I dont see any black chicks hatched, so I will assume its recessive sex linked chocolate, what you see is a natural phenomenon on diluting genes, you will see and hatch lighter birds from time to time, I assume keeping the dark chocolate ones will be desired.
What do you mean by recessive linked Chocolate? I thought Chocolate was sex linked recessive and males need 2 copies or they would be black split for Chocolate and females need only one copy. Unfortunately, my Chocolate cock hasn’t been as prolific as I would like and I only have the 6 chicks so far. 2 in the off color and 4 in darker chocolate.
That is exactly what I meant.
So what will the lighter colored chick look like? I thought a split for Chocolate cockerel would be black.
The problem with that is the cock isn’t producing fertile eggs on a regular basis.Sorry Rae, I’m even more confused.
Maybe you could just separate a hen until you get a couple (or a few) eggs from her, then separate another hen, and so on. Label the eggs by hen, and incubate them and see what ya get. Lots of hatching may be needed to narrow it down though. And it could end up being the cock.
