I will preface this by saying I haven't yet separated my flock into breeding pens, so I don't actually know the parentage of the confusing chicks.
I have 4 roosters, 2 buckeyes (black tailed red) and 2 malines black barred). Hens are mostly buckeyes, 4 malines, and 1 solid blue easter egger. Most of the chicks I hatched are black barred, they could be either malines or malines/buckeye crosses.
I expected any pure buckeyes to hatch out red.
These are the buckeyes hatched last year, the parents of the buckeye chicks i hatched this weekend. This is what I expected any buckeye chicks to look like.
The 8 non-black chicks all hatched far more yellow and striped than I expected. I'd appreciate any help figuring out what this means.
From what I understand, buckeyes are wheaten based with Columbian and mahogany plus another gene that darkens the red. Do these light colored chocks mean one of these genes is missing (hen or rooster or both heterozygous instead of homozygous)?
I have 4 roosters, 2 buckeyes (black tailed red) and 2 malines black barred). Hens are mostly buckeyes, 4 malines, and 1 solid blue easter egger. Most of the chicks I hatched are black barred, they could be either malines or malines/buckeye crosses.
I expected any pure buckeyes to hatch out red.
These are the buckeyes hatched last year, the parents of the buckeye chicks i hatched this weekend. This is what I expected any buckeye chicks to look like.
The 8 non-black chicks all hatched far more yellow and striped than I expected. I'd appreciate any help figuring out what this means.
From what I understand, buckeyes are wheaten based with Columbian and mahogany plus another gene that darkens the red. Do these light colored chocks mean one of these genes is missing (hen or rooster or both heterozygous instead of homozygous)?
