chocolate orpingtons

New-chick

Hatching
Aug 20, 2015
8
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i have some chocolate orpingtons, just 4, in order to increase my numbers without inbreeding, I obviously need more, I have read that if I had black hens I can use my chocolate cockerel and the resulting offspring would be either chocolate or black.
can anyone confirm this?
I have also been lead to believe that its the hens that would be chocolate and cockerels black, this would be fantastic if true,
any help appreciated
 
That’s an interesting question. I learned something. Thanks! (Now if I can just remember it after I take a nap)

I’m not familiar with Chocolate so I went to the chicken calculator. Chocolate is a recessive gene that modifies black. It is also a sex linked gene. That means the females only have one copy and only give a copy of that gene to their sons. They don’t give a copy to their daughters. A male has two copies and gives a copy of what he has to all his offspring. The female offspring wind up with one gene from their father and non from their mother. The male offspring wind up with two genes, one from each parent.

So the female offspring of a Chocolate rooster over a black hen would get one Chocolate gene from her father, none from her mother, so she would be Chocolate. The male offspring would get a recessive Chocolate from the father but a dominant not-Chocolate from his mother so the black would win out and he would be black.

So yes to both your questions. The chocolate chicks would be female and the black ones male.

This will only work for the first generation. After that the genetics are mixed up.
 

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