Mystery Pullet-- Help with Color Genetics (groundcolor, English Orpingtons, facemuffs)

[Bagel17]

Hello everyone! I raise pet backyard chicks and currently have 19 ranging from 5 months to 5 years in age. I have a few pullets that I can only guess as to what their colors & genetics are. I hatched them from my backyard flock, from my one rooster as the father. The rooster is supposedly purebred English orpington that we hatched from eggs we bought from eBay; he was black with leakage (strange groundcolor) out of a lavender father and a random english orpington mother (what i always assumed was a chocolate laced). I have all photos of their potential mothers and the rooster, along with the rooster's half siblings. The three pullets hatched around March 20. Two of the three are black with what I think is partial lacing, and the third is a strange khaki/dusty lace color.

I have tons of photos of all my flock and detailed records; I will post baby photos and adult photos of the ones that I think are related to the mystery pullets and their father.
I do know a bit about chicken genetics and have used the chicken calculator countless times. The only problem is that I have hit multiple dead ends and cannot find where that light dusty brown ground color comes from as seen in my rooster and his twin daughter.
The rooster had great English orpington body type and feather type, but his half sister does have facemuffs (she is just black but was supposed to be full English orpington). As I've had facemuffs/bubblehead chicks before, I have come to the conclusion that they are co-dominant to a clean face, so I also thought it was confusing that facemuffs appeared on her. I suppose I'm also asking for facemuff genetics.

I'm riddled with questions and genetics curiosity so if you know a lot about this stuff, please give me detailed responses! I'd love to learn more this is my rooster. Only 1 year old, and father to all seven chicks (rooster chick is no longer but I have photos if they are needed... his ground-color was only red, not the same brown as his father) rooster dad as a chick up is all the rooster. I'll post more pictures of the pullets in separate posts to keep photos organized.

 

[Bagel17]

Here are pictures of my beautiful girl Bagel who looks like a khaki with lacing or something strange. Always assumed she was dominant white with leakage from my above roo & ISA brown, but she looks different from my other three of that cross. I included her baby pictures, and a picture of her next to the other two whites without the intricate coloration (just dominant white with leakage).

 

[Bagel17]

And here are my two black w/ partial lacing pullets. Is partial lacing something I could only get if both parents carried lacing, or only if the mother was laced? (The most likely mothers are included in the pictures below.) The pullet with the very noticeable brown ground color lacing is different from the pullet with the red partial lacing that is less and darker. The one with light brown leakage did not have any marking as a chick with the exception of a small brown spot. The red lace chick had the eyebrows and semi-wyandotte marking as a chick. black (BLR) Wyandotte mother to the pulled with red leakage I've been assuming golden Wyandotte mother to the pullet with light brown leakage the photos directly above are of what I assumed to be black partially laced pullet from the golden Wyandotte hen and the above rooster. This is his look- alike. How is the ground color that light brown? It does not look like either gold, silver, or red, but almost like chocolate or dun. Is dun, chocolate, or khaki leakage a thing? Below is the pullet from (what i assume anyway) the red laced hen above. I dont have any other laced reds so i thought that this one must have been from the red laced hen because of her red partial lacing. She also had similar to wyandotte markings on her face as a chick as you can see.

 

[janiedoe]

You have some pretty birds. @NatJ may be able to answer your questions.

 

[Amer]

Your rooster is heterozygous for silver and gold. He got the gold from his mother and the silver from his lavender father. This is only possible with males as it is a sex linked gene.

 

[Amer]

I don’t see any facemuffs?

 

[NatJ]

How is the ground color that light brown? It does not look like either gold, silver, or red, but almost like chocolate or dun. Is dun, chocolate, or khaki leakage a thing?

Dun, chocolate, and khaki are dilutions of black, so no you should not be seeing leakage of any of them.

Chickens with the gold gene can have many different shades of brown (red, gold, buff, rich browns, drab browns, etc.) I'm pretty sure that color is caused by the gold gene, but I don't know what modifiers are present or absent to make that particular shade.

 

[NatJ]

As I've had facemuffs/bubblehead chicks before, I have come to the conclusion that they are co-dominant to a clean face, so I also thought it was confusing that facemuffs appeared on her. I suppose I'm also asking for facemuff genetics.

Muff/beard is caused by a gene that is considered to be dominant.
So breeding clean-faced birds should always produce clean-faced chicks.
If there are exceptions, I haven't seen them or read of them.

Here are pictures of my beautiful girl Bagel who looks like a khaki with lacing or something strange.

Lacing is specifically an edge (often black) around a feather with a different base color (usually silver or some shade of gold/red/buff/brown.)

Chickens can have quite a few other patterns in their feathers that are not lacing, and many of them don't have specific names. It's pretty common for the feather shaft to be a different color than some other parts of the feather, which I think is one of the things happening with your pullet. No, I don't know what genes are involved in that.

Is partial lacing something I could only get if both parents carried lacing, or only if the mother was laced?

It should be possible to get partial lacing if only one parent is laced.

 

[Bagel17]

Muff/beard is caused by a gene that is considered to be dominant.
So breeding clean-faced birds should always produce clean-faced chicks.
If there are exceptions, I haven't seen them or read of them.


Lacing is specifically an edge (often black) around a feather with a different base color (usually silver or some shade of gold/red/buff/brown.)

Chickens can have quite a few other patterns in their feathers that are not lacing, and many of them don't have specific names. It's pretty common for the feather shaft to be a different color than some other parts of the feather, which I think is one of the things happening with your pullet. No, I don't know what genes are involved in that.


It should be possible to get partial lacing if only one parent is laced.

Thank you! All of this was very helpful and cleared a lot of stuff up for me.
Would Bagel have gotten different pattern genes from the ISA brown? Because Bagel's feathers have a lot more definition compared to my black Australorp/ISA brown cross and the two other dominant white pullets I have, I questioned whether or not she was even from my ISA brown family. Though Bagel's white highlights look a lot like my ISA brown's.

Unrelated: Could partial lacing come through in a dominant white?

 

[Bagel17]

I don’t see any facemuffs?

The facemuffs are on the rooster's half sister, Digits. She was supposed to be purebred English Orpington (just mixed colors, hence the rooster's leakage), and since the rooster brother had good Orpington type, I was confused that Digits had face muffs and was wondering if it could have been recessive. I know the seller of the hatching eggs said he was experimenting with English Orpingtons, but the eggs were advertised as purebred. Not that I really care, I just wanted pretty chickens for pets and I love Digits

I know now though that the mother had facemuffs (the only possible father was lavender Orpington rooster with a clean face and I saw photos of him on the ad)