Lavender Orpington Rooster X Red Sex Link Hen... What will my babies look like??

[LittleBiggersFarm]

Hey guys, first day as a real member of the BYC community, been a lurker for years. Joined literally just to ask this question. lol. Attaching pics of the rooster and hens. The only Lavender hen isn't laying quite yet, so all the babies will be a crossbreed. Has anyone done this particular cross before? And if so do you have pictures of the baby/adult offspring? According to that Dutch/German Chicken breed calculator, I'll be getting all black chicks. That would be really interesting! I don't fully understand chicken genetics, but I love to watch it all play out when I do a hatch.

Collecting eggs for the incubator now, trying for 12 so we can do a November hatch.

12 is the max my incubator will do, which my husband says he is thankful for! lol

 

[Ridgerunner]

I have not done that hatch but i theory you will get solid black chickens. Lavender is a recessive gene so it will not have any effects on the chicks. Lavender modifies what would normally be a black feather to look that grey lavender color. So those roosters are based on black and will pass black down to their chicks. Black should be dominant to anything those hens have so in theory you get solid black chicks.

What I really expect though is that you will get black with leakage. That leakage could be red or white. That calculator does not handle leakage. It can't because leakage is so uncertain. What leakage means is some random feathers will be a different color than the base color.

This first shows some gold colored leakage on what is supposed to be a solid black cockerel.

In this photo those white cockerels are supposed to be solid white. You'll see different patterns as well as shades. It's possible you will not get any leakage but I think it is pretty probable. I sure can't predict what it might look like.

 

[ILoveDaffy]

What does a lavender orp look like?

 

[LittleBiggersFarm]

It's possible you will not get any leakage but I think it is pretty probable. I sure can't predict what it might look like.

Thanks for your quick reply! I didn't know about leakage. I mean, I had heard the word before but never really got what that meant. The pictures make it way more clear. That's pretty cool!

So now, since the lavender gene is recessive, if I take the pullets from this hatch and breed them back to my pure Lavender Orpington rooster, am I likely to get at least some chickens from that cross which will be a pure lavender color? Because the chicks from this hatch should carry the recessive lavender gene, and then so does my Orpington roo. Have I got that right?

 

[LittleBiggersFarm]

What does a lavender orp look like?

If you can see the pics in my original post, he's the grayish guy. He's my only roo right now. He seems gray in that pic because it was cloudy when I took it this morning. But in the sunlight, he shimmers an actually pastel sort of lavender color. It's really pretty.

And he's just the sweetest. We don't do much interacting, but he's sweet to his girls and protective, too. He's never attacked any human people. At least not so far. He's only about 6-7 months old.

 

[LadiesAndJane]

What does a lavender orp look like?

If you look at the original posters photos, they have good examples of what these look like. Gorgeous birds.

 

[ILoveDaffy]

They are gorgeous!

 

[LadiesAndJane]

Thanks for your quick reply! I didn't know about leakage. I mean, I had heard the word before but never really got what that meant. The pictures make it way more clear. That's pretty cool!

So now, since the lavender gene is recessive, if I take the pullets from this hatch and breed them back to my pure Lavender Orpington rooster, am I likely to get at least some chickens from that cross which will be a pure lavender color? Because the chicks from this hatch should carry the recessive lavender gene, and then so does my Orpington roo. Have I got that right?

Yes you do!

 

[LittleBiggersFarm]

Yes you do!

Oh that's exciting! Yay!

I'm starting to see how this chicken math problem starts up, hahaha! My husband's likely to find me googling land plots outside of town in the coming weeks! Luckily, our town is relatively rural and the only ordinance regarding animals/pets/poultry/livestock is "keep them in your yard!" I'm sure as long as I continue to bribe the neighbors with eggs/meat/garden veggies I can get away with a chicken house or two...

 

[Ridgerunner]

So now, since the lavender gene is recessive, if I take the pullets from this hatch and breed them back to my pure Lavender Orpington rooster, am I likely to get at least some chickens from that cross which will be a pure lavender color? Because the chicks from this hatch should carry the recessive lavender gene, and then so does my Orpington roo. Have I got that right?

As Jmns said, yes. To be a little more precise, each chick has a 50% chance of being Lavender. The others should all be black. I's a matter of odds. I'm trying to be careful how I phrase this. The pullet will have one Lavender gene and one not-Lavender gene. These will be passed down at random.

It's like flipping coins. If you flip a coin three times you might get three heads, three tails, or maybe a split. If you flip a coin 100 times you should get real close to a 50-50 split. Same thing with the chicks, the more you hatch the more likely you are to get an even split. With just a few chicks, who knows.