RIR X Light brahma

[tinyhillfarm]

Hi all. Hoping you can help me out. I just hatched some RIR /LIGHT BRAHMA chicks.Father is RIR,Mother is light brahma. i heard they can be sexed at hatch. yellow male. dark brown/black female. Is this true.? anyone have any experience on this one? everything i have read online does back this up. but not sure i can trust what i read any ideas? If you hace an pics from your own hatching please share. thanks

 

[Ridgerunner]

No pictures but it is almost true. This one is based on science, not just something you read on the internet. Read the very first post in this thread for the science.

Tadkerson’s Sex Link Thread
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=261208

The reason it is almost true is that the black is wrong. A RIR rooster over a Light Brahma hen will produce a Red Sex Link. Males will show yellow and females will show red. Black has nothing to do with a Red Sex Link as far as determining sex. That red can be different shades of red too. Some crosses will give you a dark brown but some give you a fairly light reddish color, sort of a buff. It could be many different shades of red. Instead of saying dark brown/black in your statement, say reddish.

Some sex link crosses will produce solid yellow or red chicks but some will produce chicks that are only yellow or red in certain spots. It helps to have those chicks side by side to compare them. I have not done your specific cross but I’d expect the chicks from that cross to be pretty solid red or yellow and real easy to tell apart.

You can try browsing through that thread I gave you above for pictures of red sex link chicks. It’s a real long thread and I don’t know if anyone has photos of your specific cross or not. But if the rooster is a pure RIR and the hen is a pure Light Brahma, you have red sex link chicks.

 

[tinyhillfarm]

Great info. thank you for the link. I guess the black coloring is wrong.Maybe my RIR is a mix. Don't know. was told he was pure when i got him. So knowing this they may not be females. only other way is to check the vent to determine .The article was both helpful and confusing. But i get the point. would vent checking work at this point if they are only 2 days old?

 

[tinyhillfarm]

i put them under light last night. oooooh ya no brown or red here. all black with patches of white . DAD
MOM

I can post pics of chicks. will need to go take a picture.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The basics of making sex linked chicken is fairly simple. The father gives recessive genes to both his sons and his daughters. The mother gives her dominant gene to her sons but gives nothing to her daughters. So at hatch the males display their mother’s dominant gene and the females display the father’s recessive gene. It took me a while for that light bulb to come on but once it does the basics are pretty simple. It’s putting it into practice when it becomes more challenging.

I’ll wait until I see your photos for any more comments, but looking at the parents you should have sex links.

 

[tinyhillfarm]

Ok, sorry this took so long. Duty was calling at work . Here are pics of both

.

 

[tinyhillfarm]

Sorry pics might be blurry. See what I mean about the black. I have people taking the girls. Now I'm afraid to let them have then .since they could be boys ...geeeez

 

[Ridgerunner]

That’s not a Rhode Island Red rooster. You can go to Feathersite and scroll down to get a photo of what a RIR looks like. I have not raised RIR so I had to look it up to make sure what the adult roosters looked like. That was my mistake not looking it up at first since I didn’t know for sure.

http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/CGP/Reds/BRKRIR.html

How sure are you that those eggs came from that pair? Is it possible the eggs came from another pair of chickens?

That rooster looks like he has a Birchen gene, pretty close to a Black Copper Marans coloring. To get chicks like that he could not be pure for Birchen but that gene pair would be split with something else. Birchen can give black chicks but to get some yellow chicks like that, he could not be pure for Birchen. He’s have to be mixed with something else. He should be pure for the gold gene to have that red color since silver is dominant over gold, and the hen has silver.

If those chicks are from that rooster and hen, the yellow chicks will be male. Those did not get the Birchen gene from their father but got whatever else he had at that gene pair. If you had hatched any solid red chicks those would have been female but you didn’t hatch enough to get any of those.

The black chicks could be either male or female. They got the Birchen gene from their father and it is dominant over whatever that other gene at that gene pair is. When the feathers start to come in you should be able to sex then by feather color, but not in the down. The females will be pretty black with some red on their heads and the males will have some white feathering much like where their father has red. That’s the dominant silver from their mother dominating the gold from the father.

The only explanation I can come up with for that pair to have a black chick is that the rooster is not pure but is a mixed breed rooster. I has to be the rooster, not the hen.

 

[tinyhillfarm]

That must be the case then. He has to be a mix. I only have light Brahma's and that one rooster. So i know those are the parents. Guess time will tell as they get older. Thank you for the info. greatly appreciated

 

[littlegreywolf]

My grandmother hatched out three Rhode Island Red(rooster) x Light Brahma(hen) cross chicks and they're 12wks old now. She gave them to me and they are beautiful! They are all three pullets, as far as I can tell. I will take some pictures of them and post them ASAP. Here are some of them from when they were younger (maybe around 8wks old).




Here's a more recent one at maybe 9-10wks old.



I'll be right back with more pictures ...