I'm going to guess it's a Black Australorp x California White hen, or California Grey. I think the key to the dusty color is Autosomal red with the Barring gene (and something else the Barred Rock must have). (edit: I change my mind below.)
First, I don't think either the Smoky or the Pearl genes are at play here, it's just a marketing thing. (Pearl/Opal is totally hard to find, and looking at the bird, I would go for Dun (I^D) over Smoky (I^S) every time, but it's not Dun either.) It looks similar to what the lavender gene does to both black and red pigments, but we know there's no lavender there because of the black in the saddle. Same with the blue gene.
(Pre-explanation in the context of silver based birds with the pattern gene.)
When crossing a silver male to a gold female, you get all silver chicks, the males being S/s+ and the females being S/-. The males usually have a gold tint to them because of their hybrid status, but the thing is, sometimes the females do too. This drove me crazy because it's impossible, until I found one obscure reference that explained that a silver hen could present like that due to the autosomal red that her mother carried. Since this isn't common knowledge and the reference was to a breed that has lacing, I believe the feather pattern genes are a contributor.
The Black Australorp should be a silver base, but the shiny green sheen to the feathers is enhanced by Autosomal red, therefore that could be what's making that coloring (even though we've got all Silver base parents).
Yes it does, but with the extra dustiness of the white. The California White is a California Grey Male over a White Leghorn Female, and the California Grey is a Barred Rock Male over a White Leghorn Female. So in essence you have 3 parts Leghorn and 1 part Barred Rock going in, and then adding the Autosomal red is what makes the "with some having what we describe as ghost barring" appear, due to the added chance of carrying the Barring gene. They wouldn't all carry the barring gene, so there must be something else at play that's also triggering the dusty color. Maybe the barred gene has nothing to do with it and it's just one of the pattern genes like that's seen in the lace or spangle varieties with dustiness?
And that's another thing...Ar making the dusty color over silver is one thing, but we've got Dominant White going on here too. It's leaky, sure, but it doesn't affect Ar or gold. So how would we get Ar over it
and turn it a little greyish? Could it be that they're using the California Tan that they stopped selling?
https://flockjourney.com/breeds/brown-egg-layers/california-tan/ (BTW - flockjourney is Hoover's.)
Being that they don't generally want to have to make too many not-for-sale hybrid breeds just to parent a new hybrid, they're probably using the unused California Grey females to make this cross.
What I don't get is that the California Grey, being part Barred rock, should lay a brown egg, and so should the California white, but neither do. Every barred rock easter egger I've ever seen lays some shade of green to olive, so I wonder what it is about mixing with the leghorn that makes the brown tint to not be produced? The California Tan had a brownish egg, so it must not be the leghorn genes entirely.
Scratch the Black Australorp.
California Tan and California Grey (25% Red, 25% Barred, 50% leghorn); or Black Sex Link Males with White Leghorn (same percentages). Probably the last one, so they can drop all their "California" hybrids altogether, and utilize the male sex-links. I don't really see gold in those chicks' phenotypes, but there are a couple that
could be, and if they are, they'd be female. (50% S/S or S/s+ males, 25% S/- female, 25% s+/- female.)
See how fun science is? Every answer creates more questions!
And you guys thought you'd be getting away without some crazy story on them!
