In order to increase my buff flock I crossed my wheaten line into my buff line per Mike Gilbert\'s advice. When crossing the buff bantam ameraucana to the wheaten bantam ameraucana 24 of the 25 chicks came out buff with tiny bits of smutty black in wing tips or in tail tips. Some chicks appear to not have any of the black. The other chick looks wheaten in color.
So am I to assume that buff is a dominant gene over the wheaten gene?
Secondly, in birds, is it the male gene or the female gene that determines the sex of the chick?
Thanks for that report Patty. Buff is made up of multiple genes, one of which is wheaten at the e locus. I understand it is possible to have buffs with e>g (brown) at the e locus too, but wheaten is by far most common. That is why I recommended the cross. Dominant or recessive is only meaningful when comparing alleles - which are different possible genes located at the same place on the same chromosome. Wheaten does tend to be recessive in the absence of certain unidentified melanizers when compared with other possibilities at the e locus.
All chickens have the same number of chromosome pairs, but there seems to be nothing inherited on one of the sex-link chromosomes that females have. There are many genes that express from the other sex link chromosome, but only male chickens have two of them; females get only one. Examples would be silver (S) or gold(s) , sex linked barring - B, brown eye (br), the gene that inhibits melanin formation in the dermis of the shanks (Id), and there are more. See Sellers genetics website.
But back to your question: which gender determines sex?
Depends how you look at it, but the way I see it, only the females can make more females, as the male does not have the \"blank\" chromosome that is required for it, hence cannot pass it on to his offspring. Does that make any sense?