Nicalandia - Thanks very much for posting that link. Unfortunately I hardly understand any of it! I bought myself Grant Brereton's breeding book - recommended to me as a good 'starter' book on genetics, but again found it largely incomprehensible. I'm intelligent enough and I can pick up the theories and rules when they're explained to me in simple terms, but most of the genetic stuff just uses too much language I don't understand the meaning of, even after googling and reading the supposed explanations. So much of it supposes a background in biology, which unfortunately I don't have, so it's pretty much beyond me. However I shall persevere! Thanks again.
Pyncheon Guy - Both of your posts were actually very useful to me. I was asking about the yellow legs just because it was a totally unexpected result with my crossbreed chicks, but I also keep a willow legged breed - or rather, a breed which is SUPPOSED to have willow green legs but which routinely turns out legs in all shades from the very palest green to a very dark slatey grey green. It's a real puzzle to quite a few of the breeders, so your knowledge will probably be hugely useful to me. I hope you don't mind if I bombard you with loads of questions about it at some future point!
So... if you breed yellow legs to blue legs, you'll get green legs? Like mixing paint? How odd. I assume that the resulting birds will have a mixture of yellow and blue genes and therefore could most likely not be counted on to reliably produce green legged offspring? I also didn't realise that there was an actual 'willow green' gene.
And if a pure yellow legged male bred to a willow legged female will produce yellow legged males and willow legged females, does that mean that the genes which produce both colours are sex-linked? I remember reading something about certain genes being on the D or w chromosomes, meaning they were sex-linked, but I'm not sure if this is the same thing...
And what was going on with my own chicks then, where green x pink = yellow? All of the chicks are pullets, the yellow and the pink legged ones both. The green legged fathers are Marsh Daisies, and I have no idea if mine are proper willow like they should be, or a mixture of blue and yellow. The pink legged mothers are utility Leghorns, bred for maximum egg production with no regard for correct yellow leg colour. I've only ever kept females so have no idea if any of the males in the original flock had yellow legs or not...
