Hi. I'm a rookie. I found this thread because I just raised several dark and blue laying pullets... Marans hens (Wheaten, Splash, and Golden Cuckoo), Welsummer, and Splash Ameraucana. I also have a couple pretty Wyandottes and Speckled Sussex. I have no roosters and I need some! So - I have a chance to pick from several Whiting True Blue cockerels. Their mother is almost pure white which I don't like. How dominant will this be in the offspring ?
There are several genes or combinations of genes that can make a chicken look white, so it can be a bit hard to predict. But if you choose a cockerel who shows little or no white, he will probably not produce chicks with large amounts of white either.
If you post photos of the specific cockerels in question, asuming they have grown most of their feathers, I can make a guess about which ones are more likely or less likely to give you a bunch of white chicks.
these OE cockerels are the result of back breeding to pure WTB... so they are a wild card but pretty darn likely to pass blue on... right?
Yes, they should pass the blue egg gene to at least half their chicks, and maybe all of their chicks.
A genetic test does exist:
https://iqbirdtesting.com/blueegg
If you want to know whether a rooster has one, two, or no copies of the blue egg gene, the test can tell you that. If he has two copies of the blue egg gene, every one of his chicks will get one copy, so all his daughters will lay blue eggs (or green or olive ones, depending on what genes she gets for brown on the outside of the egg.)
In that Olive egger chart - these guys fall into the 'spearmint' category if they were female. Would I be foolish to breed them into my pure dark layer flock or breed to my Ameraucana? What might happen?
What might happen: the daughters might lay egg colors you like, or they might lay egg colors you do not like. It is up to you whether that is a big problem, or just a mildly interesting thing to have.
should I select a WTB cockerel with a beard or no?
That depends on whether you want chicks with beards or chicks without beards. Beard has nothing to do with what color eggs a chicken lays, or how many eggs she lays, so you can go either way and get chicks that will be equally good layers of the egg colors you want.
If you select a cockerel with a beard, many of his chicks will have beards, from all of your hens.
If you select a cockerel with no beard, then you will get non-bearded chicks from your non-bearded hens, but you will probably get some bearded chicks from your bearded hens.
I feel this hunch that white leghorn coming through in these chickens makes them lay more eggs but maybe my Splash Ameraucana could be bred back to them in order to mitigate the white with blue or black and also reinforce the blue gene. Am I thinking about this correctly?
That is more or less what was done to create the Whiting True Blue in the first place, except that apparently the person creating them did not care about feather color.
Yes, you could breed for the not-white colors that way.
And yes, you could get chicks who are pure for the blue egg gene (two copies of the gene, one inherited from each parent.)
Or am I just going to make a mess? lol.
Not too big of a mess. Any way you mix the chicken breeds, you will still get chickens. They will be fluffy and cute as chicks, grow up into adults who either look pretty or not to you (different people have different preferences), and lay eggs (probably including many blue or green eggs.)
Note for the future: it often works better to start your own thread for things like this, so people don't get confused about which breeding project is being discussed in which replies. For now, I've made sure to quote your post, so hopefully it is clear which questions I am answering.
