Help me understand the "Split" and "Split to" descriptions?

[Blue Eggerz]

I see a lot of posts/info where people say something like, "I have a blah-blah that is a Split Marans" or "(talking about a black chicken) a black split to lavender Ameraucana", or "Lavender orps split to mottled". I know "split" is a thing, but I don't know exactly what it means... and I want to describe my pullets properly when I go to sell them, and/or if I breed them how would they (as the mother) be referred to? Can someone help me with the verbiage please?

Pullet #1 - Pullets Mom is a combo Black Ameraucana (Mom's father) and French Black Copper Marans (Mom's mother), and Pullets Father is a Lavender Marans; pullet is dark charcoal gray, smallish comb, 6 weeks old.
Pullet #2 - Mother is Lavender Marans hen, Father is Lavender Ameraucana; pullet is Lavender, with small (tiny) comb... may be a pea comb.

Thank you for any help you might be able to offer.

 

[Pyxis]

When people say a bird is split to or 'carrying' a color, they mean they are heterozygous for a recessive color. In your examples, a black ameraucana split to lavender means that the bird is heterozygous for lavender. That is, it has one copy of the gene, so if you bred it back to another lavender ameraucana or another ameraucana that was heterzygous for lavender, they could produce lavender offspring.

Same thing with the lavender orps split to mottled; it means they are heterozygous for mottling and have one copy of the gene.

This is mainly only a thing that you talk about with purebred birds whose new owners will be breeding them and might need to know if they are carrying recessive colors. Someone working on only black ameraucanas for example might not want the black ameraucana from your example that's split to lavender, because they might not want to introduce lavender into their flock. Same with mottling and other recessive color genes. Or those might be things someone is specifically looking for and DOES want to add.

For your birds you probably don't have to worry about that so much unless someone was specifically looking for them to use in an olive egger color project. Anyway, Pullet #1 would be heterozygous for aka 'split' to lavender. Pullet #2 should just be lavender.

 

[Blue Eggerz]

That was a very informative answer, Pyxis, thank you so very much! Really helped me to better understand the "split" terminology.