a green sheen to his tail. Paired to a blue hen, I did hatch a splash chick from him this year, so this is definitely blue.

In my experience, hens can hold sperm for a couple weeks. I haven't seen any of mine hold it longer than that.

 

[formerchickenlass]

As for which hen is the mother of each chick, that is harder to say. Assuming your splash and black birds are both extended black (and not another E locus with melanizers), they might be impure for it. For example, let's just say both the male and the black hen have genes for both extended black & partridge. Then you would get some chicks that were pure extended black (25%), some that have both genes (50%), and some that are just partridge (25%). Some of your chicks have that dark brown look that I associate with partridge, but with seramas it's really hard to know what you've got (in my inexpert opinion) because there's such a soup of color and pattern genetics going on that can affect the appearance of the chick down.

 

[Sheryll_woods]

Blue/Splash only affects black pigment. Everything else is unchanged. Since the rooster is Splash, all of his chicks will get at least one Blue gene. If a chick does not have the Blue gene, your Splash rooster is not the father.
And that's not barring. That's juvenile partridge patterning with a silver base color, like that hen pictured. And that hen is not Wheaten. She's what's called Silver Ginger in the Old English Game bantam world.

Very informative!