what color is this banty cochin?

[French Hen]

My guy is at that chick age where they look moth eaten and awkward! He isn't just black. Anyone know what color this is? Some kind of lacing or mottled/spangled maybe? I'm such a newbie!!

Don't mind the toddler hand. My 2 year old loves to pet Bitty.

 

[Griffinsong]

Looks like a possible Birchen[or a dark Blue Birchen] to me. Birchen looks very similar to Black on chick down, dark chick with pale belly, but as adults they have laced neck/chest feathers.

 

[French Hen]

Looks like a possible Birchen[or a dark Blue Birchen] to me. Birchen looks very similar to Black on chick down, dark chick with pale belly, but as adults they have laced neck/chest feathers.

Ah! Very cool. Thanks I haven't read about Birchen yet. Off to research!

 

[French Hen]

He has some red feathers on his head too. Kinda red tinged

 

[Griffinsong]

The red might be due to the color not being entirely pure.
A Birchen has the sex linked Silver gene which removes golden pigment and thus turns golden feathers to white, but if they are mixed with a golden female then the males get a single silver gene and a single golden one. Silver is dominant over gold but the covering is incomplete unless both genes are silver, the golden gene still shows through if there is only one silver gene, so Silver/Gold mix males [think of red sex links, for example] will have some golden[or in RSL case, red] coloring left over. Females can not have this color because they can only have one Silver or golden gene due to the sex linking. So they are either silver or golden, no in-betweens.

 

[French Hen]

The red might be due to the color not being entirely pure.
A Birchen has the sex linked Silver gene which removes golden pigment and thus turns golden feathers to white, but if they are mixed with a golden female then the males get a single silver gene and a single golden one. Silver is dominant over gold but the covering is incomplete unless both genes are silver, the golden gene still shows through if there is only one silver gene, so Silver/Gold mix males [think of red sex links, for example] will have some golden[or in RSL case, red] coloring left over. Females can not have this color because they can only have one Silver or golden gene due to the sex linking. So they are either silver or golden, no in-betweens.

So is it best, then, to avoid mixing the two colors when breeding for either gold specifically or silver specifically since the color can bleed through like this?

 

[Griffinsong]

Yes, though only male birds can have the combination because unlike most mammals, where males have XY and females XX, in birds, males have two Z chromosomes [ZZ] and females only one [ZW], and the Silver gene is linked to that Z chromosome, and can't appear on the W one females have, females can only be straight gold or silver as a result. and they will always get their Z chromosome from their father and the W from the mother, so if you are mixing the pure colors to make a sexlink, female chicks will always be the color of the father[usually with some white leakage, though], and males will always be mixed. With an already mixed father the results are no longer predictable by sex, since he has two different genes on his Z chromosomes.