Chocolate/Dun Orpington Project?

[angidee]

Those are gorgeous!!!!

 

[cpartist]

At the risk of looking like an idiot, because I know nothing about genetics, and can not even wrap
my little brain around geno-pheno, whatever, I'm going to throw this out there...

I've got a BCM girl that looks chocolatey to me. The Marans people call this a "mossy".
Seems they are lacking the melanizer ? gene which covers this with black. A lot of these
birds I've seen pictures of look to just have too much copper, but this girl's body feathers
are dark brown. I have her in the Olive Egger pen, but wonder if I should put her with
my Buff Orps to see what hatches from her eggs.

A photo at about 4 weeks old:

and at 16 weeks:

I know this would be a lot of work...to breed out the leg feathering and copper hackles,
and I don't have the time or space to do this, but there seem to be quite a few of these
"mossies" out there. Both breeds are similar in size, have white skin, and single combs.
I have olive eggers created by Buff EE x Marans and all chicks have hatched with Marans
coloring...

Am I totally off base here? It would be too cool to have a chocolate Orp that lays
a chocolate egg

 

[sonew123]

Quote:
no me me me!!

LOL love you!

I would share with your Nat! hehe! Only because my olive eggers from you are so beautiful!

I know you would I would to you too... Jody is right though..I have more chickens than I know what to do with-but you know once I weed out the 75% roo ratio-I need some more girls:-(. I got 1 OE girl out of 6:-( I got 2 EE girls out of 10. Argh...

 

[hinkjc]

cpartist, I'm not sure as it's hard to tell color in the pics, but all you can do is test it to see what you get. Why not chocolate Marans that lay chocolate eggs?

That would be cool too! I think the preferred method for testing choc is with a black bird though. If your buff is dun based, you may get similar results although the breeding works a bit differently.

My birds are from buff cross breedings that are pictured, so I'd say if you want to give it a try anything's possible. Keep us posted on how it goes. Good luck!

 

[Birch Run Farm]

Jody,

Beautiful! They look blue-red to me though!

 

[Tony]

Jody,
Ewwww!! those are yucky and ugly, I really think you should just send them to me, so you don`t have to look at them anymore.

lol
They are really nice, best of luck with them. if you decide to go forward with the project, just throw my name right in there on your egg waiting list.

 

[corancher]

IMG. I don't care if they are Chocolate or not, they are so very pretty. Don't you dare stop on these beauties.

 

[hinkjc]

Thanks!

Ann, definitely no blue involved with this breeding, but they do remind me of how blue acts (with the lacing and darker head) except in a brown color.

I will likely test breed them out of curiosity to see what happens. Probably another 2 months or so until anyone starts laying in there. I'll keep everyone posted.

 

[karabbitry]

I am not sure if someone has said this already or not because I scanned some of the posts. To me those females are far from being chocolate or dun. I am not sure what the male is, but the females look like wheatons. I have a few different breeds that are wheaton and some, the asil bantams in particular look identical. That is what I think you have there.

The male I don't have a clue! The lighting on the pics is hard to tell much from

 

[hinkjc]

Thanks for your insight. I had actually considered wheaton, but based on what I remember when I had wheaton birds, they were always a more buff/yellow color. These are more tan/brown. I'm not sure if that is due to other genes playing a role or what. I am doubtful they are wheaton, but the test should tell us one way or another for sure.