Iowa Blues - Breed thread and discussion

[karimw]

I picked up my very first Iowa Blue chicks from Candy and Brett the last weekend of April. The chicks are now almost 7 weeks old. I have 15 in all. There are 7 Silvers (2 males, 5 females), 5 charcoals (4 males, 1 female) and 3 patterned Birchens (1 male, 2 females).

Thought I would include a picture of my favorite Silver cockerel:


My favorite Silver pullet:


My favorite Charcoal Cockerel:


And my favorite (and only) Charcoal pullet:

I realize this is an old post, but I would like to ask what indicates this pullet is charcoal? Markings indicate to me this bird is based on eb/brown, or what we call Silver variation. What color was the chick down?

The silver pullet is still showing eyeliner, which tells me she might be based on e+ or Smokey. It's getting to be very difficult to tell on some of these. I now hatch Smokey chicks that are brown instead of yellow, but have the eyeliner.

Just curious about the differences in the lines.

 

[trailrider330]

I realize this is an old post, but I would like to ask what indicates this pullet is charcoal? Markings indicate to me this bird is based on eb/brown, or what we call Silver variation. What color was the chick down?

The silver pullet is still showing eyeliner, which tells me she might be based on e+ or Smokey. It's getting to be very difficult to tell on some of these. I now hatch Smokey chicks that are brown instead of yellow, but have the eyeliner.

Just curious about the differences in the lines.

Thanks for your response Kari.

Here are pics of my "silver" pullet when I first got her. She was more of a medium brown with broken mottling down her dorsal.





Her are pics of my "charcoal" pullet when I first got her. She was more of a solid dark brown though there was a very faint dorsal.





If I have them labeled incorrectly regarding their variety, please let me know. And, if so, can you please clarify what makes them one vs. the other?

 

[Candy442]

Mine look a lot like this, though about 75% still pop red on the breast eventually. I'm not sure if this one is clean, because I can see the rust along the edge in this picture. It could be hinting of the Db gene. I'm still not sure where the brown tone comes from on these. The Silver gene disperses Db and Ar+ throughout the body on the hens, essentially hiding it.

This is the first "dark" smokey we have hatched. All of our others that have the typical "smokey" chick down get almost all white with the exception of salmon on the breast (that mingled with brown). This one is very clean of AR. In fact, we have not seen AR in any of the birds since Gandalf's offspring. I am sure it is still there, but out of all the chicks we are hatching since JB is the sire, no AR thank goodness. We won't breed her but our chicks feather out completely different than what the web site shows in most cases. Trailrider330 got a nice group of many different chick down patterns from our introduction of the Jamaica line birds. We got more silvers out of them under JB, but they are darker silvers than most and our hatch of smokey type is WAY down this year. We started with majority smokey the first year and it has declined to under 1 percent of our entire hatches (we hatched about 100 chicks this year with JB over our girls and the new silver pullets)

We now have a "JB" junior Pictures to follow and we will post our charcoal pullet later on too. She is very pretty.

 

[iamfivewire]

 

[bigmrg74]

Brett and Candy, are you guys sure your's didn't get crossed with a duck somewhere back in the day??

 

[Candy442]

Brett and Candy, are you guys sure your's didn't get crossed with a duck somewhere back in the day??

why not! they say "pheasant" in the lineage. It looks like duck as well

 

[karimw]

Thanks for your response Kari.


Her are pics of my "charcoal" pullet when I first got her. She was more of a solid dark brown though there was a very faint dorsal.





If I have them labeled incorrectly regarding their variety, please let me know. And, if so, can you please clarify what makes them one vs. the other?

I agree from the top, why one might think this was charcoal, however the light down on this chick definitely makes this one silver. the variation is because of the variation in pg - the pattern gene, which makes them penciled or laced, and the presence or absence of Db or melanizers that make them dark or light.
Charcoals are based on birchen which are usually have dark or black fluff.

This is the typical Birchen chick without any modifiers. They may or may not have the spots on them, but if they do the odds are better they will have good birchen markings. The amount of melanizers, which make the feathers darker, will determine if the feathers will be black or show some of the underlying pattern.

(borrowed picture from the thread)


Two birchen cockerels, and a pullet


Birchen hen



There are others that have better examples of charcoal chicks.

 

[bigmrg74]

why not! they say "pheasant" in the lineage. It looks like duck as well

quack quack!!

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Silver chick with darker brown coloration

Chestnut colored chick


Notice the chestnut color is a richer drown than the silver, also the silver has a light colored streak behind the eye around the ear. The chestnut colored chicks do not. All silver Iowa chicks have the pg gene on the eb locus and will show the light colored spot/streak behind the eye. Hope this helps. It can be really confusing until you see each of them side by side. Then you'll never struggle differentiating them, even from pictures.

 

[Candy442]

Silver chick with darker brown coloration

Chestnut colored chick


Notice the chestnut color is a richer drown than the silver, also the silver has a light colored streak behind the eye around the ear. The chestnut colored chicks do not. All silver Iowa chicks have the pg gene on the eb locus and will show the light colored spot/streak behind the eye. Hope this helps. It can be really confusing until you see each of them side by side. Then you'll never struggle differentiating them, even from pictures.

I sold the chicks to Trailrider330 and some of the chicks were very much similar to the one you show above. I believe the photo attached is when they were 3 weeks old already but I could be wrong. We are doing photo tracking of this hatch since the chicks were all sired by my cockerel JB over the silver pullets we hatched out of the Jamaica line.
Any incorrect information is my fault as I told her that the more chestnut color down as opposed to beige or light brown would be in the "charcoal " family of coloration. TrailRider330 wishes to also focus on chestnut as we are at Fivewire.