Imposter Chicks?

[ksrees]

I have recently hatched my first lot of eggs from my home grown birds. I have a mix off sussex hens (white, splash, platinum & brown) with a platinum rooster. I was very surprised to see what hatched out looked nothing like the hens or rooster? Can anyone help explain?

 

[chooks4life]

White can mask other colors, so a white chook can genetically be black, and therefore have black offspring; I think your rooster probably, and possibly one or more hens, actually have something black in their ancestry.

Are they supposed to be purebreds? If the breeder has black birds as well, there's a chance they assumed white chicks were from a white father when in fact the father was black, and therefore assumed they were purebred when in fact they were crosses.

Another possibility is diet. Colors are not expressed properly when nutrients are insufficient, and most common feeds leave birds deficient in multiple nutrients. Color is made up of nutrients so deficiency causes all white/pale stock which, when put onto a healthier diet, over a year or so change into their true colors. Everything can change from being white: eyes, skin, claws, beaks, feathers, eggshells, legs, etc. Put them back onto a deficient diet and they will 'bleach out' again.

Best wishes.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’m not familiar with Platinum but I found a post in another forum from Henk that said it would be based on Extended Black but split for some alleles at the Dominant White locus and split for Blue. The split for Blue confuses me some looking at those chicks.

That looks like a Light Sussex, not a White Sussex, based on Silver and maybe Wheaton. Black from the rooster will override Wheaten.

The Splash doesn’t have to be but is highly likely to be based on Extended Black. With that rooster that should give Splash or Blue chicks, not black. All the Blue mixed in with the genetics should be showing up, but those chicks look black, not blue. I don’t think any are from the Splash hen.

That brown hen could be based on a lot of things but black from the rooster will override all of those. The rooster is probably silver too which would override the gold in the hen.

With those split genes for Platinum, chicks from the Platinum hen could be Blue, Black, Splash, or Platinum.

Five chicks is not a huge genetic sample. I think most if not all of those chicks are from the Light Sussex or Brown, the black from the rooster dominates, and for some underlying reason you are getting a lot of silver leakage or maybe some pattern from the silver showing up due to all the split genetics.

What surprises me is not the black but that they are so consistent with that white. That implies a pattern more than random leakage.

 

[gloryblue]

I have a single cockeral which appears exactly like these babies...he is from the breeding of an Ameraucana roo who is Blue splash wheaten over a Silver laced Wyandotte hen.
The cockeral is black with silver pattern leakage, though I'm seeing threads of gold coming in on his saddle and hackle feathers just now.

I've two pullets from this cross both very different from this cockeral. One pullet is all white/silver with just a bit of dirtiness ...meaning her feathers are lightly dusted with brown and black to where she has a dirty white appearance.

The last of the two is spectacular. ...a nice surprise. ...medium blue with blue lacing on gold/cream.
She's as completely and perfectly laced in the blue and gold as her silver laced wyandotte mother is.

I had hoped for this result and my experiment worked....a soon to be Olive egger too.

Have you noticed yet what sex these black with silver are? Could it be they're all cockerals....and that a pullet from this breeding would be perhaps the coloring you expected?

The idea that there might be other birds ..such as a black one in the recent background of theses young birds of yours is sure something I too would look into with the breeder of these juveniles you have here.

Though these birds aren't what you expected, I think they're attractive.

Sorry I don't know that much about color genetics on chickens.

 

[chooks4life]

I’m not familiar with Platinum but I found a post in another forum from Henk that said it would be based on Extended Black but split for some alleles at the Dominant White locus and split for Blue. The split for Blue confuses me some looking at those chicks.

That looks like a Light Sussex, not a White Sussex, based on Silver and maybe Wheaton. Black from the rooster will override Wheaten.

The Splash doesn’t have to be but is highly likely to be based on Extended Black. With that rooster that should give Splash or Blue chicks, not black. All the Blue mixed in with the genetics should be showing up, but those chicks look black, not blue. I don’t think any are from the Splash hen.

That brown hen could be based on a lot of things but black from the rooster will override all of those. The rooster is probably silver too which would override the gold in the hen.

With those split genes for Platinum, chicks from the Platinum hen could be Blue, Black, Splash, or Platinum.

Five chicks is not a huge genetic sample. I think most if not all of those chicks are from the Light Sussex or Brown, the black from the rooster dominates, and for some underlying reason you are getting a lot of silver leakage or maybe some pattern from the silver showing up due to all the split genetics.

What surprises me is not the black but that they are so consistent with that white. That implies a pattern more than random leakage.

For what it's worth, I found crossing Light Sussex, or any similarly patterned bird, with literally any combination of genetics resulted almost as a rule in this sort of patterning. Very, very easy to pass on.