This Rooster Ilustrates Why It's Difficult to Judge Mixes

[speckledhen]

This guy is a pretty decent quality Barred Rock, better than what most hatcheries produce. Except that the only Barred Rock in his pedigree is two generations back. He's actually 75% Easter Egger (hatchery sourced).View attachment 1186118

Oh, I've had a few of those myself! In fact, I had a beautiful Delaware colored cockerel from a single barred rooster over my red Rita. No one would know he was not a Delaware, though the single barred rooster's sire was.

But, both Rita and Tiny came from gorgeous blue eggs because I watched them hatch in my incubator. Even if their sires were brown egg layers, they should have laid at least green, or that's what I was expecting from Rita. I thought Tiny was just beardless like some I used to see from time to time.

 

[speckledhen]

I have a hen now whose mother was a beautiful blue Ameraucana hen. Her sire was pure BR. The daughter has no beard or muffs, white skin and a tall single-pea combo-type comb. Beards and muffs don't always pass. And her sister from the same mother with a different BR rooster had yellow legs and a beard and muffs. Same mother, BRs were brothers.

 

[junebuggena]

Exactly right and my point!



I am sure you are correct about that. Here is the photo of the birds that Rita and Tiny came from. Not sure whose sire Tiny is, but when I questioned her Sumatra-like body type and other things about her that were not Ameraucana, the breeder said she got her Ameraucana rooster from another breeder who used to breed Blue Sumatras. Bingo.
View attachment 1186120

Rita. I watched her hatch from her blue egg and was floored when I saw red fuzz. Her underfluff was blue and she had faint lacing on her feathers (she passed away this year).
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And Tiny, who hatched from the same flock, but I'm sure the Wyandotte was not her sire. She also lays brown eggs.
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Which is why you can't always take a breeder's word for it. Sadly, some are not very honest.

 

[speckledhen]

Which is why you can't always take a breeder's word for it. Sadly, some are not very honest.

Which is true, however, I've seen things in my own barnyard that tell me that genetics are not always by the book. There are too many invisible factors in play. Genetics are not absolutes. They are gremlins, I tell you! LOL. I've gotten black barred birds from barred x splash twice. They say it cannot happen. I say it did, more than once. Not possible by the book, but I believe my own eyes. They were my birds. I know splash and black barred. So, I think there are things that veer from the black and white on rare occasion.

 

[junebuggena]

I have a hen now whose mother was a beautiful blue Ameraucana hen. Her sire was pure BR. The daughter has no beard or muffs, white skin and a tall single-pea combo-type comb. Beards and muffs don't always pass. And her sister from the same mother with a different BR rooster had yellow legs and a beard and muffs. Same mother, BRs were brothers.

If the hen was a purebred Blue Ameraucana, then only white skin, muffs, beard, and pea comb would be passed on. No yellow skin, single comb, or clean faces. I've got a Barred Rock/Easter Egger hen that looks just like an black Ameraucana. But she's not. And I would never try to pass her off as one. But some breeders are not so honest. The inconsistent breeding results are evidence that the Ameraucana hen is not what you thought she was.

 

[junebuggena]

Which is true, however, I've seen things in my own barnyard that tell me that genetics are not always by the book. There are too many invisible factors in play. Genetics are not absolutes. They are gremlins, I tell you! LOL. I've gotten black barred birds from barred x splash twice. They say it cannot happen. I say it did, more than once. Not possible by the book, but I believe my own eyes. They were my birds. I know splash and black barred. So, I think there are things that veer from the black and white on rare occasion.

Could be that you mistook a pale Blue for a Splash. Splash can only produce Blue. Blue can range a lot in shade.

 

[speckledhen]

Could be that you mistook a pale Blue for a Splash. Splash can only produce Blue. Blue can range a lot in shade.

I know splash. I know blue. She is a splash, no question. I still have her. I have issue with people who say "blue splash" because there is no such thing. I am not new to this BBS color family. I've owned Orps, Rocks and Ameraucanas in BBS over the last dozen years. This is the hen, my splash Rock.

