Dun, Khaki, Platinum?

[RoostersAreAwesome]

Thanks, RAR! I have eggs from these hens that were bred to a black rooster in the incubator. Hoping for some khaki and dun birds.

Let us know what you get!

 

[NatJ]

Thanks, RAR! I have eggs from these hens that were bred to a black rooster in the incubator. Hoping for some khaki and dun birds.

If the rooster is black, you should get dun chicks and black chicks from dun mothers, and only dun chicks from khaki mothers. No khaki chicks when a parent is black.

 

[Khakle]

Thanks, NatJ. This is all so interesting! I’ve not found a lot of background info on how these colors work and how you distinguish colors that can (to me) look very similar — ie, platinum vs khaki. I’m including a picture of my rooster here. What color is he? When bred to the hens shown above (I don’t know which hen was mother of which chicks), I got 2 chicks that look similar to the light-colored hens, 2 blues, 1 black (possibly very dark dun?), and 1 dun.

 

[NatJ]

Thanks, NatJ. This is all so interesting! I’ve not found a lot of background info on how these colors work and how you distinguish colors that can (to me) look very similar — ie, platinum vs khaki. I’m including a picture of my rooster here. What color is he? When bred to the hens shown above (I don’t know which hen was mother of which chicks), I got 2 chicks that look similar to the light-colored hens, 2 blues, 1 black (possibly very dark dun?), and 1 dun.

I am no better than you at recognizing those particular similar-looking colors.

I can understand how the genetics are "supposed" to work, but recognizing them in actual chickens can be something else again!

Hopefully someone else can chime in and help identify what color your rooster actually is.

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

Thanks, NatJ. This is all so interesting! I’ve not found a lot of background info on how these colors work and how you distinguish colors that can (to me) look very similar — ie, platinum vs khaki. I’m including a picture of my rooster here. What color is he? When bred to the hens shown above (I don’t know which hen was mother of which chicks), I got 2 chicks that look similar to the light-colored hens, 2 blues, 1 black (possibly very dark dun?), and 1 dun.

I do believe that rooster is platinum (blue + dun); he looks too brown to just be blue and too grey to just be dun. He’s also not light enough to be khaki or splash.

 

[Khakle]

Thank you so much RAA and NatJ for taking the time to look at my birds and field my questions. Here’s my last burning question: with the hens and the rooster pictured above plus black hens and a black rooster, what breeding combination would you use to get khaki and dun birds?

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

Thank you so much RAA and NatJ for taking the time to look at my birds and field my questions. Here’s my last burning question: with the hens and the rooster pictured above plus black hens and a black rooster, what breeding combination would you use to get khaki and dun birds?

Since you can’t get khaki from black, you’ll have to cross the hens to the platinum rooster for khaki. However, if you want to avoid the blue gene, I would cross the dun hen to the black rooster, as you’ll just get 50% duns and 50% blacks.