Another chick down question

[Lee G]

So my last hatch of the season produced an oddity I wasn't expecting; a chick with wildtype down from pair mating a silver cock over a black hen. He's the only one out of the six that hatched with different chick down. The rest of the chicks from the same mating had more normal extended black down, but darker, with no yellow marbling. They've all feathered in fast and black, where as the oddball looks like this at 4 weeks.

At least I think it's a cockerel, although the chest is feathering in white instead of black? 
Pretty fiesty little fella too...for a runt, lol




Does this mean the black hen I used is split for wildtype? Or am I seeing something else here? Any input is much appreciated! Thank you 

[Lee G]

Ack!!!

  Sorry bout the massive photos folks....not sure why photobucket insists on blowing up any pics I crop or resize to epic, bandwidth busting proportions...other than it really, really hates me.  Sigh....

[John]

Grow him and if he shows crowwing, instead of duckwing, I would guess she is split for birchen (E/E^R).   

[Mike Gilbert]

You can see a thin edging of white on the secondaries, so my guess is the hen is indeed split for wild type e+.
But adult feathers can be much different than chick feathers, so I think John's advice is good.   Grow the chick out and see what the adult feathering looks like.

[Lee G]

Thank you kind sirs, that is exactly the info I was looking for. 

It's pretty neat how some of the parents genotype can be deciphered from their offspring's chick down.  And how much can change (or is masked) by adult plumage. So cool. I shall grow him up and post the results later on.