Unexpected chick colors

[AinaWGSD]

Nice thinking!

Have you looked at the combs on the black/barred chicks in that hatch?

If the eggs you set were all from Buckeye hens, then all the Malines-colored chicks should have pea combs too.

Not yet. They're still too little for me to see clearly (I've been putting off making an appointment with the ophthalmologist for a few months now I really need new glasses)

 

[ABQ chicken keeper]

Not yet. They're still too little for me to see clearly (I've been putting off making an appointment with the ophthalmologist for a few months now I really need new glasses)

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.View attachment 4299590
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.View attachment 4299592View attachment 4299593View attachment 4299594View attachment 4299595View attachment 4299596View attachment 4299597View attachment 4299598
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 chicks mean one of these genes is missing (hen or rooster or both heterozygous instead of homozygous)?

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.View attachment 4299590
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.View attachment 4299592View attachment 4299593View attachment 4299594View attachment 4299595View attachment 4299596View attachment 4299597View attachment 4299598
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 chicks mean one of these genes is missing (hen or rooster or both heterozygous instead of homozygous)?

Where did get Malines , they look like an interesting breed?

 

[AinaWGSD]

Mine came from Chicken Scratch Poultry, they got theirs from Greenfire Farms (though Greenfire doesn't seem to have them anymore) who imported them from Europe. Chicken Scratch is only about 2 hours from me so we were able to pick them up instead of having them shipped.

 

[AinaWGSD]

Three weeks and that definitely looks like silver. The feathers on the wings have a bit of reddish tint to them, but the chest feathers are definitely white or nearly white.

I haven't checked all of the black chicks, but the ones that I did all seemed to have pea combs.

 

[NatJ]

View attachment 4308722View attachment 4308723View attachment 4308724
Three weeks and that definitely looks like silver. The feathers on the wings have a bit of reddish tint to them, but the chest feathers are definitely white or nearly white.

I haven't checked all of the black chicks, but the ones that I did all seemed to have pea combs.

This is very interesting!

I think the Silver must have come from one of the Malines, because there is no way for a Buckeye to carry Silver while looking their normal red/brown color.

Regarding the striping on the chick down, and the black & silver on those chicks, I'm going to guess that one Malines rooster was Extended Black carrying something else, maybe the wild-type Duckwing coloring (although I think a few other e-locus alleles can also cause some striping in the chick down.)

I'm also thinking that your Buckeye roosters were not doing much mating with the Buckeye hens, given the colors of chicks that hatched (since you think it likely that only Buckeye eggs went in the incubator.)

 

[AinaWGSD]

Yeah, the malines are definitely more popular with the girls.

 

[AinaWGSD]

I think I've cracked it!

These chicks are, in fact, barred! They all also seem to have white skin. And pea combs.

They are buckeye/malines crosses. Which means at least one of my malines boys is carrying silver. And probably heterozygous for extended black, right?

 

[NatJ]

They are buckeye/malines crosses. Which means at least one of my malines boys is carrying silver. And probably heterozygous for extended black, right?

That sounds right to me!

Yes, he would have to be heterozygous for extended black, to produce chicks of that color.

 

[AinaWGSD]

Hatch #2, still haven't separated my birds into breeding groups yet so chicks are still a pot-luck of buckeyes malines, and crosses. Hatched a few more silver chicks, a few sexlinked chicks, some red chicks, and single combed malines chicks.

One of the malines chicks hatched with these kind of reverse chipmunk stripes.

And one hatched with so much silver-grey down it looks almost blue! The only blue chicken out there is the Easter egger and I did not set any of her eggs for this hatch.

Does this chick down tell me anything about what my malines might be carrying?

 

[NatJ]

One of the malines chicks hatched with these kind of reverse chipmunk stripes.
View attachment 4323223
View attachment 4323224

Huh. I'm thinking the stripes on the back show that you've got two Malines (male & female) that are carrying some e-locus gene that is not Extended Black. The light head dot sure looks like a backwards version of the common "chipmunk" head marking (which is usually dark on light), but I think it is actually caused by the barring gene.

If you want to have Malines that are homozygous for Extended Black, you could test-mate every single bird to something else (example: Buckeye), hatch a bunch of chicks from each mating, and then make up Malines breeding groups with only the ones that produce just Extended Black chicks (since they are presumably homozygous gene.) If you can't get a breeding group this year, you could hatch a bunch of chicks from them and then test-mate those chicks to put together a breeding group in future.

Or you could go another direction, and deliberately keep the off color "Malines" chicks as a start to breeding them in other colors.

Or you could do both as separate projects, or neither. You could just breed your Malines as you otherwise would, and probably keep having other-colored chicks show up on occasion.

You are definitely getting some interesting chicks from this flock!

I don't remember if you said this earlier, but are you breeding from Malines that you bought, or have you already raised several generations of Malines and just this year started seeing the off-colors?