Can you tell the difference in pattern?

[Ponyiqandhens2]

Ok i have a bunch of photos of the golden sebright x mille fleur duccle chicks that are about 9-10 weeks old.

The males should have incomplete lacing and girls double i cant get day time photos, they have been raised by an old english game bantam hen who shall we say is still in mild attack mode, these kids have superb free range survival skills,hyper alert,etc..so i can only get roost phots and get bitten by Cicely doing it..so i think i have 2 pictures each of the 5.. i didnt include pictures of the sebright legger cross..

 

[NatJ]

Ok i have a bunch of photos of the golden sebright x mille fleur duccle chicks that are about 9-10 weeks old.

The males should have incomplete lacing and girls double

I assume you got that prediction from the chicken calculator, but it would be talking about the adult pattern, which they may not have yet. Chicks with lacing, double lacing, spangling, and some other patterns can change appearance quite a bit as they go through several juvenile molts. The juvenile patterns can often look like what your chicks are showing right now.

Are you trying to figure out sexes, or just curious for other reasons?

I noticed several chicks have quite dark feet. If you're trying to identify sexes, check what color feet the father and mother have. A dark-footed father and a light-footed mother should produce daughters with dark feet and sons with light feet. So it may be possible to sex them that way. If the parents have any other set of foot colors, you'll just have to wait until males grow combs & wattles that you can recognize.

 

[Ponyiqandhens2]

I really am just interested because they have been pretty interesting.Unfortunately comb and wattles will likely take longer..The golden Sebright cockrel complicates it.. i know the mother of 5 are the mille fleur d'uccle at the time she was the only feather footed girl.. the only comb that is different isthe 6th egg,sebright and egger..he has always had a partial mulberry partial red.. he is definetly a cockeral. The other 5 i suspect will be wait until they crow. I will say in person their are clearly two different patterns..but i cant really tell which is which.. im not sure if the hen featheris going to show up.. i didnt even think about it being adult color/pattern,thank you forthe reminder

 

[NatJ]

I really am just interested because they have been pretty interesting.Unfortunately comb and wattles will likely take longer..The golden Sebright cockrel complicates it.. i know the mother of 5 are the mille fleur d'uccle at the time she was the only feather footed girl.. the only comb that is different isthe 6th egg,sebright and egger..he has always had a partial mulberry partial red.. he is definetly a cockeral. The other 5 i suspect will be wait until they crow. I will say in person their are clearly two different patterns..but i cant really tell which is which.. im not sure if the hen featheris going to show up.. i didnt even think about it being adult color/pattern,thank you forthe reminder

In that case, I'll hope for some adult photos when they are older
I think they are going to be beautiful birds!

 

[Ponyiqandhens2]

Do you know how the s

In that case, I'll hope for some adult photos when they are older
I think they are going to be beautiful birds!

Ebright hen feathering works,i know some of it is hormonal which is why their fertility rate is low ( someone did not inform mine) anyway, is it a dominant,recessive,multiple genes affecting different elements?

 

[NatJ]

Do you know how the Sebright hen feathering works,i know some of it is hormonal which is why their fertility rate is low ( someone did not inform mine) anyway, is it a dominant,recessive,multiple genes affecting different elements?

http://kippenjungle.nl/sellers/page3.html
According to this page, it's just one dominant gene.

http://kippenjungle.nl/breeds/crossbreeds.html
The chicken calculator considers it a dominant gene too (symbol Hf)

https://poultry.extension.org/artic...on/causes-of-hen-feathering-in-male-chickens/
This article explains how it works, being something that happens specifically in the skin.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/280136
An article from quite some years ago (cites a study from 1926 as "recent").
The first half talks about research that has already been done, which includes:

--caponizing (castrating) a male chicken causes him to grow yet another kind of feathers. It doesn't matter whether he was normal-feathered or hen-feathered, he still grows capon feathers after he's caponized. So they decided that testosterone is needed for the hen feathering to be displayed.

--someone transplanted testes between Sebright roosters and Brown Leghorn roosters, and the Sebrights still grew hen feathers while the Brown Leghorns still grew normal male feathers.

