RHODE ISLAND RED W/WHITE SPOTS

[Farmer Kitty]

How beautiful. She should be very easy to tell apart from the rest.

 

[PARKBOY]

Quote:
She doesnt have any Sussex in her. Must be a recessive gene or something. Yes she is gorgeous im just wondering if it will all go away next time she moults or even better if it will show up everytime she moults for the winter.

 

[PARKBOY]

Quote:
Heres another pic.

 

[patandchickens]

how many generations back do you know her grand and great-etc-grand parents, though?

"Purebred" chickens are not necessarily quite as purebred as, say, purebred dogs or horses, where generations are longer and registries do a pretty tight job of controlling the injection of outside blood. It seems to me that however RIR-looking her parents are, there could VERY easily be some other type bird(s) a generation or three back, which could easily explain her surprising color, especially if her parents are related to each other.

Really snappy looking hen, though! Pretty cool!

Pat

 

[HenHaven]

Perhaps she has some SS way back in her lineage that just happened to pop up. She is very pretty! I love that look. If it is a SS characteristic, she will get more white with each molt.

Whatever it is, she is beautiful!

 

[speckledhen]

Recessive genes have to come from somewhere back in the lines, though, which is what Pat is trying to say. There still could be a SS somewhere further back. She does have more the body type of a SS than a RIR, but however she got her spots, she is absolutely gorgeous! I have one SS hen I adore.

 

[BantyChickMom]

I agree with everyone else,

she's very pretty but there's some SS in there somewhere

 

[PARKBOY]

Quote:
Well i never thought of it like that she may have something else back there. I got the parents from my dad and hes been raising them for years and originally got them from Mcmurray hatchery years ago so this may be true. Either way its no biggie i just love her look and was wondering if it was common. My dad says he never seen it before and that one of my Standard White Cornish got ahold of the hen but thats just not possible the RIR's have never been in contact with them.

 

[BurrOakHill]

I doubt there is any SS in your hen. It is not all that uncommon for individual birds to loose some pigmentation in random feathers. This use to be quite common in birds about 100 years ago, even in show lines. Usually pigment loss occurs after they are older, such as was the case in your hen. We don't see much of it anymore as it was mostly related to nutrition. Not that the birds weren't getting enough nutrition, but that some individuals didn't seem to absorb certain nutrients as they aged and thus the lack of pigment on feathers. I've seen pictures of purebred Black Australorps that turned almost solid white in college experiments from the 1930-1940s.
You can google it and find lots of information concerning it.

All that being said, your hen is beautiful and it would be neat if one could establish a line that actually bred pure for a coloration like your hen.