drakes carrying chocolate = rusty blacks?

[toadbriar]

I have a drake with a bit of rusting on his sides. Turns out he carries chocolate - yay! It made me wonder if being split for chocolate would tinge his feathers with the brown tint. I know an ideal black or blue wouldn't have the tint, but I do wonder if carrying chocolate has an influence.

thoughts?

 

[70%cocoa]

You might be onto something there.

I have two ducks that came out of a hatch of Swedish (from someone else's flock - I bought them as day-olds). These ducks, both female, are chocolate. Being females, they only need one dose of this sex-linked recessive gene to appear chocolate. A number of their male siblings in the same hatch (which my friend bought and raised) had quite a lot of brown in them. Being male, they could have had one dose of chocolate. Not enough to turn them chocolate all over but perhaps enough to put rust in the feathers.

Unfortunately I don't know exactly what the parents looked like but I do know that they were supposed to be reasonable quality Swedish. Obviously one of them was carrying chocolate though.

 

[rollyard]

Maybe? I have no doubt that many recessives do/can express to some degree when in heterozygous form, but your conclusion may not be as straight forward as it would seem! Other factors/modifyers (major/minor) @ other loci ? could influence colour outcomes, maybe?