Expected chick color

littlekatzz

Songster
8 Years
Jan 23, 2012
346
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I have a black copper Marans/coo coo rooster over a black and a blue Marans hen, and two Easter eggers hens . One blue wheaten and the other no idea what color it's considered lol. Anyways I'm curious as I had babies hatch today and only one has the white dot on its head leading me to think it will be barred. Now I thought you had to have barred hens with a solid color to make sexlinks... So yeah I'm just lost
 
Just because the chick has white or cream on the top of the head does make the chick a sex link. The chick with the spot could be male or female.

You cross a barred female with a non-barred male ( male can not be white) to get sex linked offspring. The non barred male is usually a black tailed red variety.
 
Is your rooster black copper or cuckoo?

A pure bred cuckoo rooster will have all barred offspring, no matter what hen you breed him to. He gives one barring gene to each chick, no matter the gender. So, your chick with the head spot inherited one barring gene from daddy, but it's not a sex link, it's just cuckoo. You'll have to grow it out to determine gender.

If your rooster is a mix of black copper and cuckoo, he only has one barring gene himself. So, he only passes that gene on to half his offspring, again regardless of gender. So you'll get half barred (cuckoo) chicks and half solid, again not sex linked at all.
 
Yes he is half cuckoo and half black copper.. I need to take pics one day as he is very pretty. I set 18 eggs had 10 hatch, three that were pure Marans and seven that were F1 olive eggers hatched. I got three blue, 1 barred and 6 black of the bunch lol. Yeah I didn't think there were sexlinks... But I was kinda hoping :p. Oh well guess I'll play the waiting game on who is a boy or girl
 

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