perfect sense to me...
yes and no, as the Blue or White and the Brown coating genetics are separate. Blue and white are the only shell colors, but the Blue gene can be either Dominant or recessive. Chickie Hawks daughters get the blue shell in about 50% of their population, and they all get the Brown from both him and their mother, so they lay varying shades of green or brown. (I’m wondering how it will go if I add Sapphire/Hyline reds to his pen? Hopefully we will see this winter or early spring +20 weeks!)
In some breeds like the CCL the blue shell gene is dominant, and is passed to all their offspring. But the blue or white shell gene is separate from the genes that go into putting the “brown” coating on. Brown on blue shells gives a green, and on white shells... some shade of brown. Anywhere from light tan to dark chocolate Marans colors. That’s why my breeder uses a CCL Rooster (Dominant Blue/Blue) over leghorn hens (White/white) to get my Sapphires as guaranteed blue Layers (Dominant Blue/white). If I cross my Sapphires to my Marans I get either tan, mint, olive or brown depending if the hen passes on her Blue gene or the white to her chicks. The brown coating genetic stuff I don’t fully get, but it seems to pass on as a dominant trait, at least in all my pairings. I don’t think you can breed a brown layer and a white layer and get white shells from their offspring.
I'm not much of a scientist & it all gets very confusing very quickly for me.
