Who’s baby daddy! And baby? Mottled rooster with blue Cochins!?

[Ashleyboz]

I definitely agree with that!


Just to check: the ISA Browns are mostly brown (or red/gold color), with a white tail and some bits of white in other areas, right?

(If I am wrong about that, then what I am about to say will be wrong too.)


Paints could probably come from Smoky Pearls or from ISA Browns.

Paint should be a genetically black chicken, with the Dominant White gene turning the black to white (but missing some bits, which is why they are paint rather than actual white.)

Smoky Pearl and ISA Brown should each have Dominant White (one copy of Dominant White, one copy of the normal gene that allows black to show.) This would mean half their chicks inherit Dominant White, and the other half do not.

The rooster should give genes to make all-black chicks (possibly with some leakage, but I'll ignore that for a minute.)

So your rooster, with either Smoky Pearl or ISA Brown hens, should give about 50% black chicks and about 50% paint chicks.

Leakage: you are more likely to see leakage of red/brown/gold on chicks from the ISA Brown hens, and less likely to see that kind of leakage on chicks from the Smoky Pearl hens. There will probably not be enough difference to be positive which is the mother, just a general likelihood.

Other traits: Chicks from ISA Brown or Smoky Pearl should have the same comb types, amount of leg feathering, leg color(s), crest or lack of it, muff/beard or lack of it, and so forth. When they grow up all the way, there may be differences in body shape and earlobe color, but they may not be enough different to be obvious.

So unless you can be sure of which eggs you are setting, I don't know of any good way to distinguish which chicks come from which of those two breeds.


Those might be male/female differences, based on the rooster having dark skin and either of the possible mother breeds having light skin.


Males are more likely to have leakage like that on their wings and back, and females are less likely to. Yes, I do think that one is more likely to have and ISA Brown mother rather than a Smoky Pearl mother, but I can't be positive.

I’m finding with these chicks I can definitely pick out the males and that is because of certain colors, size, and demeanors are so apparent. After having a career in the oilfield and now stay home with the kids I have a lot more time on my hands to watch chickens run around

I was trying to pick out which egg was to which chicken and watch when they hatched but I found the color was pretty inconsistent. I may have went a little overboard with my excitement of hatching and wasn’t scared to use up the space in the hatcher

 

[rural mouse]

That mama is about the coolest. And they are definitely weird! But I find it fun and fascinating because the colors are so dang pretty and when breeding you can do some neat stuff. I just need to get this color stuff down. Didn’t know when I put our first eggs in the incubator it would be this complex!

http://kippenjungle.nl/Overzicht.htm

Is helpful, but doesn't do much with bleeding colors.

 

[NatJ]

I’m finding with these chicks I can definitely pick out the males and that is because of certain colors, size, and demeanors are so apparent. After having a career in the oilfield and now stay home with the kids I have a lot more time on my hands to watch chickens run around

It is definitely nice to have enough time to watch the chickens
And yes, having quite a few and watching them does make it easier to observe which traits go with males vs. females. I've seen that myself-- it is usually easier to sex 20 chicks as they grow than to sex 3 chicks, and having some males and some females makes it much easier than having them all alike, because you know you are seeing both versions. If you have just males or just females, you can go crazy trying to spot the ones that have an differences that might mean something (like on those nasty tests some teachers make in school where every answer is false and nothing true: you know that isn't right, so you go back over everything and second-guess yourself.)

I was trying to pick out which egg was to which chicken and watch when they hatched but I found the color was pretty inconsistent. I may have went a little overboard with my excitement of hatching and wasn’t scared to use up the space in the hatcher

Yes, that would make it hard to tell which ones came from which egg. But it's definitely fun ot have a whole bunch of variety of chicks at once

Sometimes people set just white eggs one time, and just brown eggs the next batch, or something like that. Then they know what chicks came from what color of eggs.

If you care about knowing which chicks hatch from which eggs, there are also ways to separate them in the hatcher. Some people use little plastic baskets, some use mesh bags, I once saw photos of a divider built of Legos in one incubator, and so forth. It just needs to be something that keeps chicks in the same section where their eggs were, allows air & heat to move around properly, and doesn't cause problems (not sharp, not falling over and squishing chicks, etc.) For as much as chicks move around after hatching, it does need to make sure they don't get out. That means mesh bags tie shut, plastic baskets get shut with twisties or wire ties, and so forth. Just turning something upside down over a batch of eggs will probably not work, because chicks will push it aside and mix themselves up anyway.

(As I'm sure you have already noticed: chicken raising is full of options and choices: "you could do ___ or ___ or ___")