Wheaten X Black Bantam Ameraucana Cross

[ChickenLeg]

I crossed my wheaten cock over a black hen. The hen obviously wasnt pure for E/E but Im not positive what she was carrying. His down looked almost like partridge when he was born, I mistook him as one of my silver chicks at first. He's a cool looking bird, reminds me of a salmon faverolle. He was given to a friend, Im going to give him a few wheatens and maybe a silver hen to cross over him to see what we can get off him next year. I attached some pics of his siblings too, all hatched out black with leakage. His dad is 2nd to last pic and mom is the last pic

 

[YardMoa]

The two possibilities I see are...

A) mother is full E/E and the son didn't get enough melanizers and is simply extremely, extremely leaky.

B) mother is split to wheaten, and the son is showing wheaten with extra melanizers.

I'm leaning towards A because of how leaky the siblings are looking. Looking at his hackles, I think his mother is silver based. I believe he's gold/silver split.

I could be wrong, I'm not sure how the chick down would be affected in either situation. Hopefully someone more experienced will chime in.

 

[ChickenLeg]

The chick down is a good way to identify their e locus, and since extended E is the most dominate even 1 copy of it would make the chick down mainly black, this is why I concurred the mother couldnt be E/E. If she was split to wheaten, and this chick got 1 copy for wheaten from each parent then this chick would have had a wheaten down but it didnt. So I can conclude shes not E/E and not split to wheaten.

I forgot to mention the breeder she came from also raised brown reds. She could possible have some of the same genetics as them with real good melanizers. Brown red though is crow wing so it should be based on E^R.. Im curious is a wheaten bird has 1 copy for E^R and one for e^Wh does it still show a wingbow like this guy?

But maybe his brown reds werent pure for E^r and maybe they were also split to e+ or e^b. Maybe she never had brown red blood and her line always carried e+ or e^b... anyways I'm leaning toward e+ or e^b since extended E would mask their pattern as an adult.

Im also curious if E^r (crowwing) split to ewh e+ or eb hides the wingbow in males since its e locus dominate? I will assume it does but if anyone whos done the cross would chime in.

 

[ChickenLeg]

I agree she is silver based since all her male offspring look cream in the hackles. Which is surprising because I thought she was one of my forsure gold based birds. Im going to cross her with a silver duckwing cock this spring and see what I get she might possibly be some help to my silver line if shes not carrying autosomal red.