Wheaten - Blue Wheaten

[Guest]

Okay I\'ve looked everywhere...

I don\'t know much about genetics (I had one class in high school a long time ago) but I am trying to find out how the wheaten and blue wheaten colors are coded/react.  Is there such a thing as a splash wheaten?  I know I have seen it mentioned before but nothing was elaborated on.  I am trying to decide which rooster to keep from a group of wheaten/blue wheaten.  I have handled them quite a bit and they will all lay in my hand with little or no nervousness.  I much rather prefer them to be tame as they will be pets.  However I recently read that handling roosters at a young age in turn creates mean roosters because they are not afraid of people?  I find that a little bit ridiculous, but to the big question...

Does the following link showing \"Intermediary heredity\" or
\"Dominant-recessive hereditary\" represent this breed?

http://www.chicken-yard.net/general/genetics.html

Thanks,
Jason

[Mike Gilbert]

Hello Jason, and welcome.    Dominant and recessive and incomplete dominance only have meaning when applied to specific traits.    A single bird may have both dominant and recessive traits.    Concerning wheaten and blue-wheaten, a single gene (Bl) dilutes black to a shade of gray which in chicken talk we call blue.    One copy of Bl added to wheaten makes blue wheaten.   Two copies of Bl make splash wheaten.   Splash wheaten crossed with wheaten should yield 100 percent blue wheaten progeny.   Splash wheaten crossed with blue wheaten should yield about 50 percent of each of the two colors, but no wheaten.   Splash wheaten is not a recognized color, perhaps because in the eyes of many the males are not very attractive.   But they can be very useful if you plan to produce or sell blue wheaten chicks.    The three colors are not distinguishable by the color of their chick down.
If I didn\'t answer your question or went down the wrong rabbit trail let me know, and again, welcome to the best breed club on the planet.

[Guest]

Mike,

You nailed down what I was looking for.  Intermediary heredity it is!  From the link I posted, the black chick would represent the wheaten, the shaded chick would represent the blue wheaten and the white chick would represent the splash wheaten.   I have one blue wheaten rooster with a very kind demeanor.  He is only a month old but is currently my favorite.  I\'m unsure of how long to wait to cull.  They have already begun their battle for pecking order dominance(nothing bloody yet).  Any advice on timing?


Thanks for the warm welcome!

[Mike Gilbert]

The Ameraucana breed has very many things to watch for, probably more than most breeds because of egg color, muffs, ear lobe color being difficult to detect,  shank and eye color change over time, etc.    The wheaten and blue-wheaten males especially are difficult to cull for early on.   Their final coloring won\'t be apparent until they get their adult plumage.
So the best advice I can give at this point is don\'t be too hasty in culling for coloring \"defects\" in your males.

Mike