Identify chicks?

[Cee]

Rooster is a Blue Ameracauna. Hatched out blue eggs that could have been an EE, Blue Ameracauna, Cream Legbar. There are 4 total.
The eggs were placed under broody bantams.

 

[NatJ]

Can you post a picture of the EE hen?

The chick with white barring is a male. He is the son of the Cream Legbar, unless the EE has white barring, in which case he could be her son instead.

Any chick that grows a crest of feathers on its head, must have a parent with a crest of feathers on the head. That would mean a Cream Legbar mother, or maybe EE mother if she also has a crest.

Any splash chicks have the Blue Ameraucana mother, unless the EE has blue or splash, in which case they could be hers as well.

Blue chicks with no crest could probably come from any of the possible mothers.

 

[Cee]

Can you post a picture of the EE hen?

The chick with white barring is a male. He is the son of the Cream Legbar, unless the EE has white barring, in which case he could be her son instead.

Any chick that grows a crest of feathers on its head, must have a parent with a crest of feathers on the head. That would mean a Cream Legbar mother, or maybe EE mother if she also has a crest.

Any splash chicks have the Blue Ameraucana mother, unless the EE has blue or splash, in which case they could be hers as well.

Blue chicks with no crest could probably come from any of the possible mothers.

No pics of the EE. She does have a crest and is all dark and reddish browns.
I’m not sure what you mean by crest on the white chick?
Does splash refer to the black and yellow mottled ones?
Thank you.

 

[NatJ]

No pics of the EE. She does have a crest and is all dark and reddish browns.

If the EE has a crest, then any chick that grows a crest could be hers, or could be from the Cream Legbar.

I’m not sure what you mean by crest on the white chick?

None of the chicks is showing a crest yet. When they grow head feathers is when you will be able to tell if they have a crest or not.

Does splash refer to the black and yellow mottled ones?

Splash refers to chicks with two copies of the blue gene. From your chickens, that should only happen if both parents are the Blue Ameraucanas.

A chicken with one blue gene will have all their black areas turned into blue (a grayish shade.) A chicken with two blue genes will have all their black areas turned into splash, which generally looks almost-white with spots of black or dark gray ("splashes" of color on a light background.)

When they hatch, black chicks tend to have black on their backs and the tops of their heads, and yellow or white on some of the underneath areas. People often say they look like penguins, or sometimes like orcas.

Blue chicks usually show a gray color instead black in their chick down. The shade of gray can be variable, so some of the are obvious, some get mistaken for black chicks, and some get mistaken for splash chicks.

Splash chicks usually show a much lighter gray color.

The lightest one or two chicks might be splash, or they might be actually white (which would be caused by any of several different genes.)

Knowing the color of the Easter Egger hen rules out some of the genetic possibilities I had been wondering about (for example, there is a gene that turns black into white: the EE doesn't have it, the Cream Legbar doesn't have it, the Blue Ameraucanas don't have it, therefore none of the chicks can have it either. If any chicks are white, it must be caused by a different gene, of which there are still several choices.)

 

[Cee]

This is fascinating! Is there a book you recommend about all this?

 

[NatJ]

This is fascinating! Is there a book you recommend about all this?

I've seen some people recommend "Genetics of Chicken Colors" by Sigrid Van Dort. Apparently it has nice photos, and a discussion of the genetics involved in creating those colors in chickens. I haven't read it myself, because my local library does not have it, and I haven't been willing to spend the money to buy it.

For learning what chick colors go with what adult colors, I have learned a lot from looking at the pictures on hatchery websites. For example, here are two that have photos of many different chicks, and you can go to each breed's page to see the adults:
https://www.hoovershatchery.com/id-my-chick.html
https://www.mypetchicken.com/pages/baby-chick-identification-photos

For what Splash chickens look like, here are some pages that show adults and chicks:
https://www.cacklehatchery.com/product/splash-rosecomb-bantam/
https://www.cacklehatchery.com/product/splash-old-english-game-bantam/
You can see that some of the adults have a rather crisp black-and-white coloration, while some others look more like a dirty white with black flecks. I don't know what causes the variations, just that they do happen.

If you want to learn about chicken genetics in general, there are some webpages that can be helpful.
http://www.sellers.kippenjungle.nl/page0.html
This one has links to several other pages that talk about genetics, starting with basics and getting into more complicated stuff.

http://kippenjungle.nl/chickencalculator.html
This is a calculator, where you can change the genes in the dropdown boxes and watch the picture of the chicken change. You can also use it to calculate results from various crosses, but I haven't played with that feature much.

To model a solid black chicken:
Change the top dropdown box to E/E (it starts at e+/e+)
That makes a solid black chicken. The other options in that list will cause various arrangements of black and red on a chicken.

To make a solid black chicken into a solid blue chicken, look down the list to the box that says "bl+/bl+" and change it to Bl/bl+ (that box is near the bottom of the list of genes.)

To make that chicken into a splash chicken, make it Bl/Bl.

That Bl or bl+ is the blue gene. Bl is the dominant form (blue), with bl+ being the recessive form (not-blue) and the + meaning that is the original form in the wild Jungle Fowl, before any mutations happened. So two blue genes is Bl/Bl, which makes the chicken the color called splash. Two not-blue genes are bl+/bl+ which allows the chicken to show black. And one of each is Bl/bl+ and that gives the color we call blue.

Genetics is either a fascinating puzzle, or a confusing mess, depending on who you ask (or sometimes, which day or hour you ask them!) If you enjoy it, there is a lot of material you can choose to learn. If you find that you don't enjoy it, you can certainly enjoy having chickens without having to understand their genetics.