Making Chicken Colors

[Chicken Quest]

I know how to make the color blue in chickens: by crossing black to splash. But what about other colors like silver duckwing, partridge, chocolate, and lavender? What colors do you have to cross to make these colors?

 

[Chicken Quest]

@nicalandia

 

[nicalandia]

@MysteryChicken @NatJ

 

[MysteryChicken]

I know how to make the color blue in chickens: by crossing black to splash. But what about other colors like silver duckwing, partridge, chocolate, and lavender? What colors do you have to cross to make these colors?

I know that the colors Silver Duckwing, & Partridge are pure for their coloration most often. But you can have other variants of those colors, or mixes of those colors here, & there.

Silver Duckwing can be created by crossing BB Red, or Gold Duckwing(Not Golden) to Silver Duckwing.

First generation, or F1 Males will be Gold/Silver Split, or Golden in color while the females are Silver.

You take the F1 Golden Males, & cross back to Silver females, this will produce: 25% Gold/Silver Split Males, 25% Gold Females, 25% Silver Females, & 25% Silver Males.

Take only the silver F2s, & breed from them for 100% Silver Duckwings.

The crossing above is good for when you have only 1 silver Duckwing rooster, & no hens of that color.

Partridge is recessive, & can be found in different breeds by crossing.

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

Black x splash doesn’t exactly “make” blue— blue is black with one copy of the “blue” gene and splash is black with two copies of the blue gene. Crossing a black (no copies of the blue gene) to a splash (two copies) = one copy of the blue gene, resulting in blue. So what you’re doing is putting together a color that is already there, if that makes sense.

You can’t “make” lavender, it’s a simple recessive gene, but you can “make” lavender mottled by crossing black mottled to lavender and breeding the offspring together, because lavender mottled is made up of multiple different genes that combine to form a pattern.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I know how to make the color blue in chickens: by crossing black to splash. But what about other colors like silver duckwing, partridge, chocolate, and lavender? What colors do you have to cross to make these colors?

You also can get blue by breeding blues to either Blacks or splashes or to another blue

 

[NatJ]

But what about other colors like silver duckwing, partridge, chocolate, and lavender? What colors do you have to cross to make these colors?

Usually, you don't cross anything to get them.

You can breed lavender to lavender and get more lavenders.
You can breed chocolate to chocolate and get more chocolates.
The same goes for silver duckwing, and for partridge, and for most other chicken colors.

With most chicken colors, it is possible to have a purebred flock of them, where all the chickens are the same color, and they produce chicks that are also the same color.

Blue is unusual among chicken colors, because it does not breed true. There are a few other genes that behave like blue (one copy of the gene is needed to give the correct color, but two copies of the gene gives a different color.) But the majority of chicken color varities do not use such genes.

I know how to make the color blue in chickens: by crossing black to splash.

Yes, breeding splash to black gives all blues, but it is not the only way to get blues.

Breeding blue to blue gives about half blues, with the other half divided among black and splash. Breeding blue to black or blue to splash also gives about half blues, with the other half matching the not-blue parent (black or splash.)

 

[NatJ]

You can’t “make” lavender, it’s a simple recessive gene, but you can “make” lavender mottled by crossing black mottled to lavender and breeding the offspring together, because lavender mottled is made up of multiple different genes that combine to form a pattern.

I agree that you can't make the lavender gene, but the color usually called "lavender" requires that gene in a chicken that would otherwise be solid black.

If you start with porcelain, or isabella, or any other chicken variety that has the lavender gene in a non-black background, you can breed with a solid black chicken, and interbreed the offspring to "make" a solid lavender chicken.

(It's the same as your example of lavender mottled, just with different starting and ending points-- moving the lavender gene into a chicken with a different pattern or base color.)

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

I agree that you can't make the lavender gene, but the color usually called "lavender" requires that gene in a chicken that would otherwise be solid black.

If you start with porcelain, or isabella, or any other chicken variety that has the lavender gene in a non-black background, you can breed with a solid black chicken, and interbreed the offspring to "make" a solid lavender chicken.

(It's the same as your example of lavender mottled, just with different starting and ending points-- moving the lavender gene into a chicken with a different pattern or base color.)

That’s a great point! And you can “make” (solid) blue from pretty much anything if you have a solid black chicken and any other pattern with the blue gene.

 

[Chicken Quest]

Thanks for answering my questions!