--breeding tests showed hen feathering to be caused by a dominant gene, although from the description I think it's incompletely dominant (so homozygous males are hen feathered, while heterozygous birds can have an in-between sort of feathering).


I have read that some breeders think hen feathering causes lower fertility, but I have also read that hen feathering actually has no effect on fertility. I have no personal experience either way, and I don't know who to believe.

Sebrights do have rose combs, and homozygous rose comb in males is definitely known to reduce fertility. So if a Sebright male has poor fertility because of having homozygous rose comb, it could be hard to sort out whether the hen feathering has an additional effect, or whether all the trouble is caused by the rose comb gene. And what people think about it might or might not match what is actually true.

 

[alpacasandchicks78]

I assume you got that prediction from the chicken calculator, but it would be talking about the adult pattern, which they may not have yet. Chicks with lacing, double lacing, spangling, and some other patterns can change appearance quite a bit as they go through several juvenile molts. The juvenile patterns can often look like what your chicks are showing right now.

Are you trying to figure out sexes, or just curious for other reasons?

I noticed several chicks have quite dark feet. If you're trying to identify sexes, check what color feet the father and mother have. A dark-footed father and a light-footed mother should produce daughters with dark feet and sons with light feet. So it may be possible to sex them that way. If the parents have any other set of foot colors, you'll just have to wait until males grow combs & wattles that you can recognize.

Okay, so does that work in reverse?? I have the same mix but mom is dark legged and dad is light colored leg.

 

[Ponyiqandhens2]

Okay, so does that work in reverse?? I have the same mix but mom is dark legged and dad is light colored leg.

@NatJ maybe you can answer this question?

 

[neo71665]

I see a few that are brown and black and a few that are black and brown

 

[NatJ]

Okay, so does that work in reverse?? I have the same mix but mom is dark legged and dad is light colored leg.

The skin color is only sexlinked when the father has dark legs and the mother has light.

Reversing them (dark mom, light dad) gives chicks that cannot be sexed by color. You will get light legs in both genders, and you may also get dark legs in both genders if the father carries the gene for dark legs.

Genetic explanation (ignore if not interested):

This is because of the way the chromosomes work in chickens.
a male has ZZ sex chromosomes
a female has ZW sex chromosomes
dark vs. light legs is on the Z chromosome

A hen inherits Z from her father and W from her mother. She gives Z to her sons and W to her daughters. If you think about the W part, that's what determines the sex of the chicks, and it only passes from mother to daughter. Because a hen only has one Z chromosome, she shows whatever genes are on it. Whether a gene is dominant or recessive doesn't matter to a bird with only one.

A rooster inherits Z from his father and from his mother. If they match, he shows that trait (in this case, dark legs or light legs.) If the two Z chromosomes do not match, he shows whichever one is dominant (in this case, light legs.) So a dark-legged rooster must have two dark-legs genes, while a light legged rooster might have two light or one light and one dark. A rooster gives one Z chromosome to each of his chicks.

When you breed a dark-legged rooster to a light-legged hen, he gives the dark legs to every chick. Since that is the only Z chromosome his daughters have, they show dark feet. The light-legged mother gives W to her daughters (makes them female) and Z to her sons. For the sons, because they inherit dark from dad and light from mom, they show light legs (dominant trait.)

When you breed a light-legged rooster, if he has the light-legs gene on both of his Z chromosomes, he gives one to every chick. For the daughters, that is the only Z chromosome they have, so they show light legs. For the sons, because light legs is dominant, they also show light legs. This is true regardless of whether the mother has light or dark legs.

When you have a light-legged rooster that carries the gene for dark legs, he gives light legs to some chicks and dark legs to other chicks. For daughters, they show whatever leg color they got (dark or light), because they only have the one Z chromosome. For sons, if they have a dark-legged mother, they can show either leg color. Dark legs from the mother and dark legs from the father makes a dark-legged son. Dark legs from the mother and light legs from the father makes a son that shows light legs (the dominant trait.)

All the sex-linked genes work the same way. Once you know which is dominant, you can set up a sex-linked cross by using a father with the recessive trait (which will appear in his daughters) and a hen with the dominant trait (which will appear in the sons).

For other common sex-linked genes:
silver is dominant over gold
barred is dominant over not-barred
not-chocolate is dominant over chococlate