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That we did not fully understand either. You're right if it were true mottled they should have been mottled in both generations. I must reiterate that the Tollbunt blood I had to work with was not properly colored, but at the time we did not know that. Not to veer too far off subject, but I am investigating a type of mottling/spangling that I have observed in Spangled Gamefowl that doesn't seem to follow the normal rules AND it gives a dispersion of white similar to what is found in some mottled Houdans, Tollbunts, and I believe, Exchequer Leghorns. To give an example, this year one pair of my spangled games, both birds heavily spangled produced 1 pullet with not a single white feather on her. This is the first time this had happened. In a cross between two bloodlines of games, one spangled and one that is not I have tried crossing back to the spangled side time and time again and each time the spangling disappears after the birds get to be a few months old. Now in the full blood spangles I have 1 hen who is from the same line, only removed by several decades. That hen has turned progressively whiter with age, while the side of that family I started with has not...the hens and original cock have just as much white now at 5 years old as they did at 2 years old.
See, and interesting that you mention that, I was once working with the chicken calculator, guessing that tolbunts were simply a mottled golden laced bird (as most are laced, not tipped like mille fluers) but it didn't seem right, as no tolbunt is quite identical. Each one has too much of this color or too little of that color, quite often in varying places. My frizzled girl's secondary feathers are pure white, but everywhere else seems decently balanced. My cockerel's tail feathers, especially his sickles, are crazy looking - They're a wish wash of white, red, and the tiniest smudges of black.
Rare Feathers: Send that Orloff over here!! He's GORGEOUS!!! . . . Or one of your girls, actually.
They're breathtaking and worth the time to work with!
