Eumelanin based color (such as blue) as ground color with black lacing pattern?

[katefollot]

So, is it possible for eumelanin to be a ground color and for there to be black lacing on top of that?

I'm assuming it is possible as this is what Papa's Poultry is doing with their Blue Silver Laced Orps project, but I've also read that ground color is only ever silver/cream/isabel/gold/red. Can someone explain to me what I'm missing?

 

[br0nc0]

Well, the two questions you're asking aren't really related... I'm no expert, but eumelanin (black) ground color is possible, but you can't have a black chicken with some sort of lacing, since most genes responsible for lacing restrict the black pigment to the outer areas od the feather, making feathers mostly non-black.

What Papa's Poultry is doing has been done with other breeds, and it's basically a black laced gold with silver and blue genes making it blue laced silver. In this case eumelanin is already restricted to the feather edges, and the inside of feathers is pheomelanin. Silver affects pheomelanin and makes it silver and blue affects eumelanin and makes it blue.

If anyone with more knowledge of genetics can add something that'd be great (and maybe also someone who's native English speaker)

 

[katefollot]

From what I've read, eumelanin is black/brown and pheomelanin is red/yellow?

And From Henk69:

There are 4 aspects of a chicken color:

1. groundcolor (silver/cream/isabel/gold/red)
2. pattern- or eumelanin-color (black/blue/white/chocolate/lavender/khaki/mauve/beige)
3. the pattern/distribution of the eumelanin (eg Partridge/columbian/laced/autosomal barred/solid/self etc...)
4. overlay pattern (like mottled or sexlinked barred or both and maybe recessive white)

So... Both blue and black are eumelanin based.

And I'm wondering how exactly they can be bred together. Which I guess is what I was trying to say in the first place, I just didn't phrase it correctly.

I kind of understand what you're saying as to it restricting the pigment to the edges, but I would assume we would see more birds with that coloring if those characteristics weren't hard to combine?

 

[br0nc0]

Well I guess I can try to explain it a bit differently now. Black and blue are *essentially* the same thing. Blue is the dilluted version of black. In this case, we're talking about BBS (blue, black, splash). Each chicken can have two copies of this gene.

The reccesive allele is b, having two copies of it means the bird will be black (wherever the black pattern was in the forst place).

The dominant allele is B (blue). One copy of B and one b will make the bird look blue, which means that this gene will cause the black pigment to dillute and appear blue.

Homozygous dominant (B/B) are splash colored, that means that the black is dilluted to almost white with some leakage of darker feathers.

This is why you can't have, for example, blue laced black bird. One bird will either be black or blue (at least if we only consider these genes)

Blue laced silver chicken aren't particulary hard to make, since there's plenty of options out there that you can cross-breed to get the desired result. The hard part is keeping neat lacing and, most of all, you can't breed true for blue laced silver for the reasons stated above.

 

[katefollot]

Quote: Which is why I'm kind of confused. I understand the basics of blue, and I understand the unreliability of blue unless it's splash x splash, but as for pattern interacts with color I know very little. But, if the above is true, then wouldn't the reverse also be true?

If the birds in questions had a silver ground color with the lacing itself being blue, then I would understand. But Papa's BSL birds look like they a blue ground color so I'm just... not clear on how things work.

 

[br0nc0]

Well I'm pretty sure they are blue laced with silver groundcolor, but it might seem otherwise because their lacing is not perfect (yet). The silver might look blue-ish because the contrast between blue-silver isn't as sharp as black-silver.

 

[katefollot]

That.... would explain it.

SO, long story short, it's not possible.

Thank you for coming on this journey full of misunderstanding on my part.

 

[br0nc0]

No problem at all, glad I could have been of some use.