Charcoal (Cha) vs Melanotic (Ml) difference ?

[Aneury Sanchez]

Hello I want to try to create a lakenvelder / vorwerk patterned chicken from scratch project. Where I live fancy colored breeds are something I would love to have but import restrictions and expensive paperwork make it impossible for the time being. What I have to work with are mixed breeds, broilers, commercial brown egg layers and maybe white egg layers along with feral game type chickens. I only have the feral game chickens to use in order to get the charcoal gene. What i would like to know is how to tell the difference of charcoal from melanotic most likely on e+/e+, e+/eb, eb/eb base with or without columbian and pattern genes in the mix.

 

[ABQ chicken keeper]

Hello I want to try to create a lakenvelder / vorwerk patterned chicken from scratch project. Where I live fancy colored breeds are something I would love to have but import restrictions and expensive paperwork make it impossible for the time being. What I have to work with are mixed breeds, broilers, commercial brown egg layers and maybe white egg layers along with feral game type chickens. I only have the feral game chickens to use in order to get the charcoal gene. What i would like to know is how to tell the difference of charcoal from melanotic most likely on e+/e+, e+/eb, eb/eb base with or without columbian and pattern genes in the mix.

Hi, Where do you live?

 

[Aneury Sanchez]

Hi, Where do you live?

A small caribbean island called St.eustatius

 

[ABQ chicken keeper]

WOW, Nice to meet you.
From Google: Sint Eustatius, known locally as Statia, is an island in the Caribbean. It is a special municipality (officially "public body") of the Netherlands. (Sounds idyllic)
So, Can you order hatching eggs from the Netherlands?

 

[Aneury Sanchez]

WOW, Nice to meet you.
From Google: Sint Eustatius, known locally as Statia, is an island in

WOW, Nice to meet you.
From Google: Sint Eustatius, known locally as Statia, is an island in the Caribbean. It is a special municipality (officially "public body") of the Netherlands. (Sounds idyllic)
So, Can you order hatching eggs from the Netherlands?

Not really as there is no direct shipping fast enough to get the eggs here fast enough or reasonably priced for eggs with a very low hatching rate expected.

 

[Amer]

Well, any patterned bird with a lot of black on the head and neck: safe to say that there's charcoal in the mix. For example: moorhead silkie is just Partridge with Charcoal.
I don't know if this is easy to find in mixed populations but you can try.

 

[Amer]

So basically find birds with coloring similar to what you desire and then refine it.