RiR & White Question ??/

Seeing Silkies

Songster
9 Years
Sep 12, 2010
205
1
101
Columbia TN
Maybe someone here can answer, What kind of chicken do I have. Last year I bought some RIR when I went to pick them up he said he had 2 albino he would give me for free because he could not keep them in his program they were the same age as the others 16 weeks, he only had rir. He said this happens every 300 or so eggs????
This link shows my flock, & a roaster I hatched out of one of the white one eggs

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=401320

now why I am asking now is, one of the white hens molted she has all new feathers BUT she has black feathers ( 1 or 2 in a spot ) hear & there I will get a pic as soon as i post this.

I do sell there hatching eggs, & offer not to include there eggs. I am going to save up there eggs ( white ones ) & hatch them out again. The one I did hatch out I gave to a lady and with in days a dog killed it, just when he started to crow.

Any input would be great,

I just dont want to miss lead any one on the eggs, as to what the white ones are
 
ok not the best pic, weather is nasty & out of 10 pic's this is the only one that would show her black spots.. She was pure white untill she molted??? right now she is 1.5 years old
she has more black spots then what showed up in the pic... The black you see on her is the black feathers.. looks like specks of dirt but its not.

67666_rirriw_007.jpg
 
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OK,
First - let me say that there is no such thing as a, "Albino Rhode Island Red".
Second - I would say that the birds in the picture are hatchery type birds at best and are Production Reds not true Rhode Island Reds.

Hatcheries will some times cross leghorn blood into birds to produce a better egg layer and a production red is one of the breeds that in most cases has had leghorn crossed in to them.
I raise Rhode Island Reds and I have never had, seen or herd of a solid white bird popping up every 300 or so chicks.

Chris
 
So there mutts? I will get better pic's on a sunny day, So you can see there true colors ( the flock pic they were on 26 weeks old ) & size, we have had rain the last few days so the are flat, I love my roo I hope hes not a mutt
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Better pics may help but there are no pure Albino RIReds. There are Rhode Island Whites but they are not the same breed as RIRs and the real ones only come in Rose Comb and the hatchery ones come in Single Comb but are not the true breed and their eggs from the ones I had were much darker than the ones you posted.

So its hard to say whats going on here. Seeing the light color of the eggs, my guess is that they would be from a White Leghorn rooster on RIR hens. Since most White leghorns carry both Silver and Dom white, that would explain why you got some decently clean white colored hens ( the dom white would be covering any black and in the pullets, they would be silver based which is why no red would be coming through) And then that would also explain why you got tanish coloring in the roo because the dom white would still be covering the black but the roos would be split for gold as well so some of the gold coloring would come through. So thats my best guess but it questions the credibility of the "Breeder" you got them from if he says RIRs were the only thing he has. Though as Chris pointed out, these birds are hatchery birds so I wouldnt really call the person a "Breeder" becuase to me a "RIR Breeder" would have hertiage birds and breed them towards the standard. So there is a difference between a keeper and a breeder.

But if this person is truthful that the RIRs is all he has and that white ones pop out every few hundred or so chicks, then this is more indicative of recessive white so somewhere along the line white rocks may have been breed in and may have possibly got some Red colored chicks out of that that still carried the Recessive White Gene so say if one rooster and one hen in this flock each had one recessive white gene, then that would probably pop out a white chick in every three hundred but either way, a White Rock or other Recessive white breed would have had to be bred in somewhere so they still wouldnt be pure RIRs and if this were the case of recessive white, you shouldnt be getting tan in the roos and the chicks should be all white so what exactly do you mean by "Almost White " ?
 
I would say they're Production Reds, have Leghorn mixed in behind them, and the white from the Leghorn popped up in a few. . .


The dark spots are the mahogany and columbian color leaking through the white.
 
The first thing I thought of when I read your post was a California White, but your birds are heaver looking than my CWs. So there probably Production Reds with a lot of Leghorn or CW blood.
 
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