Chocolate Serama Breeders - dun and blue can be included here as well

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Can you tell me if he is a chocolate Serama? I have several chocolate seramas mostly hens and once chocolate roo in the pen but also have a few other colored roosters in there. I think he might also have silkied feathers. I do not have any silkied seramas so this is exciting!

 

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Can you also tell me what color this rooster is?

 

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These are some of my Seramas. Tell me what you think about them. And also which ones are actually chocolate?

 

[muffi]

The chick does look like a silkied, congrats! I can't tell from the lighting if it has chocolate or not. If the dark parts of the feathers are brown, then it is choc. If they are black, it's not. The same goes for any Serama: if it has any black it can't be a chocolate, because the chocolate gene turns black into brown.

The black male with silver hackle has a birchen-like color to him. Dad was a solid black and mom was silver chocolate partridge.

 

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Hello

Can you give me some info. on the chocolate gene? I would like to mate them to produce chocolate. I am very new at this...

 

[muffi]

The simple answer is mate choc to choc and you will get all choc. As I mentioned before, choc gene simply changes black to dark brown. It does not alter the plumage pattern. Thus, a solid black bird would be changed to a solid chocolate. A mottled bird becomes chocolate mottled. A laced bird would become chocolate laced. Since Seramas are not standardized for color by most breeders, you can get all sorts of color and pattern combinations. I had been working toward a flock of solid chocolates, and I strongly urge you to pick up where I left off. The main difficulty is lighter color in males' hackles.

For those who don't know, I had to sell off dozens and dozens of birds, including last year's hatchlings due to medical issues. I apologize for not having the energy to auction off and ship out so many birds. I know it would have been better for the breed to spread my stock out. My loss was Kdmp7244's gain! Now you will have to bug her for eggs and birds.

Choc is sex linked recessive. Unlike mammals, birds are reversed when it comes to sex chromosomes, as the female determines the gender of the offspring. Males are ZZ and females are ZW. The chocolate gene, designated choc, resides only on Z chromosomes. If the choc mutation gene is not present, the wild form of the gene, designated Choc+, is present. Choc+ is dominant to choc, so if Choc+ is present, the bird will NOT be chocolate. Males can be pure chocolate (choc/choc), chocolate carriers (Choc+/choc) which have black in their plumage unless other black modifying genes like blue, lavender or dun are present, or they can be pure 'not chocolate' (Choc+/Choc+). Females are called hemizygous because they can only have one copy of the sexlinked gene on their Z chromosome. The terms pure and carrier do not apply here. Females are either chocolate (choc/-) or not chocolate (Choc+/-).

Chocolate males have two copies of the choc gene. Black males can carry chocolate if they inherit one copy of the choc gene. Females can only have one copy of the chocolate gene, which will ALWAYS come from their father. If a female is black (or has ANY black in her feathers), she is not chocolate and her only gene at the choc location is Choc+ (i.e. "not chocolate").

So to summarize, here are the possible outcomes of matings:

Father X Mother = Sons & Daughters

choc/choc X choc/- = choc/choc & choc/-
(chocolate) (chocolate) (chocolate) (chocolate)

choc/choc X Choc+/- = Choc+/choc & choc/-
(chocolate) (black) (black choc carrier) (chocolate)

Choc+/choc X choc/- = Choc+/choc , choc/choc & Choc+/- , choc/-
(black choc carrier) (chocolate) (black choc carrier, chocolate) (black, chocolate)

Choc+/choc X Choc+/- = Choc+/Choc+ , Choc+/choc & Choc+/- , choc/-
(black choc carrier) (black) (black, black choc carrier) (black, chocolate)

Choc+/Choc+ X Choc+/- = Choc+/Choc+ & Choc+/-
(black) (black) (black) (black)

 

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Thanks Muffi! You are a great help!

 

[smoothmule]

I've hatched several chocolate chicks and I think I finally have a chocolate cockerel. He's chocolate and white mottled and so far, no red leakage. I hope he stays this way but I've had several black cockerels to show red hackles as late as 4 months old. I also brought home a chocolate wheaten cockerel a few weeks ago and anxious for some chicks. Of course everyone would moult so it may be a while before they're laying again.


Here is the young chocolate wheaten cockerel. He was still in quarantine here. He has some chocolate lacing on the breast. I like that his legs are yellow but I also like the swarthy chocolate legs some of my other chocolates have. He is with some of my chocolate hens now.



Here is my chocolate mottled hen Dottie. She has a couple of other hens chicks she hatched out but her two are chocolate.




My chocolate mottled frizzled Serama pullet is laying and I've hatched out 2 black chicks so far and one that hatched today is chocolate (sire is my wheaten rooster, Tiger, that is a chocolate carrier). I can't wait to see if any of these chicks are frizzles too.

 

[smoothmule]

Here is another pair of my chocolate Serama's, this cockerel came from a place where they let them free range and they were out year around so the -13 temps froze the tips of his comb

 

[SunshineSteedFarm]

Hi guys! Just hatched out this little guy about a week ago. Haven't had this color yet. The mom is shown right beside the chick. She is chocolate. And the chick is starting to have feathers that have a light chocolate look to them. What is your opinion?





Thanks!
SSF