Help with Color Genetics? New & curious..

Kholts

Songster
Feb 11, 2019
508
1,304
246
Canada
I don’t have anything fancy happening in my incubator. I am curious though...

The Roo is Blue Laced Wyandotte

Hens: crested cream Legbars, ameraucana(I’m sure they are EE) sapphires & isbar.

Now I know the ameraucanas (EE)could be anything so ignore those.

What are the possible color outcomes for the others? Also am I correct to assume that the sex linked breeds offspring will NOT be sex linked?
 
Last edited:
However, that only helps if people know what color genes the birds HAVE. And most of us don't. And I have yet to have anyone tell me somewhere to look to learn about CHICKEN color genetics. I know horse and some turkey color genetics, but am clueless as far as chickens go.
That's why I like easter eggers & other backyard mixes...a surprise every time.
 
However, that only helps if people know what color genes the birds HAVE. And most of us don't. And I have yet to have anyone tell me somewhere to look to learn about CHICKEN color genetics.

Here's one possible place to start learning:

http://sellers.kippenjungle.nl/page0.html
Has links to page 1 (basics of how genes work), page 2 (discusses various chicken-specific genes) and page 3 (a list of chicken genes with brief comments on each, sorted into linkage groups).

And I do find the calculator useful for seeing how the genes work:
I look at the picture, change a gene and see how the picture changed, change another gene... It was most fun after I already knew some things about how the genes worked, though. And the first half-dozen genes in the calculator are the most confusing, because of the way they interact. So it makes more sense to start by messing with the genes further down the list.
 
The Roo is Blue Laced Wyandotte

Hens: crested cream Legbars, ameraucana(I’m sure they are EE) sapphires & isbar.

Now I know the ameraucanas (EE)could be anything so ignore those.

What are the possible color outcomes for the others? Also am I correct to assume that the sex linked breeds offspring will NOT be sex linked?

Because the rooster has blue:
The blue gene changes all black parts on a chicken's feathers to blue.
Two copies of the gene change black into splash.
A rooster with blue lacing has one copy of the blue gene, so he will pass that blue gene to about half of his chicks, and not-blue to the other half.
Chicks from him with the Cream Legbars could have black or blue in their coloring.
From any hen who has blue in her coloring (Sapphires, maybe?), you could get some chicks with black, some with blue, and some with splash.

There is a different gene that turns black into white (it's called Dominant White.) If any hens have that, they can pass it to their chicks, and that will cover any black/blue/splash so you cannot see it. (Might get white-laced-gold from a cross like that.)

The Crested Cream Legbars have the barring gene. The rooster does not.
So chicks from that particular pairing will be sex-linked: barred sons, not-barred daughters.
The barred sons will probably have a light dot on their head when they hatch, and will grow up with white bars on their feathers (whatever other color the feathers may be, they will have white bars on them too.)
The same would go for any other barred hen you may have.

Because your rooster does not have barring, you can trust that EVERY chick with white barring is a male. The not-barred chicks could be pullets from a barred mother, or either gender from a not-barred mother.

Assuming your rooster does have a rose comb (Wyandottes are supposed to), you can expect plenty of rose combs in the offspring. Might be all of them, might be only half of them, depending on whether your rooster carries the not-rose gene.

The Ameraucana (or Easter Egger) hens probably have pea combs. Crossed with a rose comb rooster, their chicks should mostly have walnut combs (genetically, pea + rose.) But a few of those chicks could have just pea or rose or even single combs, depending on what recessive comb genes each parent carries.

The rooster has the gold gene (the "red" in "blue laced red.")
If any of your hens are silver, they will produce gold/silver sexlinked chicks: silver sons, gold daughters. It's fairly common for Easter Eggers to have a silver-and-black color pattern, which is why I'm mentioning this one.

Crest is a dominant gene, so the chicks from Legbar mothers are likely to have crests.
Muff/beard is a dominant gene, so any hens that have beards are likely to pass that to their chicks.

Those are all the genes I can think of to mention, from the chicken breeds you listed :D
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom