White marans roo with lavender orphington hen

[kboese]

It was a sad morning over here since our only remaining (out of 3...) lavender rooster died... I was really looking forward/hoping to breed some lavender chicks, but now my options are to either breed our lavender hens with our white marans rooster or with our black australorp rooster. Does anyone have any idea what the outcome of those would be?

Thanks a lot for now,
Kristin

 

[Ravynscroft]

Very sorry for your losses...

It'll take a few generations, but I'd go with the black Australorp... first batch of chicks will be all black, but half will carry lavender (called black split to lav)... unfortunately, there is no visible way to tell which are split and which are just black... breeding back the splits to lavenders will give you half and half black splits and full lavenders...
I wouldn't go with the white as it could be recessive and recessive white can hide other colors, plus lavs are bred to blacks frequently to improve feather type...
Good luck and hope this helps...

 

[kboese]

This helps a lot, thank you so much and I will be patiently breeding my lavenders to the blacks will let you know if I ever am successful
Oh, and if we do end up hatching some true lavenders, will they be austral-orps?

 

[Ravynscroft]

No problem!

Not sure what to call them, but Orpington was used in the original line of Australorp so at least they're closer related to each other than Marans...

 

[Angry Cupcake]

This link has a great chart explaining what percentages you will get using the black and how to get back to 100% lavender chicks. It also has information on the lavender orp breed and why you should breed back to black.



http://thefancychick.com/LavenderOrpington.html

 

[kboese]

Thanks so much @RavynFallen and @Angry Cupcake .
I learned a lot from your replies and now feel better about the future of my beautiful lavender girls and their offspring

 

[Ravynscroft]