Roos & dark-colored Eggs Question

[kgeorge]

Does a rooster have any bearing on the color of eggs an off spring lays?....what I'm trying to ask is: If, say, a Welsummer roo was bred to, say, a Barred rock hen, it is possible the off spring would lay dark-colored eggs or would it have to be the hen that is the Welsummer in order to get the dark-colored eggs?

(edited for grammer)

 

[Dustin Biery]

I have always heard that if you do the said cross, the pullets will carry the darker color from the dad (but not nearly as dark), where the cockerels would pass along and egg color more of the mothers side. So what I am trying to say is that girls take after fathers, sons after mothers.

 

[kgeorge]

Thank you. I appreciate your help.

 

[Krys109uk]

There are quite a lot of genes affecting brown eggs, a few of which, apparently, are sex linked.

Other than that there is no reason that males would carry egg colour genes any more from their mother than from their father & vice versa.

If you cross a wellie male onto a barred rock hen the resulting females will lay darker eggs than their mother but not as dark as their paternal grandmother (or aunts) presuming them to be purebred wellies.

 

[Dustin Biery]

Yeah, thats what I said, only not as smart...

 

[Krys109uk]

So what I am trying to say is that girls take after fathers, sons after mothers.

Well not really, because if one was to cross a barred rock male onto a wellie hen then the female offspring would lay darker eggs than their paternal grandmother (& aunts) but not as dark as her mother's eggs.

Either way around they're going to be of intermediate colour.

A cockerel will pass on genes equally from both his parents but as males cannot lay eggs we can only have some idea of the genes carried by the eggs laid by his female relatives.

The only genes male offspring inherit differently to their sisters are genes on the mother's Z chromosome.​

 

[Ryu]

We have outcrossed our Buckeye line both ways. The Buckeye hens passed on the Darker egg.

I don't know if it will always hold true....

 

[Dustin Biery]

There was a good thread on this a while back, and I cannot find it. If I remember correctly, there was research to document that it is passed on by the father. Krys, I know males do no lay, but I still think it would be easy enough to determine how it was passed on. On another note, Krys is right, it will never be as dark as the Wellies, but will not be as light as the barred rock. So my answer is still yes, the rooster has an effect on the color of egg of the offspring.

 

[Krys109uk]

If I remember correctly, there was research to document that it is passed on by the father.

I think you misunderstood. There have been a few studies on inheritance of brown shell colour, basically showing that some brown egg genes are sex linked. Those & only those genes are inherited differently. The male is not going to inherit genes more from the mother or father. How could he? He will inherit a Z chromosome from each parent. His daughters will inherit either the genes on the Z chromosome from his mother or the Z chromosome from his father, but, as you know, there is little way of telling precisely what brown egg genes he inherited from his father.
All of the autosomal egg colour genes will be passed on equally.​

 

[Dustin Biery]

That is always a possibility as genetics become scrambled eggs in my head most of the time....but....Like with silver and gold in feathers, the male can carry both silver and gold, where a female is one or the other, could egg genes not work in the similiar fashion?