I really like the way the Cemani Chickens look...and I have three hens that look like they may be

[tadkerson]

I was just wondering if you had any experience with pink layers? Dominant vs Recessive. I know blue/brown is dominant and white is recessive... What about pink layers (pink shells)

The pink color is actually a brown tinted egg. Chickens can only produce two kinds of pigments that are placed on or in the egg shell. Porphoryns ( there are different kinds) and biliverdin-IX are the pigments that give eggs their color. Porphoryns are brown and biliverden is blue.

Egg color is caused by more than one gene ( one is sex linked and the others are autosomal)- so you can not say the trait is dominant or recessive. If you cross a brown egg layer with a white egg layer, then the female adult offspring normally lay a tinted to light brown egg. Researchers have crossed white egg layers and the adult female offspring, from the cross, have produced tinted eggs. It is complicated. I tried the link below and I get an error message. If you do so try back later and see what happens. It is an article I wrote on egg color in chickens.The group may have a new website and the link will never work.

http://marans.org/eggreview.pdf

Tim

 

[nicalandia]

I also have a pretty white She my be a good one to put in the gene pool? I think she's the momma of the wild coloured hen.

if you want Cemani looking bird as fast as possible? then this is the hen to use, dont use the extremely frizzell

this is how the breeding program should start..


the roo you posted x this Fibromelanotic hen.. her genetic make up seem to be of a self black bird(with heterozygous dominant white, thats why you see black flecks on her, thats called leakage) and by the look of the other he in the background(seem to be sisters) she is also seem to be Heterozygous for the black skin gene Fm(Fibromelanotic)

so the roos genotype is going to be ER/ER(Birchen) id+/id+ fm+/fm+ i+/i+ mated to hen's genotype E/E id+/-(hens can only have one copy of the id sex linked gene) Fm/fm+(one copy of Fibromelanotic) I/i+(one copy of dominant white)

this cross(try to hatch 20 eggs at least).

50% of all the chicks will hatch with black skin(males and females, cull the ones with white skin) of all the black skin chicks 50% will hatch with white chick down and 50% with black chick down, keep them both as a this stage this should not be an issue, that means that if you were only able to get 5 females and all of them are white then thats Ok because they will be closer to type(cemany like the roo) than the original hen. but if you are able to obtain a few black females then that is just perfect. more hens to breed from.. since that hen looks to be fully melanized(she is not showing any ground color gold leakage) always use fully melanized hens because this will give you fully melanized birds(like cemani)

 

[CheekyMare]

Wow! Thanks. Ok, right now she's in the breeding cage with my nn barred roo. I'll put Loverboy in next.

They just passed the two weeks so I can get some guaranteed nn eggs. He can come out this weekend.

 

[CheekyMare]

Black Hen Eggs. All three lay eggs like this no matter how I adjust the ca intake and they're big with strong shells.

 

[Kev]

What is the color of the shanks of the male you have in the above picture? If he has blue or slate shanks that would be good. Does he have blue or slate shanks? What color of skin does the male have? Does he have white shanks, green shanks or yellow shanks? It would be best if he had white or blue shanks.

Tim, can I ask the reason for picking white skin over yellow skin? I get the Id part- but the skin is still a big puzzle to me.. also gold or silver?

PM me if you prefer..