Color genetics in Orpintons.

[Crescent Moon Ranch]

Greetings from Oklahoma! I'm new to the group and have become the proud owner of 2 blue Orpington roo's and a black Orpington pullet. I am interested in crossing the blue roos with buff Orpingtons, but wonder what kind of colors I will end up with? Any help would be greatly appreciated, I'm new to Orp's after having New Hampshires for years, and am completely enthralled with these chicks.

Carrie

 

[Henk69]

It is a cross that has been done.
The cockerels become a lot columbian restricted (black tailed buff).
The pullets less so, more dark pattern on their back and hackle.
This is due to the action of Db from the buff parent.
Without the Db the offspring would be a lot more black (or blue).

If necessary, the others will dumb it down for you.
I am not good at that.

 

[MommaOrp]

I just hatched out some black cross buff, i ended up with 2 black, 1 buff with brown stripe and one buff if thats any help?

 

[Crescent Moon Ranch]

Thanks! I'm excited to see what we will end up with. Right now they are only one month old chicks, so aside from them being spoiled rotten from getting played with all the time. I'm not going to have to be in any hurry to set up my breeding pen.

C

 

[Henk69]

You should get uniform chicks if all your birds are purebreed. Except for the blue.

 

[RAREROO]

The pullets Henk was describing would look similar to these, the roos would have even less black and in both sexes, some of them would have blue markings instead of black since the fathers were blue.

Also with the Blues being the fathers and with the possibility of them being silver based or split silver/gold, there may be a possibility for you to get birds that are silver in the places where the buff/gold is in the pic I posted.