Getting a Mauve Orpington Chick from Chocolate parents.

[Redhead Rae]

I have an Orpington chick who someone has told me looks Mauve (chocolate with one blue gene on top).

I have 3 hens (small standard size hens) from one source.

My cock and one other hen from another source. This is the cockerel with 2 of the 3 girls shown above after they got sun-faded. I don't have a picture of the hen that came with my cock.

All the other chicks I've hatched so far hatch dark.

Could I have blue hidden in my Chocolates somewhere?

 

[Redhead Rae]

@WVduckchick

 

[Redhead Rae]

@The Moonshiner

 

[Sneebsey]

Could Dun be involved by any chance? It looks to me like a dun chick; they start lighter and then their adult feathers come in darker. Those feathers on the wing are too dark for khaki (double-dose dun) or mauve, I believe.

How many normal chocolate chicks have you hatched from this group? Could you snap a picture of the fourth hen?

 

[Redhead Rae]

I don't know about Dun... I'll get a pic of the 4th hen later.

I hatched this one and 4 more hatched today and one is hatching now. All the ones that hatched today look like normal chocolate.

 

[Redhead Rae]

I've been having fertility problems with the Cock. I've hatched eggs from the 3 hens pictured before. I still need to do a butt fluff trim to see if that helps.

 

[Sneebsey]

That's a very small sample size, so I suspect that more are on the way. Depending on the quantity of these chicks, you'll get more of a feel for who could be carrying it. I would suspect that it is a hen, rather than the cockerel, with the numbers so far.

Dun can express very similarly to Chocolate, and is often termed Chocolate, so it's easy enough for a Dun bird to get into a Chocolate breeding programme.

 

[Redhead Rae]

That's a very small sample size, so I suspect that more are on the way. Depending on the quantity of these chicks, you'll get more of a feel for who could be carrying it. I would suspect that it is a hen, rather than the cockerel, with the numbers so far.

Dun can express very similarly to Chocolate, and is often termed Chocolate, so it's easy enough for a Dun bird to get into a Chocolate breeding programme.

Could my hens that sun-faded so badly be part dun?

 

[Sneebsey]

That was my first thought too, though I'm unsure what dun and chocolate look like expressed in the same bird. Chocolate and dun both fade due to the sun, though.

You'll need to test breed them to find out the exact bird/s carrying dun. If you have a black cockerel available, then breed them to him; dun works on the same basis as blue (unlike chocolate, which is sex-linked recessive), so a cross to a black cockerel should result in black chicks and dun chicks, whereas a cross to chocolate will result in all black, with the cockerels carrying chocolate unseen. It will be a pain to do, but not impossible.

 

[Redhead Rae]

That was my first thought too, though I'm unsure what dun and chocolate look like expressed in the same bird. Chocolate and dun both fade due to the sun, though.

You'll need to test breed them to find out the exact bird/s carrying dun. If you have a black cockerel available, then breed them to him; dun works on the same basis as blue (unlike chocolate, which is sex-linked recessive), so a cross to a black cockerel should result in black chicks and dun chicks, whereas a cross to chocolate will result in all black, with the cockerels carrying chocolate unseen. It will be a pain to do, but not impossible.

I don't have a black cockerel, but I've been considering getting some blacks so I could sell sexed Chocolate pullets. So, yeah, a pain, but I could do it.