Chocolate orpington x sapphire splash?

[triciayoung]

No, you will not get chocolate with blue barring.
The barring gene puts white stripes across the feathers, no matter what the base color is.

Chocolate dilutes black to a brown shade. The Blue gene dilutes black to a gray shade (one blue gene) or a lighter/blotchy gray shade (splash is caused by two blue genes).

A chicken with chocolate and also one blue gene is called mauve, and has a color a bit different than chocolate or blue.
I don't know the name for chocolate with two blue genes, but presumably it is a lighter color than mauve.

All of those dilution affects happen to black, but not to red/gold colors. The chickens in your question have the genes to be black all over, with no red/gold anywhere, but if you were working with Laced chickens you would see the black areas get diluted but the other areas not.



As regards Sapphire Gem or Sapphire Splash already being a cross: yes, I am pretty sure they are sexlinks, with the males having one barring gene and the females having none.

So if you cross a Chocolate Orpington rooster (no barring) with a Sapphire Gem or Sapphire Splash hen (no barring), you get chicks with no barring.

If you cross a Sappire Gem or Sapphire Splash rooster (one barring gene) with a Chocolate Orpington hen (no barring), you get barring in half of the chicks, and no barring in the other half. Males and females will be in both halves, so you can't sex them by whether or not they have barring.



You are correct that chocolate and barring are both sexlinked genes. That means they are on the Z chromosome. Roosters have two Z chromosomes, hens have ZW.

A rooster inherits one Z from each parent, and gives one Z to each chick he sires.
A hen inherits Z from her father and W from her mother. She gives Z to each of her sons, and W to each of her daughters (the W makes them female.)

Chocolate is recessive.
Because a rooster has two Z chromosomes, he can have two chocolate genes (so he looks chocolate), or two not-chocolate genes (does not show chocolate) or one chocolate and one not-chocolate gene (does not show chocolate.)
A hen has just one Z chromosome, so either she has chocolate or she has not-chocolate. She shows whichever one she has.

Barring is incompletely dominant. One barring gene makes white bars across the feathers. Two barring genes make white bars across the feathers, but the bars are either wider or there are more of them, so the chicken looks lighter.
A hen has only one Z chromosome, so either she has barring or she has no barring.
A rooster with two Z chromosomes can have no barring, or he can have one barring gene (Black Sexlink rooster, Sapphire Gem rooster, Sapphire Splash rooster), or he can have two barring genes (Barred Rock rooster, Dominique rooster, Cuckoo Marans rooster.)
In the breeds that are pure for barring, you can sex the chicks by color: every female has one barring gene and every male has two barring genes, so the males are overall lighter in color than the females.
In Black Sexlinks, males have one barring gene and females have none. So the males have the darker barred color that you would fine in Barred Rock females.

Sapphire Gem and Sapphire Splash are like Black Sexlinks, but they also have blue or splash. The barring is easier to see on an actual black background, which is why I use Black Sexlinks as an example when discussing barring.

For the cross you are talking about doing, if the rooster is a Chocolate Orpington and the mother is a Sapphire Splash:
--Every chick gets one blue gene from the Sapphire Splash hen, and no blue gene from the Chocolate Orpington rooster.
--Every male chick gets one Z chromosome from the rooster (has chocolate, no barring) and one Z chromosome from the hen (no chocolate, no barring). This means every male chick looks blue (one blue gene), carries chocolate without showing it, has no barring.
--Every female chick gets one Z chromosome from the rooster (has chocolate, no barring) and one W chromosome from the hen (makes her female). This means every female chick looks mauve (one blue gene, plus chocolate, no barring.)

If the rooster is Sapphire Splash and the hen is a Chocolate Orpington:
--Every chick gets one blue gene from the Sapphire Splash rooster, and no blue gene from the Chocolate Orpington hen.
--Every male chick gets one Z chromosome from the Sapphire Splash rooster (half of them have barring, half do not, none have chocolate). Every male chick gets one Z chromosome from the Chocolate Orpington hen (chocolate, no barring.) So half of male chicks are blue with white barring, and half of male chicks are blue with no white barring. All of the male chicks carry chocolate but none of them show it.
--Every female chick gets one Z chromosome from the Sapphire Splash rooster (half of them have barring, half do not, none have chocolate.) Every female chick gets one Z chromosome from the Chocolate Orpington hen (makes them female, does not have chocolate or barring.) So half of female chicks are blue with white barring, and half of female chicks are blue with no white barring. None of the female chicks have chocolate (not shown, not carried.)

If you use Sapphire Gem instead of Sapphire Splash, half of the chicks will have the blue gene, instead of all having the blue gene. So that would make half of the "blue" chicks be black and half of the "mauve" chicks be chocolate. It would have no effect on whether they are barred or not.

Wow @NatJ, you are a genetics expert.

 

[N F C]

Hi, make yourself at home here!

 

[sourland]

Good morning, and welcome to BYC.

 

[Kenneth Zweerink]

Welcome to BackYard Chickens. The Best of Luck with your Plans. And a Big Hello from Eastern Nebraska!

 

[Burnt Brass Homestead]

Hi @New2diss

Good luck with your cross breeding.

Welcome!