Chocolate projects?

[smoothmule]

Jean,
They sound amazing. What a cool start for any breeders project. Definitely keep me in mind for your next available please

I have some nice black Araucana hens that would be great for a project like that.

Cathy

 

[makhir63]

So, my curiosity is up. What are the genetics of the chocolate coloring? Where did it come from and how does one select for it? By the way, I have seen at least one of Pips and Peeps chocolate birds and it is a beautiful bird.

 

[OSUman]

Quote:
The choc gene is sex-linked, so when you cross a choc male on a black female you will get females that are choc and males that are black. If you cross a black male over a choc female all the offspring will be black but only the males will carry the choc gene, if you cross a split male over a black female then you will get black males with %50 of them carrying the choc gene and %50 females that will show choc while the rest will be black, finally if you cross a choc male to a choc female then all of the offspring will be choc. It was a sport in a flock of black orpington bantams owned by Dr Clivefoot in England.

 

[makhir63]

Thank You!

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

pips&peeps :

Quote:
I have already sold split chocolate (not dun) birds to two araucana breeders. They should have pure chocolate babies on the ground in a couple months.

I hope to have chocolate birds that lay chocolate eggs by the end of the year too.

Pure chocolate--inside and out

Love the looks, but not too fond of the taste, lol!​

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
Chocolate COLOURING. Well, there is chocolate colouring via the choc gene, as already explained. And there is chocolate colouring via the dun gene. One copy of dun will give a chocolate colour; a second copy further dilutes the bird to khaki, a medium to pale taupe colour. Dun is an incompletely dominate allele of dominant white, and operates similarly to the blue gene (also incompletely dominant).

 

[makhir63]

A follow up question. What then happens when a chocolate is crossed with a bird that is dominantly red in color such as a RIR or Buckeye?

 

[OSUman]

Quote:
If the chocolate is the father, the female offspring will be majority of chocolate coloring with some red leakage (maybe some diluted red because of the choc gene) and the male a Majority of black coloring with some red leakage.

 

[smoothmule]

I have several young chocolate Serama pullets that have begun laying. I have some with my chocolate carrier (he's wheaten) rooster that has produced chocolate. I also have a silver rooster to help tone down the red in the hackles of cockerels, a real pain to get rid of I hear. I have a solid black rooster now and 2 black hens to help the project along as well. My goal this year is to hatch at least one good chocolate cockerel. He can have leakage, that's something I think I'll have to work on for a while to correct but I feel I need to be able to breed chocolates to chocolates so I can be certain of which are true chocolates. Then I can get down to the business of cleaning the chocolate up with my silvers and good blacks. So, I guess my number one goal is to prove to myself they are recessive chocolates.

Here are the ones I'm pretty sure are recessive chocolate

Kiss - Solid

Dottie - Mottled

CocoPuff - Mottled/Frizzled (not laying yet, she's been slow to mature)

Latte - a lot of red leakage. She's got better color than this photo shows, it was taken at night on my desk with flash but you can see the red hackles.

These are all out of known chocolate breeding and correct for recessive the way the gene works. I have some others that I suspect may be but I need to do some test breedings so I really need a true chocolate rooster.

 

[smoothmule]

A follow up question. What then happens when a chocolate is crossed with a bird that is dominantly red in color such as a RIR or Buckeye?

Chocolate only dilutes black so a totally red bird will show no chocolate, or only chocolate where the black would have been