My Salmon Faverolles Pullet is Black - Help Me Understand the Genetics

[ChickieChickieMama]

I don't believe this to be true in the least.
I believe they sell poor quality birds in a lot of cases but I don't believe hatcheries sell cross breeds as purebreeds.
I mean why would they? It takes the same time, money, effort etc etc to breed pure breeds as it does crosses so what would be the purpose or advantage of doing so?
Hatcheries are in the business of selling chicks and making a profit. That includes staying in business and continuing to make money. If that's what you did for a living would you sell a bunch of crosses and think that was in your best interest to stay in business?

Well that would be my instinct too, but I was just saying what I'd heard others around here telling me. This was my first time ordering from a hatchery...to be honest, I'd never even heard of hatcheries until the last few months....everyone I knew with chickens back home just hatched them themselves or got them at local swaps, shows or auctions.

 

[feliciadawn]

So what ever happened with Vera? Do you have a picture of the grown up hen?

 

[Feathercrazie]

Hahaha...and now we know exactly what it takes to get from "Crazy Chicken Person" to "Creepy Chicken Person!"

But back to the matter at hand *ahem* , that's where I got to as well then started to stumble. I couldn't figure out what type of melaniser would allow for black in her primary pattern....

I did find this interesting summary of patterning: http://www.aviculture-europe.nl/nummers/08E02A05.pdf

The highlights of which (to me) are this:

View attachment 1519303
View attachment 1519304 View attachment 1519305

So, my (barely educated) guess would be to agree that is not just Ml at work (since it's reported to have little to no bearing on Wheaten [unless perhaps this is a case of the mythical recessive Wheaten??]) but rather some extreme combination of the above? Is that possible as just a gene mutation or would this only come up as the result of a cross? And why are so many of them coming up now with this patterning....are Salmon Faverolles being improperly crossbred to unrecognition, or is a new variation emerging?

On top of that, she seems to be extremely soft feathered compared to the other pictures of Faverolles I'm seeing, almost as though she's lacking the barbing to keep her fluffy feathers in place...is this another mutation? I think it adds to her odd look and masks the clean speckling/lacing which would otherwise be more apparent.

Thoughts?

This is for Spangled as in Spangled Hamburg. Spangled as in Spangled Old English is a BBRed base color with 2 mottled genes (Recessive).