Looking for Very Experienced Mottled Bantam Cochin advice

[thecochincoop]

I have a very small operation. I have too many solid birds and need to figure out what to keep. If you breed mottled to mottled does it usually produce mottled? If I breed two blue mottleds will I get any splash birds? I would still like to be able to get some splashes but I dont really want to keep the blues since I'm going to have a lot of extra blacks that way. I only have the space to keep about 20 adult birds and I am wondering what colors I should be keeping. Looking for several opinions here before I make any decisions because I have a lot of good solid colors that I'm not sure I want to part with.

 

[catwalk]

Mottling is recessive, so all chicks from mottled parentage should be mottled. I believe blue acts the way blue always does, and the mottling will be added on top of it if genetics allow. So two blue mottled can produce a splash mottled, but I have no idea what that would look like.

disclaimer: my only mottled cochin is two weeks old, so the "very" and the "experienced" part of your post does not apply to me.

 

[Krys109uk]

Breeding mottled to mottled does give all mottled offspring. I breed black mottled & blue mottled Orpingtons; I'm not experienced with cochins, just the genes producing the colour & pattern.

 

[Dustin Biery]

My personal experience when I had mottled cochins, was to keep a few blue mottleds along with the blacks. Just keep the birds that you think are the best of each color. It doesn't matter if you keep a blue or black male, just who ever has the best type and color.
ETA: A bird that is visiably mottled bred to another visability mottled bird will give you mottled offspring, as the other posters have stated, mottling is a recessive gene and if visable, the bird carries to copies of the gene.

 

[thecochincoop]

Thank You. Is there any need to keep solid blues or blacks for breeding? Does the color wash out over time when mottleds are bred together?

 

[Dustin Biery]

Unless you are using them to improve the type of your birds, I would say no. Also, remember that as a bird ages and molts, they will get increasingly more white on them. Not sure how old your birds are, but pay special attention to their age vs. mottles when selecting.

 

[shelleyd2008]

As Dustin stated, the more they molt (old) the more white they get. But they have a lot of white on them at first (before first molt) as well, so you need to take that into consideration.

Blue works the same regardless, so breeding black mottled and blue mottled should give you black and/or blue, blue to blue would give you black, blue, or splash. Splash mottled doesn't really look all that different from regular splash, but since it would come from 2 mottled parents you know that it is mottled. It's a good start for someone wanting blue mottleds.

 

[onthespot]

I don't know how many pens you have, but if I were you I would try to keep a splash mottled roo to put over black mottled hens, so you could sell eggs that would all be guaranteed blue mottled. I bet you would sell like HOT cakes! You would make BANK on ebay next spring.

 

[shelleyd2008]

Quote:
Definitely, or keeping splash and splash together, I know I'd love to get some splashes! I have nothing but black mottleds

 

[thecochincoop]

Quote:
Definitely, or keeping splash and splash together, I know I'd love to get some splashes! I have nothing but black mottleds

Splash X Splash will wash out the color

I was wondering if the blue x blue washes out over time or if that will be ok to breed together