Wappoke
Chirping
- Dec 5, 2015
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the two blacks are actually blue- wait and see if the adult plumage is blue.I'm desperately hunting for an answer so I'm hijacking this post! Sorry!! Last year I acquired a splash Orpington pullet. This year I went out and found a super nice blue cockerel. I have had them in a breeding pen by themselves for over 2 months with another splash pullet. In the last couple days, one of my hens has hatched out 5 babies. Now here is the question. Out of her eggs, she has 2 splash, 1 blue, and 2 BLACK. How did this happen? I can't find an answer anywhere since blue and splash are suppose to be 50% blue/50% splash. PS My girls had ZERO contact with any other rooster than the blue. The eggs she is hatching out are hers and her sister's only.
The blue cockerel can not be lavender because you hatched some splash chicks. And even if he was lavender, all the chicks should be blue.and that is not eh case.
If one of the hens was heterozygous/ split for dominant white then ( as was mentioned in the previous post) crossing a bird that is I*I/I/i with a blue male could produce black chicks.
another possibility is that the male is carrying a recessive gene that is epistatic to the blue gene and one of the females is also a carrier. This recessive gene pair would prevent the expression of the blue color. The recessive gene would allow for the normal production of melanosomes, therefore, you have black chickens.
pics of the hens would be great