Lavender Orpington has buff streaks

[Evan W]

Is it normal for Lavender orpingtons to have streaks of buff? Think they hatched in July 2017 so they are still growing. Both my hen and rooster have streaks of brown in their feathers, mostly around the neck. Rooster does have some in his wings. Overall they are +95% lavander.

 

[Welshies]

Leakage is what it's called.

 

[chix4thechikens]

It's leakage

 

[Gray Farms]

Leakage, undesirable trait. It needs to be culled for if your breeding Lavender Orps.

 

[The Moonshiner]

I wouldn't say it was normal.
I used to have lav orps from various sources.
Imo lav orps in general still need a lot of improvement. Mine had many flaws but leakage was never one.

 

[Evan W]

They were cheap so not a complete waste. Still nice compared to your run of the mill chickens.

 

[chix4thechikens]

I wasn't very specific. It's leakage and you need to get your chicken culled if you are breeding Lavender Orpingtons, hate to say.

 

[Evan W]

I wouldn't say it was normal.
I used to have lav orps from various sources.
Imo lav orps in general still need a lot of improvement. Mine had many flaws but leakage was never one.

How would you go about improving them? By cross with black orps for example or just culling.

 

[The Moonshiner]

If it was me I'd cull them and start over.
I'd get the best lavender I could find and still cross them back and forth with blacks for a few generations.
That's just me because I've never had any really good lavender but had very nice blacks.
You could breed to black or to each other and hope for some without the leakage and just breeding away from the leakage each generation. That may take several generations. Imo it would be faster and less headache to cull and start with better.

 

[WVduckchick]

Well-bred lavenders should never have leakage. They will fade in the sun and could look like leakage, but lavender is a separate gene, needing one copy of the gene from each parent to show the color.
Breed to a black/lav split. You will still get some lavenders from that pairing. Evaluate them.