Help on gender and color of a Rumpless Aracauna =]

[poultryhaven]

Here "IT" is... lol
I got it as a little chick on September 12th when it was a week old so it was hatched on the 5th. So its about 4 months old.
It has dark hackles but it doesnt look very Roo-ish. I was wondering what you guys thought. Its the orange-ish one.
What color would you call it. The other aracauna is its mother. I don;t know who its father is?

Sorry about the distance of the pics

So cockerel or pullet and what color would it be considered?

 

[CTChickenMom]

Tough to tell...a closer pic of the mom would help. Mom doesn't look like she has much of a comb at all. If that's the case, I'd say you have a partridge roo.

On the other hand, if Mom has a comb similar to her child, I'd say you have a partridge hen. I'm leaning more towards hen because there are no signs of wattles. Lovely coloring!

 

[Minniechickmama]

I would say pullet too because it would still have hackle feathers that would give it away as a roo. Pretty coloring and I would think the previous poster was right with partridge, but I am no expert.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

That is not even CLOSE to partridge. Mama looks like a gold duckwing; daughter looks wheaten (which seems an unusual offspring from gold duckwing).

 

[poultryhaven]

Quote:
I got told by quite a few people that the mother is a Silver Duckwing. She looks like a picture of the silver duckwings too.

 

[Dustin Biery]

The pullet in the back looks to be wheaten.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
I got told by quite a few people that the mother is a Silver Duckwing. She looks like a picture of the silver duckwings too.

Gold and silver duckwing females look very similar. I said gold based upon the depth of colour on her breast. I have a silver duckwing hen--her breast colouring is much lighter. In any case, whether mama is silver or gold duckwing doesn't matter as she does not give the silver/gold gene to her daughters; that comes from papa.

 

[BantyMom]

I raise SDW Araucanas. Mom could easily be one. GDW have a slightly more gold color to their body feathers, but it's a real pain to tell them apart. That's one reason I don't raise GDW anymore. That color on the chest of a SDW isn't gold, (silver hens are S/-).

As for Wheaten.....

That's the other reason I don't raise GDW anymore. They are nearly indistinguishable from Salmon! I had a GDW/Salmon roo once and even the judges couldn't decide after reading the color description in the standard. He gave me a salmon daughter, so that's how I decided.

If you look up the description of BBR and Wheaten, for the males they are very close except in the intensity of the color in some areas, for the females they are very different.
Wheaten OEGB Hen: http://www.cacklehatchery.com/wheaten_oeg_bantam_hen.jpg

So, since Araucanas have no tails and I can't see her wings, ok, she could be wheaten.

But how do you get wheaten out of Silver?

Wheaten is recessive to BBR, which is the non-silver version of SDW and the darker version of GDW (not going into that right here). Somewhere back in that line, someone bred in a Wheaten, or a Salmon (like a GDW Wheaten) probably a rooster, accidently (Wheatens and BBRs look very much the same, Salmons and GDW look very much the same). Even though both parents are silver, the gold is recessive too, so a wheaten genes could have come down in the line from who-knows-how-long ago, or even just in the last generation. Since both gold and wheaten are recessive to the BBR and Silver genes required to get SDW, both parents had to have been carrying both recessives.

Wait! Silver/gold is sex-linked! If Mom IS silver, she has NO gold gene (that's not gold on her chest), then dad had to be either BBR (w/recessive wheaten) or GDW (w/recessive wheaten) or Wheaten! (ok, or a silver with a recessive gold). A cockerel would then have gotten gold from dad and silver from mom and would have been Silver!

This means either: chick is definitely a pullet (gold from dad only, nothing from mom) OR Mom is GDW.

If she IS GDW, then all bets are off, lol

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

The difference between duckwing/BBR & wheaten genetically (right now let's ignore the silver/gold gene) is the E-allele. duckwings and BBR are e+ (wildtype), which is recessive to E^Wh (wheaten) unless melanizers are present in the bird. Either or both mama and papa were impure for e+, but rather were E^Wh/e+. Now if mama carries E^Wh, she must have sufficient melanizers to e E&Wh recessive. Since we don't see that, it is likely not her. Now if papa is half (or even fully) wheaten, it would be difficult to distinguish it from duckwing or BBR based upon appearance. I think there are some very small differences according to what I've read, but it would take someone with a lot of knowledge and experience to tell them apart based upon appearance alone.

OK; back to silver/gold. Since hens carry only one copy of this gene, they pass it only to their sons, so it really doesn't matter whether she is gold or silver; daughters inherit the gene from their father, meaning he could not have been BBR (which is s+/s+). Salmon is E^Wh plus silver. Wheaten is E^Wh plus gold.

 

[poultryhaven]

Here is another pic of the mother with the little chick in case it helps.