What is the correct label for the color of my chickens? Blue, Isabel, Porcelain?

[carrieb62]

Your birds are not mottled. Like I said before, the black ticking you see in the feathers is called fretting, & is a feather problem in Lavs.

If you read the literature on the link the black you speak of is mentioned as a fault of Isabella... ƒ "Black spots in the lavender feathers."

And mottled??? What is this then?

 

[carrieb62]

I'm breeding self-blue ??? I don't think so!!!

What?


What do you mean by "what"? Shocked? So am I! But that's how my first Isabelline/lavender expressing roo' came to be! Mother Nature works in mysterious ways, eh?

 

[jeremy]

If you read the literature on the link the black you speak of is mentioned as a fault of Isabella... ƒ "Black spots in the lavender feathers."

And mottled??? What is this then?

Correct, the "black spots"- fretting, are a fault that can appear on any bird possessing the Lavender gene. It's a feather quality issue.

Mottling is the absence of color at the tip of the feather, as seen here.

 

[jeremy]

I'm breeding self-blue ??? I don't think so!!!

I didn't realize that these were the parents of your birds. Nothing really that mysterious going on here though.

Both of the parent birds are carrying (recessive to) the Lav gene, meaning they each have 1 copy of the gene. In order for Lav to be expressed, a single bird must have 2 copies of the gene. Your rooster does, which he inherited from each of his parents.

As for what color the parents are... I don't know? Silver Duckwing? But the rooster appears to also be carrying gold genes. They aren't any standard color, rather they appear to be a mix of several varieties.

 

[carrieb62]

Thank you! Nothing really THAT MYSTERIOUS going on! I don't understand why it's so mysterious though to people around me in my area where I live... they're stuck on "self-blue" and "porcelain"! Why? Maybe because they're lazy and believe everything they hear and see and don't know how to do research on a computer? IDK IDK IDK!!! They're stuck on the association/idea that just because my birds are expressing lavender that makes them "self-blue"! Just because it's a leucistic/isabelline/lavender expressing chicken doesn't mean it's a "self-blue" and "with faults"....grrrrr!

 

[altair]

I don't mean to dredge an old thread, but is there a difference between lemon-blue and isabella?

 

[carrieb62]

I don't mean to dredge an old thread, but is there a difference between lemon-blue and isabella?

Oh no that's quite all right don't worry
Isabella is Lavender (Lav) color genetics while Lemon Blue (Bl) is blue genetics and they are
2 different dilutants. I'm posting a picture here so you can see the differences between
the two. And also to note, while "porcelain" is lavender as well I can not label my birds that
because the APA standard is for the Mille Fleur pattern. Here is a link to a great site
which explains the dilutants more in depth http://kippenjungle.nl/basisEN.htm

 

[ChicKat]

Hi Carrieb62

It looks like this thread has bubbled up again.

Did you settle on Isabeline, Isabel, Isabele or Isabella for your chicken's plumage pattern name? -- Do you continue to breed them? My understanding of Isabel (I like the shorter version of the word) is that a duckwing base with two recessive lavender genes will create the plumage pattern.

Duckwing can be several 'varieties' -- gold dick wing, sliver duck wing and red duck wing - as I understand it as well.

To my eye, the male on the right is Isabel, the female in the center is a silver duckwing - a very light version -- -- and the male on the left -- differs from a sliver duckwing - because from what I have seen they usually have more black on their breast.

This is what I would expect to see in a silver duckwing male:

Now the interesting thing is that Isabel pattern seems to have been recognized in Europe in around the 1970's -- As an aside in different countries over there it is Isabel or Isabella - but this link gives some background information:

http://leghorn.nl/artikelen/Isabel patrijs-UK.pdf?phpMyAdmin=92cf0928fc32fa6ade98585639c49441



These images are from the article, and would deptict the 'poster child' or perhaps another way to say it is show-quality examples of the plumage pattern. --

The hobby name Isabel(le/la/line) and the more gentic description is lavender-brown. The brown duckwing with two recessive lavender genes is the recipe. However, in the case of the silver instead of the brown (aka gold) duck wing being the base does confuse the matter a bit IMO. -- the silver based lavender duckwings would seemingly have less of the warm tones. Also the male above has a peach or straw colored patch at the top of his wing. When the duck wing bird has a silver base the red in that location is ersed. Interesting huh? However - the very tip of the wing triangle as shown in the above male is white... From my research in the world of duckwings, white is the wing triangle indicates a silver basis. In a gold duck wing (brown = gold) the wing triangle is brown.

I'm working with Isabel myself right now -- love the look.

No you won't find it in the APA as yet, because getting something accepted by the APA takes a very long time, a lot of people pushing for it -- etcc.

As you can see from the article as well, the Isabel plumage color/pattern expresses in different ways on different breeds. So yours are OEGB right? and these are leghorns...Have your been breeding your unique chickens over the subsequent years since the first post?

 

[rdmom]

I can't tell you how happy I am to have found this thread! I had seen what appeared to be a lavender chicken with "lemon coloring" (?) still learning that looks EXACTLY like the Isabella poster chickens only younger and had tried asking about what the coloring is called and was practically told that coloring doesnt exist. Probably due to my chicken beginner phrasing. However what breeds could exhibit this coloring? Only Leghorns? and I am also in Texas would love to see pics of the grow outs from your project if you still have them!

 

[carrieb62]

Hi Carrieb62

It looks like this thread has bubbled up again.

Did you settle on Isabeline, Isabel, Isabele or Isabella for your chicken's plumage pattern name? -- Do you continue to breed them?

Hi ChicKat! Sorry it has taken me forever to come back on here... to answer your questions - I settled on the name Isabella and "Isabella Bantam Project" and yes of
course I did continue to breed them. I signed up for my NPIP in January 2015 as a result of this project and have been selling & shipping hatching eggs

I'm on my second season now and while there are a lot of misses and no that won't work there are several birds that I am eggstremely happy with and I feel like
fantastic progress has been made surprisingly very quickly. While my birds are mainly Old English, there are some with the white lobes and some with yellow legs
which leads me to believe there may be Leghorn genetics involved. When I got chickens 5 years ago I just wanted chickens for eggs and bug eating,
never in a million years did I imagine I would become a poultry breeder and for a specialty project LOL I even went out and bought a high resolution DSLR to
better photo document the birds. I find myself to be a bit of a camera snob and when I research chickens my desire is to find high quality photos and that isn't always
the case. I have even taken to working with the lavender on Ginger and BB Red base color along with the Silver Duckwing.

Anyway, here are some pics for your viewing pleasure...