Did I create a new breed on accident???

[kaylacampbell30]

please help me understand how my chick came out this color? All of my chickens are standard size breeds. I know her father was a white naked neck (Turken), I’m not sure who her mother could be because NONE of my hens are this color!?!? Did I create a new breed?? How could that happen? I have a friend that says she looks like she could be a Millefleur! But I don’t understand how that could be possible because this chicken is not a bantam and google says that breed cannot be standard size.

 

[BDutch]

Crosses often give unexpected colours. I had a lavender (light greyish) hen and a pile (mostly white ) rooster. The 2 chicks I got where black.

If you want to learn more about mixing chicken genes have a look on chickenjungle. http://kippenjungle.nl/chickencalculator.html

This is not a new breed.

 

[kaylacampbell30]

Crosses often give unexpected colours. I had a lavender (light greyish) hen and a pile (mostly white ) rooster. The 2 chicks I got where black.

If you want to learn more about mixing chicken genes have a look on chickenjungle. http://kippenjungle.nl/chickencalculator.html

This is not a new breed.

Oh wow! I had no idea! Thank you

 

[SwampPrincessChick]

Chicken colors are much, much more complicated than a mix of their parents' colors. There are more than a hundred color varieties and recessive and dominant genes all make genetics even more complicated. Crosses can have colors that their parents do not show. An example would be crossing a blue chicken with a blue chicken, which would produce 50% blue offspring, 25% black and 25% splash.

Crossing chickens and making a first generation hybrid/mix does not create a new breed. A new breed is only created when you work very hard to create a large stock of parents that breed true (which means their offspring will look like them, thus confirming they are a breed and not a cross or a mix). Sometimes creating a breed takes very long, as in the case of Sebrights. It took Sir John Sebright twenty to thirty years of hard work to make his breed.

 

[AinaWGSD]

The unexpected color probably comes from your rooster. There are three common ways to get a white chicken. Dominant white, which only requires one copy to turn black (or blue or lavender) to white. Recessive white, which requires two copies (one from each parent) to turn black into white. And silver, which turns red (or buff or yellow) to white. Whatever color is being changed to white is still present genetically so a white chicken will pass that color on to its chicks and depending on what genes are involved can result in non white offspring. And just to complicate things further, a chicken can have more than one white gene (ie they could have both dominant white and recessive white, or even all three genes responsible for white feathers).

Mille fleur is both a bantam breed and a color. Genetically it's mottled buff columbian. Leghorn are an example of a large fowl breed that comes in millefleur. This chick would not be millefleur since there is no mottling (that i can see anyway...if one of your hens is mottled then it's still a possibility). She looks like a buff with lots of leakage to me.

 

[SwampPrincessChick]

Mille fleur is both a bantam breed and a color.

Not true. You are probably talking about the d'Uccle, which is most popular in its mille fleur color variety, but has other color varieties as well. Because of the color's popularity, the d'Uccle has often been overall, as a breed, called "Mille Fleur d'Uccle" (even if they are a different color variety, like porcelain) even though this would be false because mille fleur is only a color. Again because of the color's popularity, sometimes people even call d'Uccles "Mille Fleurs" even though this is also false, since mille fleur is (again) only a color and therefore cannot be used as a breed name, especially when the breed already has an established name, d'Uccle. Overall, people not knowing much about chicken breeds and colors results in confusion like this.

 

[SwampPrincessChick]

A chicken's feathers that are mille fleur look like a speckled chicken's feathers, except mille fleur turns the dark chocolate color of speckled into a bright buff, and leaves the actual speckles (the white-and-black dots scattered across the feather tips) alone.

Example of a mille fleur chicken, this one being a d'Uccle:

(Not my image.)

 

[AinaWGSD]

Ah, kinda like how barred rock has sort of become what some people call any Plymouth rock chicken because it's the most well known variety.

 

[kaylacampbell30]

Chicken colors are much, much more complicated than a mix of their parents' colors. There are more than a hundred color varieties and recessive and dominant genes all make genetics even more complicated. Crosses can have colors that their parents do not show. An example would be crossing a blue chicken with a blue chicken, which would produce 50% blue offspring, 25% black and 25% splash.

Crossing chickens and making a first generation hybrid/mix does not create a new breed. A new breed is only created when you work very hard to create a large stock of parents that breed true (which means their offspring will look like them, thus confirming they are a breed and not a cross or a mix). Sometimes creating a breed takes very long, as in the case of Sebrights. It took Sir John Sebright twenty to thirty years of hard work to make his breed.

WOW!!! This is GREAT information!! Thank you SO much for taking the time to explain this to me!

 

[SwampPrincessChick]

Ah, kinda like how barred rock has sort of become what some people call any Plymouth rock chicken because it's the most well known variety.

Yes, exactly! You summed that up in an easier way than me.

WOW!!! This is GREAT information!! Thank you SO much for taking the time to explain this to me!

You are welcome!