Hmmmmm

[TroyerGal]

So... I bred a Lavender Orpington Roo, and a White Leghorn hen. Lavender ALWAYS BREEDS TRUE... Why are the chicks splashed with black?

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Chicks as in puff balls or grown young birds? You have a photo?

Trying to figure out if it's fluff or growing feathers your getting the color from. I'd assume that cross would produce black birds. Lavender needs two gene copies to express, with one copy it's black. The Leghorn doesn't have lavender in it so would not breed lavender rather birds that are split for lavender. Of course they are now also split for white so if the chicks were bred to one another the offspring would be 25% lav, 25% white and remaining 50% split in some ratio for both white and Lav.

 

[TroyerGal]

Chicks as in puff balls or grown young birds? You have a photo?

Trying to figure out if it's fluff or growing feathers your getting the color from. I'd assume that cross would produce black birds. Lavender needs two gene copies to express, with one copy it's black. The Leghorn doesn't have lavender in it so would not breed lavender rather birds that are split for lavender. Of course they are now also split for white so if the chicks were bred to one another the offspring would be 25% lav, 25% white and remaining 50% split in some ratio for both white and Lav.

They are fully feathered. I do not have a photo... But what you said made sense! I need to read up on genetics some more

 

[Egghead_Jr]

Lavender color is not a dominant gene. It expresses with two copies. Barring is an example of a dominant trait and expresses with one copy.

Genetics can be tough but you'll get there. I only know the basics but there are some real genetic gurus here on BYC pages.

 

[donrae]

Not sure where you got the idea lavender breeds true? It's a recessive gene, so lavender to lavender should breed true. But like all recessive, if you outcross, you lose it on that F1 generation.

Genetically, your lavender birds are black. When the bird gets a copy of the lavender from each parent, you get a lavender bird. If you cross it to something else, the genetics work like you're breeding a black bird.

Leghorns carry dominant white, which basically turns black into white. Cross a Leghorn with a black bird, and you get white birds with spots and splashes of black. I say splashes of black, but the bird is not splash in color, that's based on black/blue/splash genetics.

So the bummer is, breeding a lavender bird to another color basically wastes the pretty lavender coloring, it won't come through in the offspring.

 

[TroyerGal]

Not sure where you got the idea lavender breeds true? It's a recessive gene, so lavender to lavender should breed true. But like all recessive, if you outcross, you lose it on that F1 generation.

Genetically, your lavender birds are black. When the bird gets a copy of the lavender from each parent, you get a lavender bird. If you cross it to something else, the genetics work like you're breeding a black bird.

Leghorns carry dominant white, which basically turns black into white. Cross a Leghorn with a black bird, and you get white birds with spots and splashes of black. I say splashes of black, but the bird is not splash in color, that's based on black/blue/splash genetics.

So the bummer is, breeding a lavender bird to another color basically wastes the pretty lavender coloring, it won't come through in the offspring.

Thanks... I guess I'm a little silly

 

[EggSighted4Life]

So... I bred a Lavender Orpington Roo, and a White Leghorn hen. Lavender ALWAYS BREEDS TRUE... Why are the chicks splashed with black?

Lavender will breed true to lavender. Bred with anything else it will breed as black.

But I can see that was already answered, and even better!