Recessive White Rooster, babies are blue?

[shaw613]

I hatched a small batch of ameraucanas ... the rooster is recessive white; I raised him and he was a smoky white baby. The hens paired him with were black (2), blue (1) and lavender (1). The lavenders hatched to black as I expected, however all the rest are blue. Not that I'm unhappy, just surprised. I expected maybe one or two blue from the pairings, and mostly black chicks. Is this possible? What a fun puzzle these chickens are . Thanks all for your expertise.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

It's not so hard. All genes come in pairs. Like two lights in a dark room.

For BBS it's really easy. IF both light bulbs are burnt out the room is dark. If you have only one working light bulb, no matter which one it is, the room looks blue. If both are working it looks splash. So it's like BB black, Bb or bB is blue, and bb is splash.

Now if you have a chicken that is black, you know both light bulbs are burnt out (bb), blue one is working one is out and on splash both are working.

A chick randomly inherits one of the two light bulbs from a parent. So if you have one splash chicken (bb) it MUST pass down at least ONE b. There's NO other option. It ONLY has working lightbulbs to give the chick.
So there's no physical way a chicken with bb can pass produce a BB chicken because one "B" has to come from a chicken that literally doesn't have one. A black chick can only come from a pair where both parents have a genetic B to give.

So here's an example. You can see the leftmost breeding is a bbXBb. The middle is BbxBb, the right is BBxBb. A splash can never produce a black offspring. Never.

 

[shaw613]

Your rooster could very well be blue underneath the white : D do you know who his parents were by chance?

I got him from cackle, one of their blue layer surplus special. (I got blue, black and lavender pullets plus him). Honestly was thankful to get him as I lost the blue rooster I had purchased from a breeder. No idea at all what his breeding is, but sure surprised this morning to get so many blues. I thought white recessive was two copies ... Does it mean white dominant over blue? Even the eggs from the blacks hatched blue ... Thanks

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

Also, the chicken calculator indicated white would breed as black; always something new to learn

The calculator assumed that black was under the recessive white, since that’s most common. However, any color can be under recessive white, though it’s less common.

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

So he's dominant white and has one copy? I understood they were yellow as chicks

Possibly. But that’s not exactly what I was saying. If you breed a recessive white (two copies) to a non-recessive white, all the chicks will only have one copy of recessive white, which wouldn’t show up.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

now splash would make sense I think? Thanks

Nope. RoostersAreAwesome is right. If you got a black chick out of them you can't have a splash genetic rooster. It would always produce blues or splashes. So you just got an unusual number of blues from a blue genetic rooster.

I thoroughly retract my previous suggestion of splash. All it takes is one black chick to prove that theory wrong.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Thanks ... I thought I understood this until today. Now to study the whites!!

Idk about dominant white, but recessive white is just as easy. It's the same idea, but the light has two switches, like a ceiling fan light that has a pull cord and a wall switch.

If either switch is flipped wrong the light doesn't come on. It takes both the pull cord being pulled AND the wall switch to turn that light on. You know how sometimes you flip the switch and go ??? why didn't the light turn on and then realize you gotta pull the cord too... It's like that.

So recessive white would look like;

ww - not white, doesn't carry white (both switches are off, room is dark)
Ww or wW - not white, carries white (either the pull cord or the wall switch is in the on position but not both so the room is still dark)
WW - Is white, carries white, must pass down one white. (The light switch is on and the pull cord and the room is lit.)

And then extrapolate from there, simple dominant genes look like

DOMINANT/DOMINANT - shows the dominant gene, must pass one down (Good example, blue in egg shells, OO)
DOMINANT/notdominant - Shows the dominant gene but may or may not pass one down (O/o in eggs still puts blue in the shell)
notdominant/notdominant - Does not have or show the dominant gene (a brown or white egg is ALWAYS o/o)

 

[Northwest_Wannabe]

Your rooster could very well be blue underneath the white : D do you know who his parents were by chance?

 

[shaw613]

Your rooster could very well be blue underneath the white : D do you know who his parents were by chance?

Also, the chicken calculator indicated recessive white would breed as black unless need to white? always something new to learn

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

I got him from cackle, one of their blue layer surplus special. (I got blue, black and lavender pullets plus him). Honestly was thankful to get him as I lost the blue rooster I had purchased from a breeder. No idea at all what his breeding is, but sure surprised this morning to get so many blues. I thought white recessive was two copies ... Does it mean white dominant over blue? Even the eggs from the blacks hatched blue ... Thanks

Yes, if he’s recessive white, he has two copies of the gene. Two copies covers anything underneath, while one copy doesn’t show up at all.