The black is turning more red. The grey…I don’t know what it’s doing lol
I think I see what the grey is doing.
One of the Smokey Pearl hens must have a recessive gene that allows a chicken to show some pattern of black and other colors (not just the gene for black all over.)
So I think the grey chick is showing a pattern of some sort. I can't say yet whether it's a Columbian pattern or something else.
With a red father (has the gold gene), the only way to get a chick that shows a pattern of black and WHITE (silver gene) is if the hen is genetically silver. So whichever Smoky Pearl hen is the mother of that chick, she is genetically silver, and the chick is a sexlink male. (Gold rooster x silver hen = sexlinked chicks, with gold daughters and silver sons.)
If you get any other chicks with a black-and-silver pattern, they will be males as well.
If you get any with a black-and-gold pattern, we won't know for sure if they are males or females until they grow old enough to tell by other methods: the Smoky Pearl hens might all be silver, or some of them might be gold, and we just can't tell because the gold or silver is hiding under the other coloring they show.
For the chick that is showing red, I'll hold off on predictions until it gets a bit older, because I don't know what else those Smoky Pearls might be hiding!
