Hello~
Someone had asked me to clarify what I meant on an earlier post about color issues we were having here at our farm.
We aren't have any problems per say but are tying to unify the color that we are selecting for. Typically we are hatching out three different kinds of colors within the lavender family.
As chicks they look like either:
Very dark with very little fluff. A little rangier of a look. Dark on top and light underneath.
Very light yellow-ish with partridge spots and a lot of fluff.
Smooth even color (no spots) with a lot of fluff.
All of these do feather out to be Lavender... of course. However, they do have typical variations.
Most of this years pullets are colored like this... the lighter of the curve.
While most of the Boys turn out to be the darker type... we have only had one that is the lighter smother color (I posted a picture of him a few pages back) and even he has had some variation. We have had many more boys this year... about 10 to 1. I have heard and seems to be the way here at our farm that the split blacks to lavenders do produce a smother color. We only hatched a few last year but will know better this upcoming year as we are going back to breeding to three different lines of blacks.
This year we will be selecting as chicks the lighter smoother color. This is only about one out of every 10-12 chicks. The rest is an almost even split between the other two types with a few more of the dark. Also want to mention that our parent stock is all the lighter smoother of the adult colors. We have also been getting quite a few non bearded's out of our highly bearded parent stock. We didn't mark this year to see if the color variations had any correlation to the bearded/non bearded type... wish we had... will be doing that this year!
I do not think that this will ever really be a unified thing amongst all of the lavenders because everyone has a different color preference. We just are wanting one color here... if it is possible over the years to select for it... who know how it will go!
Just wanted to share our experience this past year and looking forward to hearing about all of yours.
Darling Farms