Sufficient Self members with Poultry!

[flowerbug]

...
Guess who is buying more freaking chickens this year?

sad,

you,

and KFC...

 

[FarmerJamie]

Wow. It's been 13 years since my chicken massacre where the coyotes wiped out my meat chicken flock.

 

[Dreamz]

My girls are a bit more consistent laying. But my ISA Brown Monica had not given me any eggs in a couple of days. Today, while working my back in the garden, I received a text from her telling me that she is still at Margaritaville celebrating Cinco de Mayo. She will be so grounded when she gets back!

 

[Finnie]

My first lavender orpingtons?
They're blue

My lavender orpington rooster?
He's splash

This is what happens when people don’t know what they are doing and breed blue and lavender together. Anything that doesn’t come out black they just call lavender, without realizing it’s just blue or splash. Very likely they had a splash rooster over lavender hens, so they didn’t get any black chicks at all. Cuz that might have clued them in that their “lavenders” weren’t “pure”.

If that’s what they did, then your blue Orpingtons could be split to lavender. But with your rooster being splash, you wouldn’t be able to breed the blue out in the first generation. Not really worth the trouble to try to get the lavender gene to double up and express. If you did get a lavender chick and it also had the blue gene, I don’t know how you would be able to tell.

 

[tortoise]

This is what happens when people don’t know what they are doing and breed blue and lavender together. Anything that doesn’t come out black they just call lavender, without realizing it’s just blue or splash. Very likely they had a splash rooster over lavender hens, so they didn’t get any black chicks at all. Cuz that might have clued them in that their “lavenders” weren’t “pure”.

If that’s what they did, then your blue Orpingtons could be split to lavender. But with your rooster being splash, you wouldn’t be able to breed the blue out in the first generation. Not really worth the trouble to try to get the lavender gene to double up and express. If you did get a lavender chick and it also had the blue gene, I don’t know how you would be able to tell.

I sold my blue hens. Sad, because they were the sweetest birds I've ever had. I'm undecided re: splash rooster.

I also spent way too much money on a blue frizzle Americauna pullet. That's a rooster too. What a mess! I won't be hatching any eggs this year.

 

[Finnie]

I sold my blue hens. Sad, because they were the sweetest birds I've ever had. I'm undecided re: splash rooster.

I also spent way too much money on a blue frizzle Americauna pullet. That's a rooster too. What a mess! I won't be hatching any eggs this year.

That’s too bad.

You could totally make blue frizzle Easter Eggers with that rooster and just about any hen!

 

[tortoise]

That’s too bad.

You could totally make blue frizzle Easter Eggers with that rooster and just about any hen!

The blue frizzle roo is the same color as my lavender orps. Are the color names different between breeds?

 

[Finnie]

The blue frizzle roo is the same color as my lavender orps. Are the color names different between breeds?

Well they shouldn’t be, but a lot of breeds use different color words to mean the same thing or use the same word for different situations. Case in point is when the lavender Ameraucanas got accepted to the APA (or maybe it was when they applied. I don’t even know if they are officially accepted) they went with self blue instead of lavender. Talk about confusing the layperson! Now all the people out there who aren’t up on genetics or are newbies hear the word “blue” in both varieties, they think it’s the same variety. So they breed blues to self blues (lavenders) and wonder why the offspring don’t come out right. (Or they assume they are correct and sell them as “lavenders”.) I feel like the lavender Ameraucana people shot themselves in the foot! (I think it caused huge rifts among them too.)

So anyway, back to your blue frizzle roo. If he looks like your Orpington hens that ended up being blues, then yes, call him a blue. Whether he is blue or lavender, if you breed him to most any other random hen, the chicks should come out black based. If he is blue, you should get 50/50 blue and black babies, 50% of which should be frizzled.

If he is actually lavender, then you will get no blue babies, only black. But you would have to hatch out a lot of chicks before you could be sure he can’t throw blues. Then if he is actually lavender, all the babies will be split to lavender.

Also, you wrote “Americauna”. That’s hatchery code for Easter Egger. If they spell it incorrectly, then they aren’t claiming to be selling pure Ameraucanas, are they? Some hatcheries will just come right out and call them Easter Eggers. I don’t know why other hatcheries persist in trying to trick people. I guess because it works. You said you paid too much for yours. Did you get him from a breeder?

The fact that he’s frizzled means he was mixed with something somewhere along the line. Hopefully he has at least one blue gene to pass on.

 

[Hinotori]

People deciding to call colors something different than they are. Urgh.

Yes the blue and lavender genes are hair pulling trying to explain to people how they aren't the same color or gene.

Silkies have that all over the place. Grey (accepted color) is actually silver. Then there is the issue with what they were calling Porcelain in silkies but it lacked the mille fleur feather pattern required by the APA to be called that so it's being called Blue Cream now so they can get it accepted.

There is also "Calico" in silkies but it really isn't. They are splash birds with red leakage so only the males have the coloring. Actual Calico is available in a few breeds but it's mille fleur with the mottling gene that makes white patches. If Calico is accepted it will be the mille fleur version. At least silkies accept splash as an actual color unlike the other breeds which only recognized the dilute gene

In the silkie threads on BYC people are always asking what color they can call their mixed color chicks. I have to be Debbie Downer and try to explain that it's just mixed genes and not a color. Then explain how to set a color over tons of generations if you like something that comes out.

 

[Mini Horses]

Color! It's a genetic lesson for sure.

For poultry, I just get what I get....not showing, so doesn't matter for my flock. They scratch & lay eggs. I get more excited over egg shell colors.

Years back -- horses a whole different case! I've forgotten most of the nuances over the past 25 yrs of no breeding. But minies had a lot of silver in many lines and people thought they bought a palomino or blonde and later found it was a silver bay. . The "hidden" genetics eventually show.