Breeding?

I think I remember reading somewhere that a pure Buff bird mated to any non Buff will produce a sandy buffish colour with a darker head, black striped neck hackles and a black tail. As with everything I 'think' I remember though, it may not be entirely correct!

 

Just for fun I went to Henk's calculator and tried a buff rooster over a lavender hen. The chicks came out as solid black.

There are different ways to make buff and there are certain assumptions that go into any of the colors, especially about things that may not show through, so the calculator is not fool-proof. A basic assumption is that Extended Black is under the Lavender. That may not be the case. And I would not be surprised to see some buff or golden colored leakage if they do turn out to be black.

If extended black is not under the Lavender, the chicks will probably look a lot like Gypsy described.

 

I found what I was thinking of! From Grant Brereton's '21st Century Poultry Breeding':

"... breeding a self Buff bird to a bird which doesn't carry any or all of the genes required for solid Buff, will in most cases result in Black tailed Buffs."

As I suspected, I was misremembering slightly. I imagined the bit about the black striped neck hackles, probably because I have a number of chicks from a Buff x Partridge mating who all turned out like that. They're very attractive birds IMO, even though they didn't turn out like I was wanting.

Also, I'm not sure what the difference is between self Buff and solid Buff.