Here are 3 beautiful little chicks we hatched about a month to a month and a half ago. They are beauties, but can you guess what breed the parents were.
Try to guess what breed the parents to these were......
A closer picture....
One more.....
How large are they? They are beautiful.
Orpington and silkie?
My Silkie crosses all have black skin, feathered legs and usually an extra toe on at least one foot. If one of the parents was a pure Silkie, they always have a sort of slight top knot and beautiful big eyes.
They arn't real large at this point Catscan, they are still quite young. Maybe about 5 inches tall from ground to back.
Do they look like they are tending toward bantam sized or standard? It almost looks like they are part Black Tailed something or other...or a dilute of it. Sort of the reverse of a Columbian pattern or a penciled something.
Barred Rock and Leghorn (Legbar)?
Nope, wrong color legs... Delaware X Australorp?
This message was edited Aug 3, 2010 10:36 PM
Oooooooo! I have always wanted to have Cream Legbars...they are auto-sexing and lay blue eggs!
http://www.creamlegbar.co.uk/
Come on folks this is fun, we need more guessers. Don't tell us yet Smedgekles.
SLW and BO
Oh! Porkpal, you cheated and changed your answer...I was going to guess Delware for one parent. Or....Light Sussex? And...and....hummmmmm.
Interesting. There is some truth in some answers, but so far none are completely right.
Let me know when you want to know.
Are both parents named, but not in the right combinations?
Not yet, I want another guess - or so.
C'mon Catscan guess like the rest of us - 20 questions?
Catscan...partially.
I know that confuses you even more.
So far I have guessed Delaware and Light Sussex and referenced Silkies and black-tailed something.
But porkpal also guessed Delaware.....
I'll give you a hint, there are 3 breeds involved.
Delaware have yellow legs, Sussex, white...smedgekles' babies look like they have slate or green legs....? But it does look like they have some barring on their markings, which Delaware do.
Ameraucana, perhaps - to explain the dark legs and tiny combs, Serama because they are small, Blue Orpington to get the color, but then we need the Delaware to get the distribution of color. That's four breeds...I guess leave out the Seramas and say they are small because they are still young.
OK Smege its time to tell I am not a patience person,lol
Haha Green
Are you all ready to know?? I'll even post a picture of hte parents.
Waiting!!
I think we are waiting for porkpal's okay....she may be doing forensic investigations, preparing a haplotype data base of complex traits, population histories, and evolutionary genetics.
We'll wait....
I love these guessing games!!
Barred Rock..
Soo looks like Delaware, but color distribution is wrong.. Body shape looks Delaware to me.. but could be Orpington too..
EE's gotta be in there for the legs right? LOL
Are there any feathered legs? That second picture looks like a cochin rear end.. They have that "bowling ball" shape in that pic...
My gosh.. there is a crazy mix here.. LOL I thought Orpington, but now I think Cochin? Silkies would have given them different combs and feet.. so hummm.. this is fun!
We know there's a barred rock somewhere in the mix.. that color screams Barred Rock to me...
Head and feet rule out silkie..
Size hints toward either a super fluffy or bulky breed... what makes me think Cochin or Orpington or even Delaware, but the color is wrong..
Legs hint towards EE
Oh good, more guesses! Is leg feathering a dominant trait? EEs and Ameraucanas and Araucanas are so multicolored, what are the chances of getting three alike? Definitely a soft feathered breed...The combs might hint at Dominiques instead of Barred Rocks, and I agree with ZZ that they have a Cochin look about them. The color pattern is still a puzzle, most blue breeds have darker heads/necks. Delawares and Lakenvelders have color in front and back. More guesses!
But Delawares carry the barred gene, so anywhere their progeny have pigment they might have barring. That is not true of the Light Sussex, but if a Light Sussex were crossed with a barred breed the progeny would have barring....I don't see the Orpington or Cochin influence...I am sort of leaning toward some EE influence because of the leg colour.
Twenty questions?
What colour would their eggs be expected to be? Or if it must be worded for a yes/no answer....Might the pullets be expected to lay blue or green eggs (or some shade therein?)
expected egg color......brown
Rules out Ameraucana and Araucana.....what else has slate coloured legs...well Nankins do. Cochins are suppose to have yellow legs, and leg feathers are at least somewhat dominant.
It doesn't appear that these chickens have leg feathers....so I would rule out any feather-legged breeds....
Second question: Do these chicks have any leg feathers?
Are they big enough to be part Jersey Giant? My Giants looked much leaner bodied than these chicks at that age. They do have dark legs but are harder feathered. The Australorps have dark legs as do the Blue Orpingtons, perhaps one of those breeds are among the previous right guesses if we eliminate the EE types.
What egg color(s) is dominant?
Can anyone tell what sort of combs they are going to have?
Egg coloration is a bit complex. There are multiple genes involved. The gene for blue is dominant, but independent of others....so that you get the blue colour overlaying the others. Blue, if over white. Teal or aquamarine if over tinted and different shades of green over browns. White is recessive...any introduction of brown genes will turn the white to tinted, "pink". cream or shades of brown. I think the very dark brown eggs (BCM/Penedesenca) are somehow controlled by other genes.
I have a Penedesenca (very dark brown)/Nankin (cream or tinted) cross and she lays soft brown eggs...so dark brown is easily lost.
All we know about smedgekles' babies is that they will lay some shade of brown...which means one of the parents, at least, is a brown egg layer (Delaware, Sussex, BR, Orpington, Australorp, Jersey Giant, etc) and probably not a blue egg layer (Araucana. Ameraucana). It doesn't really rule out a white egg layer in the mix. But I think she is leading us away from that...which rules out the Leghorn.
It is important, I think, to rule out any leg feathering...that would exclude Silkie, Faverolle, Cochin or Brahma. The babies also look like they have four, not five, toes...
Combs are straight, no leg feathering on these babies. You have all 3 breeds listed somewhere in the above posts, you just don't have it narrowed down. Give up yet? The other babies from these same parents don't look like these 3 at all. If you want, I can post a picture of the siblings to these 3.
There were many eggs under the momma and we lost 3 or 4 of the babies and 2 more of them appeared to be colored like these 3, the others that didn't make it had some of the sibling colorations. So, the 3 breeds (in father roo and mother hen) that made up these babies also can make up babies that look completely different.
I don't give up yet. If Catscan agrees, I'd like to see the siblings - otherwise I'll happily keep guessing.
Go for it porkpal.....
{{{Really, we should go through smedgekles' previous posts to see which breeds she refers to owning....}}}
{{{I sort of tried that but my computer is so slow that I gave up.}}}
You guys are having fun with this, and my son is having a blast reading all your guesses as well.
Okay, here is one of the siblings. We had another similar to this with more black but it lived two weeks and died suddenly, not sure why.
By the way, there are two more siblings besides the one above (there would have been 3 more but one died) that don't look like the first three and don't look exactally like the one I just posted either. There were more, but 3 or 4 died before hatch (hen smashed the eggs), two appeared to look like the first 3 and the others appeared to look more like the one above.