The Evolution of Atlas: A Breeding (and Chat) Thread

[1muttsfan]

Good Moms have
Sticky Floors
Messy Kitchens
Laundry Piles
Dirty Ovens and
Happy Kids

 

[getaclue]

For the most part, Dh is a stickler on cleanliness, even though he man-cleans, which isn't really the same thing as cleaning, but he hates clutter. He drives me nuts sometimes. We call him Mr. Monk. Normally, I keep a very clean home. Yes, it gets a bit messy at times, but not too often. I started keeping a cleaning routine the first time I went through chemo. I was afraid I would get down, and too far behind to ever get caught up.

I was able to check my chicken better today. Yes, there is an egg right there, ready to come out. I got liquid calcium into her. Soaked, and cleaned her vent area, and all those feathers again. Her cage is cleaned, and all fresh hay is in it. She acted stronger today, and spent more time standing, eating, and drinking.

 

[speckledhen]

Okay, you folks tell me. This is Gloria Jean. Splash, right? She is sister to Neela and Alice, my blue Rock hens, a year younger but from the same flock. I have been told over and over again that "she cannot be a splash" because her son with a BR rooster was normally black barred. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all the genetics say the sons have to be blue barred, but two were black barred. I have raised BBS in several breeds and I know what a splash is. It's not light blue. I can see what I'm looking at in front of me. I hate the term "blue splash" because those are two different colors. There is no such thing. It's blue or it's splash, though both are created with the blue gene.
This is a splash bird, gray accent feathers and all!

Just like my Ameraucana, Snow, is a splash-this is the picture that the unscrupulous person on Ebay stole and reversed to sell their overpriced eggs.

 

[speckledhen]

More pics of Gloria Jean with the original Stukel male, Rex #1.

 

[kitkat5505]

I don’t know enough about BBS but I’d say you are correct.

 

[1muttsfan]

All the splash I have seen are clearly white, not greyish or light blue. my Arkansas Blue (a BBS breed) blue birds all have darker flecks of color. Here are this year's babies, you can see a splash hen in the back right, and a"splashy" blue hen on the left.

 

[speckledhen]

Both Snow and Gloria Jean are pearly white with "accent" feathers, not like your hen on the left. I've had light blues here, some very light ones. And the chicks seem to be silvery-pearly white as babies, sometimes with yellow tinge. It's plain to the eye if they're light blue or splash, though photos can skew the light. The splashes are the least hatched of all three colors in BBS, seems to me. Has been that way with all breeds I've had in that color variety.

Alice and Neela, my blue Rocks, both have darker accent feathers. The splashes have gray-blue accent feathers, too, but not many. Splashes do vary a great deal, I've found, as far as the darkness or frequency of the splash-accent feathers, but the base color is always a white, usually what I see as a pearly white, at least to my eye.

What bugs me is that some people insist that what I see with my eyes and know to be true can't be, because genetics, genetics, genetics! It begins to become irritating because they almost get to a point where they are calling me a liar. I know what I saw, I know what I have, I know what I bred, on down the line and I know what I got. That means something is off-kilter in the lineage way, way, WAY back or genetics are not 100% absolute.

Tiny is an example. She had BBS Ameraucana parents, I saw their photos, but she is a throwback to Sumatra genes far back in her lineage. I watched her hatch from her blue egg. She lays a brown egg. Everything about her screams Sumatra, but there were no Sumatras on the property of the person who collected the eggs from her BBS Ameraucana flock. Her blue Amer. breeding rooster came from a farm that, years back, used to breed blue Sumatras. Of course, at some point, Sumatra blood got into that line, but they bred Ameraucanas and continued to, breeding true, sold a rooster to this woman who gave me the eggs and voila, Tiny.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I don't know genetics. So what's the difference between a solid colored splash which I have had and a lavender?

 

[getaclue]

In dogs, they call them "throwbacks". I would assume this applies to chickens, and pretty much all else in the animal kingdom as well. The original color of chow chows is red. When raising black chow chows, you can breed black sires to black dams. They will breed true, except.... Over a 15 year period, you can expect at least one throwback that will be a red chow chow, instead of black.

 

[speckledhen]

I don't know genetics. So what's the difference between a solid colored splash which I have had and a lavender?

A splash is a genetically a black bird with two copies of the blue gene, washing out the color. A lavender is a bird with the lavender gene. It only produces lavender when bred to lavender unlike blue, black, splash. Lavender and blue are just two unrelated genes and work differently.