Backyard Poultry Forum

A few weeks ago I came on to this forum and asked about 4 australorp chicks and what colour they were. I had bought 12 black australorp eggs and hatched them in my incubator, and to my suprise 4 out of the 12 were not black!

In fact now 4 weeks on their feathers have come in and they are WHITE! I have managed to contact the breeder who is quite puzzled, but explains that he has 3 pens - 1 with a black cockerel and 6 pullets, 1 pen with 3 blues and 1 pen with a young white pullet. somehow a mistake has happened and I've ended up with 4 white australorps.

I have never even heard of white australorps are they quite rare???

I think I may have some cockerels in this 4, however I have wondered if i breed a white cockerel to one of my existing black australorps would I get blue????

I'm really excited as I'm hopefully going to end up with a whole range of australorp colours.

I will post some photos soon........

Thanks for all your help!!!

i think the white in australorps is recessive so birds cancarry the gene and not show it. when both parents carry the gene then you can expect white chicks. possibly the breeder is unaware of this.

k

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if you want to waste some time looking at photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/54516384@N02/
or set my BYP gallery on 45 photos per page for loads of chook photos and more.

Would love to see any pics that you have taken... :D

I think that the earlier post referred to is: http://forum.backyardpoultry.com/viewto ... ht=#132081 ?

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D.
SEQWA

You lucky person. white austrolorps are very rare- a new colour.
ausreolorp (black ones) are born black and white and by 6 weeks old go black.

pure white are VERy Very rare.

Lucky you.
austioneer

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Breeder of pure bred poultry since 1977. seller of point of lay Isa brown pullets. *** Specialist poultry auctioneer.*** Have gavel will travel

Just taken these pictures tonight,
The chicks are about 4 and a half weeks old and going through their 'ugly duckling stage'[ img ][/img]

here's two more[ img ]The fourth was proven difficult to photograph - camera shy!

The next question is are they male or female????

Nice! Hope you have a trio! Might take another few weeks to be able to tell. Patience grasshopper! :lol:

your a lucky ducky



isaac

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Isaac Walker, breeder of Japanese Bantams, Sebrights, Blue Australorp's, Muscovy Ducks and Brahma's.
~ Skye Farm Poultry.

you can not tell sex untill atleast 8 weeks old. The male will have a larger comb.
Chichens can be sex at 12hours to 24 hours old by a trained sexer or by sight at 6 to 10 weeks of age depending on breed.

auctioneer

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Breeder of pure bred poultry since 1977. seller of point of lay Isa brown pullets. *** Specialist poultry auctioneer.*** Have gavel will travel

No mating Black to White will not give you blue birds.
White Australorps have been known for a least 40 years,but were never recognised. They are not in the current,1998,Standard but I think they will be in the 2nd edition.
They are recognised by the Australorp club,which has classes for them in its National show. At other shows the ,at the moment,would need to be shown in Demonstration or in non recognised colour classes.
Both parents must carry the recessive white gene,so repeating the mating,mayproduce more whites. Mating either of your Whites to Blacks will give Black birds that are carriers,and mated together or to whites will produce more whites.
It is quite possible your black chicks are carring the white factor.

Is the white recessive to black? I read somewhere that black was recessive to blue (could be the other way, I forget).

Would this mean that blue dominates black, and both dominate white?

Blue is not recessive to black, as i think (not sure), mating black (or white) to blue will get 50% of each. But it think this may be splash? Black to black won't give blue, just black. Same as splash to splash or white to white, it will only give splash or white respectively.

There is recessive white and dominant white, dominant white is found in commercial layers and as ruff said recessive id in Australorps.

As with sexing, usually heavy breeds like Australorps can be roughly sexed by wing growth, the males will have slower growing wing and tail feather while their sisters have faster growing feathers, i would say the first picture is a male.

Nick

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Sebrights and Frizzles

aren't the whites different, hmmmm :yipee:

You lucky thing, usually I get not so nice surprises when eggs hatch - like all roosters, all the colour I don't want or worse yet, crossbreeds!

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Polish, Silkies, Pekins, New Hampshire, Sussex, Orpington, D'uccle, Frizzle, and Australorp chickens.