Who's the Daddy?

[trish5909]

Hi everyone:

We got a dozen White Chantecler hens from a breeder several weeks ago. They were ranging freely with the Chantecler roosters so we thought we'd try to incubate some of the eggs and this weekend hatched 7 chicks. Most are a pale yellow, one is white but what really has us baffled is that one of them is mostly gray, with some black patches. The gray one even has a beak that looks different: wider at the base and more "stubby" at the tip.

Is this what a baby rooster looks like perhaps? A genetic throwback of some sort? Any info to help solve this mystery would be appreciated! Whatever the answer, the little gray one sure is cute!

I'm going to try to upload a pic ... my first attempt. The pictures look pinkish but that's because they're all under a red heat lamp and I didn't want to scare them by using a flash.

 

[farmerChef]

White can hide other colors, can you contact the breeder and see if they have other colors, or maybe another breed that may have hopped the fence?

 

[hdowden]

did you wait a month to incubate any of their eggs. if the other person had different breeds mixed then this could be one of their babies. if i remeber right once a roo does it thing with a hen that hen can lay fertile eggs for up to a month after that roos gone. i would contact the prevous owner and see if they were mixed in with a different roo at the time

 

[trish5909]

We don't have any roosters ourselves, which is why we got an incubator as soon as we realized that the hens we had gotten would be laying fertilized eggs for a couple of weeks. So all the chicks came from the breeder's roosters. I'll try to contract the breeder but I was just wondering if anyone is familiar with this breed and knows if you can get chicks of different colours from white hens & roosters -- recessive genes??? Or if the roos are born a different colour?

 

[debid]

Unless the breeder was using your hens in his breeding program (and if he was, why would he sell them?), there is no reason for him to separate them from whatever other breeds he has on the premises. I'd put money on your chick being a mix and you'd really have to find out what else he had around in order to have a shot at guessing the breed mixture this early.

 

[jeslewmazer]

I would think you got another breed or color mixed in there. I could be possible for the color to be recessive. I wonder what it will look like when it feathers out.

 

[farmerChef]

It sounds like your saying it has a rose comb? Maybe its half wyandotte?