And the blue Ameraucana hen was this one. She produced two daughters with BR roosters, each completely different, as I said. I have her black pure Ameraucana daughter, Gypsy, still, who is 10 years old.

The daughter I still have, Panda, on the left, with her Orp "son":

Her other daughter, Riley, blue barred, sired by a different BR rooster, with their half sister, Gypsy, sired by my black Ameraucana rooster I had rehomed. You can see that, unlike her sister, Panda, above, Riley has yellow skin and full beard/muffs.

Another picture of their mother.

Actually, these two are from the same line, different hatch than the blue hen above, all Cree Farms. Cree used to raise show stock, but they got out of chickens in favor of other livestock a few years later. The sire of the blue hen that was Panda and Riley and Gypsy's mother was purchased at a show by a friend in CA, who then sent me the eggs she hatched from. I kept her and sold a sister and the cockerel after I got the daughters from her. (that is Georgia clay on my splash Ameraucana hen-she is still alive, almost 10 years old).

This is splash, same as my splash Rock hen. Definitely not light blue, either of them. Someone stole this picture of Snow to sell overpriced eggs on Ebay. And the BBS girls together. The splash is related to the black but not sisters. The blue is the same hen who produced both the beardless black barred EE and the blue barred bearded yellow legged EE with BR roosters as well as the black hen, Gypsy, beside her.

 

[speckledhen]

I don't believe this lady lied to me who sent me the Ameraucana eggs, not from what I know of the way genes can behave. What I know is that generations upon generations can breed true, then a throwback to something in the lineage can pop up spontaneously. The blue Sumatras were many years back and apparently there was a fence jumper at that time in the flock that her breeding Ameraucana rooster was from. But, the BBS Ameraucanas were still pure Ameraucanas and should have bred true. They appeared to be good quality birds. I can't recall what else I got out of that hatch, but the eggs were add-ons and free with the ones she sent me from her line of heritage BRs for a fertility test. I think there Ameraucana were males I had to sell. There was no reason to lie, she just gave the eggs to me from her BBS Ameraucana flock in case the BRs were not fertile.

My BR rooster is 1/4 Delaware but with my fine quality BR hens, one of whom was his mother and grandmother, he breeds true. His progeny are better than he is. They are considered pure and breed true. Now, twenty generations down, sure, there could be a Delaware throwback, rather like my "Sumatracauna", Tiny, but that does not mean they are not what they appear to be. Birds are what they appear to be and what they generally produce. No one knows what is truly a million generations back. Many breeds we have today are combinations of other breeds and on occasion, a trait of one of those breeds will pop up. Does not mean the parents are not the pure breed, not at all. It just means that if you want to know why the 'happy accident' happened, you may have to really do some digging. Like why Sandhill Preservation's BBS Orpingtons can be proper with eye and leg color and yet, up pops a yellow legged Orp. It's because they used blue Rocks in the production of their Blue Orps generations back. They're still pure and breed true.

 

[speckledhen]

Rose can be (p,p) (R,R) or (p,p) (R,r).
Pea can be (P,P) (r,r) or (P,p) (r,r).

If you cross a (p,p)(R,r) Rose with a (P,p)(r,r) Pea, 1/4 of the offspring should be (p,p)(r,r)...single comb.

You've just discovered that your Rose comb parent carries the recessive r and your Pea comb parent carries the recessive p.

Tim

This post was a reply to me where I was asking about the chick that looked like the BLRW chipmunk out of the BBS Ameraucana eggs and why she had a single comb. So, Tim was explaining that she could certainly have that if both the rose and pea combed parents had recessive comb genes. It's just what we were saying earlier about not being pure for the comb type, or I think someone said that about Rita's parentage.

Rita as a chick. Remember, I watched her hatch from a deep blue egg so I know she came from the BBS flock. But she obviously has BLRW chick markings.

 

[Stayc]

No clue but what a pretty boy <3